A paraplegic Marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home.
When his brother is killed in a robbery, paraplegic Marine Jake Sully decides to take his place in a mission on the distant world of Pandora. There he learns of greedy corporate figurehead Parker Selfridge's intentions of driving off the native humanoid "Na'vi" in order to mine for the precious material scattered throughout their rich woodland. In exchange for the spinal surgery that will fix his legs, Jake gathers knowledge, of the Indigenous Race and their Culture, for the cooperating military unit spearheaded by gung-ho Colonel Quaritch, while simultaneously attempting to infiltrate the Na'vi people with the use of an "avatar" identity. While Jake begins to bond with the native tribe and quickly falls in love with the beautiful alien Neytiri, the restless Colonel moves forward with his ruthless extermination tactics, forcing the soldier to take a stand - and fight back in an epic battle for the fate of Pandora.Written by
The Massie Twins
Jake Sully and Neytiri have a almost similar relationship to that of Hal Tara and Zita in Strings (2004). Both Jake Sully and Hal Tara goes among the Na'vi and Neytiri with a task. Both Neytiri and Zita are warriors. Neytiri teaches Jake Sully the Na'vi's way of life and Zita teaches Hal Tara the Zerith's origins and how The Zerith's leap. Jake Sully and Hal Tara both fall in love with Neytiri and Zita. Both Jake Sully and Hal Tara get rejected by Neytiri and Zita when they both learn the terrible truths about why they really came to their people and are forced to leave and Jake Sully and Hal Tara both sides with the Na'vi and the Zeriths and they fight back against the corporation and the Hebalonians whom are bent on wiping out both the Na'vi and the Zeriths. See more »
Goofs
Cockpits of numerous aircraft are breached without the unshielded pilots being affected by the toxic atmosphere. See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
Jake Sully:
[Narrating]
When I was lying in the V.A. hospital with a big hole blown through the middle of my life, I started having these dreams of flying. I was free. But sooner or later, you always have to wake up.
See more »
Crazy Credits
There are no opening credits of any kind (outside of the 20th Century Fox title card). The title of the film doesn't appear on screen until the end of the movie. See more »
Alternate Versions
Released to commemorate the 2010 Earth Day, the 171-minute Special edition includes the following additional scenes:
The first flight across Pandora is longer, with the helicopter flying past the Stuurmbeast herd. Grace informs Norm and Jake about it.
The squad reaches the abandoned school. It reveals that Grace teaches English to the Na'vi children until a serious incident came about (bullet holes around, etc..) which was insinuated about.
Jake and Neytiri running through the neon-lit woods is slightly longer.
When Jake joins the circle, a little Na'vi girl smiles at him curiously, but her father holds her back. Neytiri then arrives and hands Jake a fruit.
Jake tries to ask Neytiri her name, but she seems annoyed by that.
Jake, Grace and Norm proceed from the helicopter to the secluded laboratory. There's an explanation about the mountains.
At night, Jake and Neytiri run through the luminescent forest.
After Jake touches the Fan Lizard, it flies away in a radiant glow. Its fellow species follow suit and, to the delight of Jake and Neytiri, raise themselves into the air.
As Jake and the other Na'vi climb the mountain, Neytiri flies past them on her banshee, Seze.
The Na'vi goes for an aerial hunt for Stuurmbeast. Jake shoots one and exclaims in excitement. Neytiri follow suit as well.
The Na'vi destroy the Hell Trucks of the mining company.
The next morning, Wainfleet's squad sifts through the remains of the Hell Trucks. Turns out that Na'vi kill the soldiers as well. Quaritch and Selfridge watch the live broadcast.
Tsu'tey's fall from the sky is longer. A few plants decelerate and break his fall.
The scene with the Hammerhead Titanotheres has been extended.
The fight between Neytiri on a Thanathor and Quaritch is slightly longer.
Tsu'Tey's death: he knows he is dying and appoints Jake to be his successor. He insists Jake to kill him because by Na'vi customs, Jake has to pass him to the Eywa by killing him by his own hands. Neytiri starts to cry. Jake reluctantly complies with his wish, stabbing him by the knife as the camera passes by him.
The end credits has an addition of using Discovery Zone's Bless the Plague soundtrack. The copyright year has been replaced with 2010.
When movies are created, they are done so with intent. Different genres of film target specific audiences, a formula which has sustained Hollywood and it's industries since the beginning of the blockbuster movies. When a movie is created in a manner that sets in motion any given goal, said films success is pendant on whether or not that goal is reached. If a comedy creates laughter, or if a romance produces tears, then they are successes in their own right. So when a massively ambitious, seemingly impossible to create film aiming to usher in a new era manages to grab hold of it's audience and take them on an unprecedented cinematic roller coaster ride that delivers the goods every turn of the way, it can be considered successful. Avatar is that success.
A work in progress that spanned a decade and a half, Avatar is more than just a film - it's an experience, an event. When James Cameron set out to make this movie back in the mid 90's, he realized that his ambitions were simply too far ahead of their time. His ideas could not be reached in a feasible manner, and due to this, he had to wait. Or create. Once informed that the image he held for this film was one that was out of grasp, he began working on the technology that would bring his masterpiece within reach. Fifteen years and nearly half a billion dollars later, James Cameron has brought that vision to the screen, and has done so in an extravagant and showstopping way.
Avatar tells the tale of a war between species, each fighting for the ultimate survival of their race. Desperate to find the fuel for their dying planet, human soldiers and scientists set out from earth and set course for Pandora. A planet connected by all living things, Pandora is home to an indigenous species known as the Na'vi, as well as the precious element Unobtanium needed to save earth. Using transference technology, paralyzed marine Jake Sully is volunteered for the "Avatar Program", which enables the thoughts and mind of a human to be placed within the shell of a tube-born Na'vi body. Using this as technique to their advantage, Jake is sent into the harsh Jungles of Pandora in order to bond with the natives, thus gaining knowledge and insight on their ways. Having originally planned to use this knowledge as a means of negotiating the natives relocation, so that the humans can access the deposit of Unobtainium - which just happens to sit below their most worshiped and valued pseudo-deity of their planet.
While the plot on paper may read as a standard shoot'em-up action sci-fi flick, it is a near inconceivable task to truly explain how incorrect this appearance truly is. This takes a stroke from every movie, and a dab from every genre, and manages to create a portrait of beauty, in which all pre-existing notion of what cinema can and cannot do is destroyed. Within the lengthy hundred and sixty some odd minutes of film, moviegoers will find that there is always something to keep them enthralled, a merciful gift when considering how tedious many of the longer film of recent memory can become.
No matter what can be said about the overtly cheesy script,a criticism that, while holding true, manages to fit charmingly into the over-the-top nature of the film, Avatar does as it set out to do, bringing moviegoers a cinematic experience rather than a film. Relying on the technology that he created, Cameron pours his heart into this movie, and it shows in every scene. Ranging from the absurdly detailed creatures to all-too-realistic planet, this flick manages to tell a fulfilling story while all the while throwing jaw-dropping scenery at the audience, giving them only enough time to recover before bombarding them with yet another breathtaking shot.
Be it the fantastical and charming love story told between the native and the outsider, or the too-real-to-be-true action scenes between gunships and foreign ferals, Avatar is what Star Wars was too the 70's, the Wizard Of Oz of the 40's - a masterpiece that will go down in movie history as a game changer of it's time.
4 Stars out of 4 Stars
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When movies are created, they are done so with intent. Different genres of film target specific audiences, a formula which has sustained Hollywood and it's industries since the beginning of the blockbuster movies. When a movie is created in a manner that sets in motion any given goal, said films success is pendant on whether or not that goal is reached. If a comedy creates laughter, or if a romance produces tears, then they are successes in their own right. So when a massively ambitious, seemingly impossible to create film aiming to usher in a new era manages to grab hold of it's audience and take them on an unprecedented cinematic roller coaster ride that delivers the goods every turn of the way, it can be considered successful. Avatar is that success.
A work in progress that spanned a decade and a half, Avatar is more than just a film - it's an experience, an event. When James Cameron set out to make this movie back in the mid 90's, he realized that his ambitions were simply too far ahead of their time. His ideas could not be reached in a feasible manner, and due to this, he had to wait. Or create. Once informed that the image he held for this film was one that was out of grasp, he began working on the technology that would bring his masterpiece within reach. Fifteen years and nearly half a billion dollars later, James Cameron has brought that vision to the screen, and has done so in an extravagant and showstopping way.
Avatar tells the tale of a war between species, each fighting for the ultimate survival of their race. Desperate to find the fuel for their dying planet, human soldiers and scientists set out from earth and set course for Pandora. A planet connected by all living things, Pandora is home to an indigenous species known as the Na'vi, as well as the precious element Unobtanium needed to save earth. Using transference technology, paralyzed marine Jake Sully is volunteered for the "Avatar Program", which enables the thoughts and mind of a human to be placed within the shell of a tube-born Na'vi body. Using this as technique to their advantage, Jake is sent into the harsh Jungles of Pandora in order to bond with the natives, thus gaining knowledge and insight on their ways. Having originally planned to use this knowledge as a means of negotiating the natives relocation, so that the humans can access the deposit of Unobtainium - which just happens to sit below their most worshiped and valued pseudo-deity of their planet.
While the plot on paper may read as a standard shoot'em-up action sci-fi flick, it is a near inconceivable task to truly explain how incorrect this appearance truly is. This takes a stroke from every movie, and a dab from every genre, and manages to create a portrait of beauty, in which all pre-existing notion of what cinema can and cannot do is destroyed. Within the lengthy hundred and sixty some odd minutes of film, moviegoers will find that there is always something to keep them enthralled, a merciful gift when considering how tedious many of the longer film of recent memory can become.
No matter what can be said about the overtly cheesy script,a criticism that, while holding true, manages to fit charmingly into the over-the-top nature of the film, Avatar does as it set out to do, bringing moviegoers a cinematic experience rather than a film. Relying on the technology that he created, Cameron pours his heart into this movie, and it shows in every scene. Ranging from the absurdly detailed creatures to all-too-realistic planet, this flick manages to tell a fulfilling story while all the while throwing jaw-dropping scenery at the audience, giving them only enough time to recover before bombarding them with yet another breathtaking shot.
Be it the fantastical and charming love story told between the native and the outsider, or the too-real-to-be-true action scenes between gunships and foreign ferals, Avatar is what Star Wars was too the 70's, the Wizard Of Oz of the 40's - a masterpiece that will go down in movie history as a game changer of it's time.
4 Stars out of 4 Stars