avatar 1 movie review

Cameron retains his crown

Watching “Avatar,” I felt sort of the same as when I saw “Star Wars” in 1977. That was another movie I walked into with uncertain expectations. James Cameron ‘s film has been the subject of relentlessly dubious advance buzz, just as his “ Titanic ” was. Once again, he has silenced the doubters by simply delivering an extraordinary film. There is still at least one man in Hollywood who knows how to spend $250 million, or was it $300 million, wisely.

“Avatar” is not simply a sensational entertainment, although it is that. It’s a technical breakthrough. It has a flat-out Green and anti-war message. It is predestined to launch a cult. It contains such visual detailing that it would reward repeating viewings. It invents a new language, Na’vi, as “Lord of the Rings” did, although mercifully I doubt this one can be spoken by humans, even teenage humans. It creates new movie stars. It is an Event, one of those films you feel you must see to keep up with the conversation.

The story, set in the year 2154, involves a mission by U. S. Armed Forces to an earth-sized moon in orbit around a massive star. This new world, Pandora, is a rich source of a mineral Earth desperately needs. Pandora represents not even a remote threat to Earth, but we nevertheless send in ex-military mercenaries to attack and conquer them. Gung-ho warriors employ machine guns and pilot armored hover ships on bombing runs. You are free to find this an allegory about contemporary politics. Cameron obviously does.

Pandora harbors a planetary forest inhabited peacefully by the Na’vi, a blue-skinned, golden-eyed race of slender giants, each one perhaps 12 feet tall. The atmosphere is not breathable by humans, and the landscape makes us pygmies. To venture out of our landing craft, we use avatars–Na’vi lookalikes grown organically and mind-controlled by humans who remain wired up in a trance-like state on the ship. While acting as avatars, they see, fear, taste and feel like Na’vi, and have all the same physical adeptness.

This last quality is liberating for the hero, Jake Sully ( Sam Worthington ), who is a paraplegic. He’s been recruited because he’s a genetic match for a dead identical twin, who an expensive avatar was created for. In avatar state he can walk again, and as his payment for this duty he will be given a very expensive operation to restore movement to his legs. In theory he’s in no danger, because if his avatar is destroyed, his human form remains untouched. In theory.

On Pandora, Jake begins as a good soldier and then goes native after his life is saved by the lithe and brave Neytiri ( Zoe Saldana ). He finds it is indeed true, as the aggressive Col. Miles Quaritch ( Stephen Lang ) briefed them, that nearly every species of life here wants him for lunch. (Avatars are not be made of Na’vi flesh, but try explaining that to a charging 30-ton rhino with a snout like a hammerhead shark).

The Na’vi survive on this planet by knowing it well, living in harmony with nature, and being wise about the creatures they share with. In this and countless other ways they resemble Native Americans. Like them, they tame another species to carry them around–not horses, but graceful flying dragon-like creatures. The scene involving Jake capturing and taming one of these great beasts is one of the film’s greats sequences.

Like “Star Wars” and “LOTR,” “Avatar” employs a new generation of special effects. Cameron said it would, and many doubted him. It does. Pandora is very largely CGI. The Na’vi are embodied through motion capture techniques, convincingly. They look like specific, persuasive individuals, yet sidestep the eerie Uncanny Valley effect. And Cameron and his artists succeed at the difficult challenge of making Neytiri a blue-skinned giantess with golden eyes and a long, supple tail, and yet–I’ll be damned. Sexy.

At 163 minutes, the film doesn’t feel too long. It contains so much. The human stories. The Na’vi stories, for the Na’vi are also developed as individuals. The complexity of the planet, which harbors a global secret. The ultimate warfare, with Jake joining the resistance against his former comrades. Small graceful details like a floating creature that looks like a cross between a blowing dandelion seed and a drifting jellyfish, and embodies goodness. Or astonishing floating cloud-islands.

I’ve complained that many recent films abandon story telling in their third acts and go for wall-to-wall action. Cameron essentially does that here, but has invested well in establishing his characters so that it matters what they do in battle and how they do it. There are issues at stake greater than simply which side wins.

Cameron promised he’d unveil the next generation of 3-D in “Avatar.” I’m a notorious skeptic about this process, a needless distraction from the perfect realism of movies in 2-D. Cameron’s iteration is the best I’ve seen — and more importantly, one of the most carefully-employed. The film never uses 3-D simply because it has it, and doesn’t promiscuously violate the fourth wall. He also seems quite aware of 3-D’s weakness for dimming the picture, and even with a film set largely in interiors and a rain forest, there’s sufficient light. I saw the film in 3-D on a good screen at the AMC River East and was impressed. I might be awesome in True IMAX. Good luck in getting a ticket before February.

It takes a hell of a lot of nerve for a man to stand up at the Oscarcast and proclaim himself King of the World. James Cameron just got re-elected.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

Stephen Lang as Col. Miles Quaritch
Joel David Moore as Norm Spellman
Wes Studi as Eytukan
CCH Pounder as Moat
Dileep Rao as Dr. Max Patel
Giovanni Ribisi as Parker Selfridge
Sam Worthington as Jake Sully
Zoe Saldana as Neytiri
Michelle Rodriguez as Trudy Chacon
Laz Alonso as Tsu'tey
Sigourney Weaver as Grace
Matt Gerald as Corporal Lyle Wainfleet

Written and directed by

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‘avatar’: film review.

A dozen years later, James Cameron has proven his point: He is king of the world.

By Kirk Honeycutt

Kirk Honeycutt

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As commander-in-chief of an army of visual-effects technicians, creature designers, motion-capture mavens, stunt performers, dancers, actors and music and sound magicians, he brings science-fiction movies into the 21st century with the jaw-dropping wonder that is “ Avatar .” And he did it almost from scratch. The Bottom Line A titanic entertainment -- movie magic is back!

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Avatar Reviews

It is every bit the technical achievement that Cameron promised it would be. However, there is no dodging its weak, underwhelming story. And I don't go back to rewatch The Terminator, Aliens or T2 time after time for the special effects.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 7, 2024

“Avatar” remains a transporting experience – an entertaining blend of old-fashioned adventure and technological wonder.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 8, 2024

'Avatar' is not just a visual display. It contains heart, humor, and all the aspects needed to make it a well-rounded story. Sure, the script could have been punched up with something more poetic and less obvious. Still, it’s not a bad egg.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jan 9, 2024

To be sure, this is an engaging experience in every sense, from the dramatic to the visual to the visceral. This is how blockbusters should be.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 28, 2023

STUNNING epic. Zoe Saldana performance… A fantastic one

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

It’s the world of Pandora married to the groundbreaking technology used to bring it to life that makes "Avatar" impressive, but it otherwise comes across as hollow, spectacle for the sake of it with little else to offer.

Full Review | Jul 6, 2023

Cameron is a master filmmaker whose movies will endure long after he stops making movies.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jun 23, 2023

While the visuals might rate four stars, the screenplay guarantees this falls well below more compatible marriages of substance and style found in such ground-breakers as the original King Kong, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Cameron’s own Terminator films.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 16, 2023

A groundbreaking technical achievement in filmmaking. The impressive visual effects and amazing world building more than make up for one of Cameron's weaker stories. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 8, 2023

Combining cutting-edge technology with classic, earnest storytelling is firmly the hallmark of this series, and it honestly gave me almost everything I wanted from it.

Full Review | Dec 16, 2022

Three hours breeze into deep relationships, action-packed sequences, and a tale that deserves to be repeatedly seen in cinema. #diandrareviews

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 14, 2022

It’s not just that we’ve seen the tale before… it’s that every aspect of the screenplay is terrible.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Dec 7, 2022

Cameron’s epic can still thrill the audience with breathtaking set pieces, bring them to tears with moving moments, and amaze people willing to explore a fantasy land like no other.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Oct 12, 2022

Avatar still elicits much of the same wide-eyed wonderment.

Full Review | Oct 5, 2022

The emotional stakes presented in the final battle make it so powerful, going beyond the physical scale of the sequence and what the visual effects artists achieved to create a stunning, rousing piece of filmmaking.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Sep 30, 2022

Thirteen years after its release, 'Avatar' still proves to be an exceptional blockbuster that makes the most of a simple and predictable story, to develop a visually awesome and emotional experience that must be had in the cinema. Full review in Spanish.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Sep 28, 2022

The standard in modern blockbuster filmmaking. I don’t make the rules.

Full Review | Sep 26, 2022

A meaningful blockbuster that fails to play ignorant to craft or soul, it is no wonder that so many have fallen in love with the world of Pandora and the drama that takes place on it.

[W]atching Avatar‘s 4K HDR format on IMAX 3D looks more incredible and visually stunning than the original 3D version in 2009.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Sep 25, 2022

...still a gorgeous sci-fi epic, but the characters are nowhere near as detailed.

Full Review | Sep 24, 2022

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Movie Review | 'Avatar'

A New Eden, Both Cosmic and Cinematic

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By Manohla Dargis

Dec. 17, 2009

With “Avatar” James Cameron has turned one man’s dream of the movies into a trippy joy ride about the end of life our moviegoing life included as we know it. Several decades in the dreaming and more than four years in the actual making, the movie is a song to the natural world that was largely produced with software, an Emersonian exploration of the invisible world of the spirit filled with Cameronian rock ’em, sock ’em pulpy action. Created to conquer hearts, minds, history books and box-office records, the movie one of the most expensive in history, the jungle drums thump is glorious and goofy and blissfully deranged.

The story behind the story, including a production budget estimated to top $230 million, and Mr. Cameron’s future-shock ambitions for the medium have already begun to settle into myth (a process partly driven by the publicity, certainly). Every filmmaker is something of a visionary, just by virtue of the medium. But Mr. Cameron, who directed the megamelodrama “Titanic” and, more notably, several of the most influential science-fiction films of the past few decades (“The Terminator,” “Aliens” and “The Abyss”), is a filmmaker whose ambitions transcend a single movie or mere stories to embrace cinema as an art, as a social experience and a shamanistic ritual, one still capable of producing the big WOW.

The scale of his new movie, which brings you into a meticulous and brilliantly colored alien world for a fast 2 hours 46 minutes, factors into that wow. Its scope is evident in an early scene on a spaceship (the year is 2154), where the passengers, including a paraplegic ex-Marine, Jake (Sam Worthington, a gruffly sensitive heartthrob), are being roused from a yearslong sleep before landing on a distant inhabited moon, Pandora. Jake is woken by an attendant floating in zero gravity, one of many such aides. As Jake himself glides through the bright cavernous space, you know you’re not in Kansas anymore, as someone soon quips (a nod to “The Wizard of Oz,” Mr. Cameron’s favorite film). You also know you’re not in the gloom of “The Matrix.”

Though it’s easy to pigeonhole Mr. Cameron as a gear head who’s more interested in cool tools (which here include 3-D), he is, with “Avatar,” also making a credible attempt to create a paradigm shift in science-fiction cinema. Since it was first released in 1999, “The Matrix,” which owes a large debt to Mr. Cameron’s own science-fiction films as well as the literary subgenre of cyberpunk, has hung heavily over both SF and action filmmaking. Most films that crib from “The Matrix” tend to borrow only its slo-mo death waltzes and leather fetishism, keeping its nihilism while ditching the intellectual inquiries. Although “Avatar” delivers a late kick to the gut that might be seen as nihilistic (and how!), it is strangely utopian.

It doesn’t take Jake long to feel the good vibes. Like Neo, the savior-hero of the “Matrix” series played by Keanu Reeves, Jake is himself an avatar because he’s both a special being and an embodiment of an idea, namely that of the hero’s journey. What initially makes Jake unusual is that he has been tapped to inhabit a part-alien, part-human body that he controls, like a puppeteer, from its head to its prehensile tail. Like the rest of the human visitors who’ve made camp on Pandora, he has signed on with a corporation that’s intent on extracting a valuable if mysterious substance from the moon called unobtainium, a great whatsit that is an emblem of humanity’s greed and folly. With his avatar, Jake will look just like one of the natives, the Na’vi, a new identity that gives the movie its plot turns and politics.

The first part of Jake’s voyage for this is, above all, a boy’s rocking adventure, if one populated by the usual tough Cameron chicks takes him from a wheelchair into a 10-foot, blue-skinned Na’vi body. At once familiar and pleasingly exotic, the humanoid Na’vi come with supermodel dimensions (slender hips, a miniature-apple rear); long articulated digits, the better to grip with; and the slanted eyes and twitchy ears of a cat. (The gently curved stripes that line their blue skin, the color of twilight, bring to mind the markings on mackerel tabby cats.) For Jake his avatar, which he hooks into through sensors while lying in a remote pod in a semiconscious state, is at first a giddy novelty and then a means to liberation.

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Time Out says

There’s a line from ‘Jurassic Park’ that echoed hauntingly through this critic’s head as ‘Avatar’ unfolded: ‘Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could , they didn’t stop to think if they should .’ James Cameron is one of those scientists: so in love with the technology, with the possibilities, that he never pauses to reflect upon the practicalities of cinema, of storytelling, of connecting with an audience. That quote is doubly relevant when one considers the cultural similarities between these two blockbusters, both of which justified massive expense by promising a quantum leap forward in visual effects. But where Spielberg utilised technology in the service of a tight, witty script, Cameron is simply out to astound. There are moments when you almost expect Sam Worthington’s moody, ever-present voiceover to be replaced by the self-styled king of the world yelling at his audience: ‘Are you awestruck now? How about now? Now?’ When his scientist brother is killed a week before shipping out to the distant planet Pandora, wheelchair-bound US Marine Jake Sully (Worthington) is offered the chance to go in his place. On Pandora, Jake meets his avatar, a remote-controlled host body generated from his brother’s DNA and designed to blend in among the native Na’vi, a race of nine-foot blue hunter-gatherers living in peaceful harmony with their homeworld, Native American style. Or rather, Native Californian: Na’vi civilisation is a mishmash of half-formed Hollywood ideas about the supposed superiority of ‘primitive’ cultures, tossing around buzzwords like ‘spirit’ and ‘energy’ without ever approaching a cohesive set of beliefs. But ‘all this tree-hugging shit’, as Jake describes it, is only the most obvious defect in Cameron’s dire, cliché-ridden script. From the bluntly expositional nature of the early scenes to the gung-ho, sub-‘Aliens’ banter of Jake’s fellow soldiers, this is screenwriting on autopilot, cobbling together unripe ideas without a scrap of originality or emotional resonance. It’s hard to fault ‘Avatar’ as an immersive visual experience. Pandora and its luridly coloured inhabitants are beautifully designed, though none of this ever feels remotely real. But this was supposed to be the movie that changed the face of filmmaking forever. Ultimately, Cameron’s signature achievement may have been to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the oldest of all Hollywood maxims: all the money in the world is no subsitute for fresh ideas and a solid script.

Release Details

Release date: Thursday 17 December 2009
Duration: 161 mins

Cast and crew

Director: James Cameron
Screenwriter: James Cameron
Michelle Rodriguez
Sam Worthington
Sigourney Weaver
Giovanni Ribisi
Zoë Saldana

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DVD & Streaming
Action/Adventure , Animation , Drama , Romance , Sci-Fi/Fantasy , War

Content Caution

In Theaters

December 18, 2009
Sam Worthington as Jake Sully; Zoe Saldana as Neytiri; Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Grace Augustine; Michelle Rodriguez as Trudy Chacon; Stephen Lang as Col. Miles Quatrich; Giovanni Ribisi as Parker Selfridge; Joel David Moore as Norm Spellman; CCH Pounder as Mo’at; Wes Studi as Eytucan; Laz Alonso as Tus’Tey

Home Release Date

April 22, 2010
James Cameron

Distributor

20th Century Fox

Movie Review

Jake Sully has been asleep for six years.

More accurately, he’s been in cryogenic stasis five years, nine months and 22 days—the time needed to shuttle him and a crew of scientists and ex-Marine mercenaries from a decaying, resource-depleted Earth to the distant, forest-covered moon Pandora in the year 2154.

The job of the heavies? Protect miners, botanists and engineers from the perils of Pandora. Jake’s task, though he’s ex-military himself, is altogether different. His career was cut short by injuries that left him a paraplegic. Then he got tapped to take the place of his twin brother (a researcher who died unexpectedly) in the Avatar project, led by Dr. Grace Augustine.

Dr. Augustine has pioneered a way to make contact with the moon’s primary population, an intelligent, 10-foot-tall, blue-skinned, wide-eyed humanoid race known as the Na’vi. Blending human and Na’vi DNA, Augustine and her compatriots have bioengineered Na’vi-like bodies that can be linked through immersive virtual reality with “drivers,” of which Jake is one.

And all of that is just the setup before things really get rolling in James Cameron’s hyper-animated technology experiment.

Positive Elements

On the brink of being devoured by predators, Jake is rescued by a fierce female Na’vi warrior named Neytiri. Do Jake and Neytiri fall in love? Of course. But in the process, Jake begins to see the humans’ despoiling presence through the cat-like eyes of Pandora’s indigenous people.

Scowling from the face of the other side of the coin, Avatar’ s villains exhibit a caricatured kind of hyper-colonial wickedness. Parker Selfridge, the humans’ corporate overseer on Pandora, looks upon the Na’vi as animals that must be annihilated. Likewise, Col. Miles Quatrich is a battle-scarred attack dog who’s all too ready to commit genocide.

It’s clear who is heads and who is tails here. And, naturally, it’s only a matter of time before conflict erupts. When it does, Jake, Dr. Augustine and several other humans sacrificially fight on behalf of the oppressed, outgunned population.

The sermon is delivered in stark tones. Yet it’s undeniably true that unprovoked attacks and the taking of others’ land for personal gain is, um, wrong . The film also rightfully elevates the Na’vi’s harmonious relationship with their environment—because while the debate can rage over what it should look like exactly, living peaceably with our surroundings is still a good thing. (On its face, that is. The spiritual components wrapped into this issue are another matter.)

The Na’vi again serve as a counterpoint to the humans who have wrecked their own world and are intent upon doing it to another. Yes, we earthlings take quite a beating in Avatar . But in some ways we deserve to, especially if we identify at all with generally rapacious materialists who have only one thing on their minds—digging out the precious, energy-rich ore known as unobtanium.

Spiritual Elements

Just as the storyline involving the decimation of an indigenous population parallels early American history, so too the Na’vi’s spiritual beliefs often parallel those of Native American religions. The Na’vi worship a goddess known as Eywa, the Great Mother, a deity that seems both personal (the Na’vi pray to her) as well as encompassing the collective energy of Pandora’s living things.

Thus, the Na’vi exhibit high reverence for all plants and animals. And, as mentioned, the film’s environmental message is set against this spiritual backdrop. The trees, the forests and everything in them are not merely part of a natural ecology, but a spiritual one. And the violence perpetrated against Pandora’s creatures is not merely a physical violation, but a spiritual affront too.

The Na’vi’s holiest place is the Tree of Souls. Its airborne seeds are referred to as “pure spirits.” Its branches—more luminous tendrils than bark-covered limbs—are used in prayer rituals. Twice the Na’vi gather before this tree in what could be described as services of corporate healing and worship. In the first, they petition Eywa to save the wounded Dr. Augustine by transferring her soul from her human body into her avatar. The tribe’s spiritual leader, a female shaman (and Neytiri’s mother), says, “The Great Mother may choose to save all that she is in this body,” then prays, “Hear us please, All Mother. … Let her walk among us as one of the people.” Amid those prayers, Augustine tells Jake, “I’m with her [Eywa]. She’s real.” A similar service later involves Jake’ s attempt to become fully Na’vi. Both times, the tribe is seated, undulating and chanting ecstatically.

The Na’vi at times listen to the whispering voices of deceased ancestors. And they psychically bond with flying, almost dragon-like creatures known as banshees. During a funeral service, Neytiri tells Jake, “All energy is only borrowed. … You have to give it back.” Neytiri says of the Na’vi’s initiation ceremony, “Every person is born twice. The second time is when you earn your place among the people forever.”

Jake eventually prays to Eywa, telling her that the humans are about to destroy the Tree of Souls. Neytiri responds, “Our Great Mother does not take sides, Jake. She protects only the balance of life.” [ Spoiler Warning ] But when the planet’s creatures come to the Na’vi’s rescue in the final battle, Neytiri exults that Eywa has answered Jake’s prayers.

A Na’vi leader calls Jake’s avatar “a demon in a false body.” Col. Quatrich says of Pandora’s vicious environment, “If there is a hell, you might want to go there for some R and R.”

Sexual Content

The Na’vi may be aliens, and they may be computer generated, but their physiology still resembles that of humans. And we see quite a bit of it. Their garb is something you might see in a National Geographic pictorial of isolated jungle tribes. Which is to say, there isn’t much there. Both men and women wear little more than loincloths, and the race’s catlike tails don’t fully obscure their backsides. Neytiri and other Na’vi females wear ornamental coverings that don’t really conceal their breasts.

As for the humans, a female pilot wears a tight, cleavage-revealing tank top. And Dr. Augustine is seen unclothed (strategically wrapped in vines). Later, Jake’s nakedness is similarly “wrapped.”

Jake and Neytiri consummate their relationship in a sensuous scene that shows them kissing and intertwined. They sleep together afterward and are said to be “mated for life.”

Augustine alludes to an old masturbation cliché. Quatrich spits out a mocking double entendre about Jake having found “some local tail.”

Violent Content

The humans’ brutal attack begins with gas canisters. And it’s not long before copters unleash missiles that bring the Na’vi’s massive “home tree” down in a scene reminiscent of the World Trade Center’s collapse. Many Na’vi are crushed, impaled or wounded, and we see survivors departing in a line, weeping and wailing. These images recall the Cherokee’s forced migration to Oklahoma along the Trail of Tears.

Aerial clashes involve banshees vs. the humans’ aircraft. And while the Na’vi get mowed down by missiles and gunfire, many of their arrows somehow penetrate cockpits, taking out pilots and gunners.

The situation is similar on the ground. Scores of humans and Na’vi alike fall in a scene that’s similar in intensity to the final battle in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King . Also severe are several of Jake’s close encounters with Pandora’s fearsome beasties.

Specific violent moments worth noting include Neytiri’s taking out a viperwolf with an arrow and later killing a human with two well-placed shots. She also engages in a vicious melee with Col. Quatrich: She’s riding a huge jungle beast while Quatrich controls a mech (a walking, armored vehicle). He repeatedly stabs the animal and kills it, pinning Neytiri beneath it in the process. Elsewhere, an unfortunate human’s head and shoulders end up in a banshee’s mouth. Explosions consume man, alien and beast alike. On fire, a horse-like creature runs for its life. Jake’s avatar nearly knocks the head off one human and hurls others to their deaths.

Crude or Profane Language

About a dozen s-words. Also, 10 misuses of God’s name (including six or seven pairings with “d‑‑n”) and three abuses of Jesus’ name. We hear roughly 20 other profanities (“h‑‑‑,” “a‑‑,” “b‑‑ch,” “b‑‑tard,” “p‑‑‑”) and three crude references to the male anatomy (“d‑‑k” among them).

Drug and Alcohol Content

Dr. Augustine smokes often and drinks a glass of alcohol.

Other Negative Elements

Political barbs cluster among the positive messages about peace, humanitarianism and environmentalism. As if to denigrate current American foreign policy, the film includes the lines, “Our security lies in preemptive attack. We will fight terror with terror.” Somebody references the upcoming “shock and awe” campaign.

Go epic or go home.

That’s James Cameron’s way. His last feature film, 1997’s Titanic , became the highest grossing of all time (without inflation being factored in). And his other résumé entries include such well-known bombasts as Aliens, The Terminator and its sequel, True Lies and The Abyss .

Big, every one. And Avatar is bigger and bolder than them all.

Cameron began working on Avatar in 1994. Fifteen years later we have what some are saying is the most expensive film ever made—one that tops $300 million. And it’s not hard to see where he spent the money. Visually, Avatar is a feast. Lush colors and spectacular creatures dance and splash (and fight). Cameron has arguably out-Lucased Star Wars creator George Lucas when it comes to imagining and rendering a stunning world in a galaxy far, far way. And Cameron’s proprietary 3-D technology will likely enhance the experience for movie “experience” fans. (It gave me a headache.)

But we have to do more here than deliver an artistic critique. Extended scenes of near nudity (blue though it may be), intense violence and more than a little profanity pop out as much as the immersive 3-D imagery does.

Cameron’s message in Avatar is something like this: Genocidal plunderers are devoid of spiritual enlightenment and driven by their compulsive lust for another people’s resources. Time reviewer Richard Corliss wrote of the motif, “This is not only the most elaborate public-service commercial for those of the tree-hugger persuasion; it’s also a call to save what we’ve got, environmentally, and leave indigenous people as they are—an argument applicable to the attempt of any nation (say, the U.S.) to colonize another land (say, Iraq or Afghanistan).”

Says Cameron, “[In] the 16th and 17th centuries … the Europeans pretty much took over South and Central America and displaced and marginalized the indigenous peoples there. There’s just this long, wonderful history of the human race written in blood going back as far as we can remember, where we have this tendency to just take what we want without asking.”

His insurgent solution? Get in touch with your world and its spirituality and stop consuming so much stuff.

Those are great, deep thoughts—to a point. But what kind of spirituality are we talking about here? Reminding me a great deal of Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves , Cameron’s depiction of the Na’vi not only elevates tribal customs and rituals, it blurs the boundaries between God and the environment. Here the creator and her creation are indistinguishable.

A postscript: Nine minutes were added to Avatar in a Special Edition theatrical re-release about nine months after it first premiered. According to Cameron, in an interview with the Washington Post , “There are short, sort of, 10- and 15- and 20-second bits that have been added back. And there are a couple of larger chunks in the one-and-a-half to two-minute range.” One of the short adds involves Jake and Neytiri’s marriage/mating scene, prolonging their sensual foreplay just a bit, but actually not adding anything more explicit to the mix. One of the longer adds is a death scene in which Jake ceremonially takes tribal chief Tsu’tey’s life as the leadership of the tribe passes to Jake. Tsu’tey has been critically injured during the fight, and he asks Jake to finish him off. Jake does so with a dagger of sorts. We see the movement but not the contact.

A second video release, the Extended Collector’s Edition set, hit shelves on Nov. 16, 2010. In it are 16 additional minutes of new footage and 45 minutes of deleted, never-before-seen scenes. To the untrained eye—and perhaps even to the trained one—the scenes are barely noticeable and of little or no consequence to the story. Most viewers will be unable to tell the difference—apart from the already long film’s additional length. Most worthy of mention is the alternate beginning in which Jake is in a futuristic city on Earth before he is chosen to succeed his late twin brother, Tommy. We see Jake drinking a shot and trying to protect a woman who is slapped by her abusive boyfriend in a bar. A brawl results, and he’s violently thrown out of the establishment. On the other side of the content coin, a family-friendly audio track (for the original version of the film) is included that’s designed to eliminate profanities. Missed in the filtering process, however, is at least one use each of God’s name and “a‑‑.” Subtitles still contain curse words.

Adam R. Holz

After serving as an associate editor at NavPress’ Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In’s reviews as the site’s director. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children. In their free time, the Holzes enjoy playing games, a variety of musical instruments, swimming and … watching movies.

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Common Sense Says
Parents Say 257 Reviews
Kids Say 651 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Action-heavy epic has dazzling effects, familiar story.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 13+?

Sigourney Weaver's character, Grace, smokes cigarettes and somewhat glamorizes t

The word "s--t" is used several times. Language also includes "bulls--t," "bitch

Characters (supporting and extras) die due to explosions, bullet wounds, arrows

No product placement in the movie, but dozens of tie-in merchandising deals tied

Many longing looks between Jake's avatar and Neytiri, which eventually leads to

Any Positive Content?

Several characters make difficult but moral choices. Jake chooses to support the

Although humans on the base are racially diverse, majority of main characters ar

Overall, movie's message is that we could all stand to learn something from a po

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Sigourney Weaver's character, Grace, smokes cigarettes and somewhat glamorizes the activity.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

The word "s--t" is used several times. Language also includes "bulls--t," "bitch," "goddamn," "piss," limp-d--ked," "hell," "oh my God," "ass," and insults like "stupid," "ignorant," etc. Degrading language is used to describe disabled people, such as "cripple." Slurs such as "savages," "roaches," and "blue monkeys" are used to describe the Na'vi.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Characters (supporting and extras) die due to explosions, bullet wounds, arrows (some treated with toxins), precipitous falls, asphyxiation. Several intense scenes involving frightening Pandoran animals and plants, as well as tension between Jake's rogue group of pro-Na'vi humans and the rest of the humans sent to Pandora.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

No product placement in the movie, but dozens of tie-in merchandising deals tied to the title -- including toys and books aimed at young kids.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Many longing looks between Jake's avatar and Neytiri, which eventually leads to kissing and a marital "mating" ritual (kissing and touching are seen on screen). Na'vi clothing makes parts of their humanoid bodies visible. Jake and Neytir's relationship is briefly referred to as "getting tail."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Role Models

Several characters make difficult but moral choices. Jake chooses to support the Na'vi even though it's against orders to do so and means he must fight (and kill) fellow human soldiers. Neytiri, Grace, and Trudy all make personal sacrifices to help the clan; they're strong, courageous, assertive characters. (In both human and Na'vi populations, female characters are brave and important -- even the Na'vi mating ritual requires that both partners equally accept/choose each other.) On the flip side, the Colonel and corporate boss Parker are portrayed as bloodthirsty and greedy.

Diverse Representations

Although humans on the base are racially diverse, majority of main characters are White. They use offensive terms and stereotypes when talking about the Indigenous population of Pandora, and the military engages in imperialist violence. These scenes, intended to encourage racial/ethnic equality and show value of treating other groups with respect, only partially succeed because, while the Na'vi ultimately triumph, they do so only by following the guidance of outsiders. Violent human colonizers are ultimately ejected from Pandora, but film glosses over how the Na'vi environment and population have been permanently damaged by even well-meaning human scientists and allies. Main character Jake has a visible disability: He uses a wheelchair and is initially teased and treated as an inconvenience. But he easily moves around the base in his wheelchair and asserts control over himself when others try to touch or move him without his consent. Women and female Na'vi characters are important in the story, hold prominent social roles such as scientists and spiritual leaders. No body size diversity. All romantic relationships are between male and female Na'vi.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Positive Messages

Overall, movie's message is that we could all stand to learn something from a population that's different from our own. Strong environmental and pro-peace themes. Some viewers may see the message of occupying a foreign land to usurp their cultural riches as a commentary on Western imperialism or United States' involvement in global politics.

Parents need to know that James Cameron 's sci-fi epic Avatar is about humans colonizing the planet Pandora, home to the Na'vi. The movie is long (at 161 minutes) and intense, with several effects-heavy battle and hunting sequences that show the devastation of imperialist violence and the right that Indigenous groups have to protect themselves and their land. These scenes include missile-launching military aircraft, neurotoxin-laced arrows, scary Pandora-dwelling fauna and flora, and lots of explosions. Salty wartime language includes many uses of "s--t," "bitch," and more. As in his previous films, Cameron infuses the action-driven story with strong female characters who are important to the plot, and crafts a morality tale about treating others with respect centered in a romantic relationship. Main character Jake uses a wheelchair in his daily life and a Na'vi "avatar" body to interact with local populations, and the human-Na'vi relationship in question gets a bit complicated because the human is actually using his Na'vi avatar. Na'vi clothing makes parts of their bodies visible from time to time. The romantic leads have chemistry that's sometimes sensual. (Note: Fans of the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender should know that this movie is in no way connected to that show or the movie based on it.) To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 257 parent reviews

Very well done. Make sure you are not only an older teen, but a mature one too. Watch the family edition.

What's the story.

In the 22nd century, Marine Jake Scully ( Sam Worthington ), who uses a wheelchair, embarks on a corporate-run, military-backed experiment in which he and a select group of academics -- led by Dr. Grace Augustine ( Sigourney Weaver ) -- can fully control avatars that look exactly like the Na'vi: the lean, blue-skinned native population of a distant world called Pandora. On his first outing as his AVATAR, Jake is saved by Na'vi Neytiri ( Zoe Saldana ) and then captured by her clan. They decide to spare Jake's life as long as he agrees to learn the Na'vi ways from Neytiri. He does, but then he's told by villainous Colonel Quaritch ( Stephen Lang ) that he'll be spying on the Na'vi to make it easier to remove them from their home, an ancestral tree that's rooted above a deposit of an unbelievably valuable substance called "Unobtainium" (pun intended). As Jake becomes more and more involved with Neytiri and her people, he's forced to choose between following orders and respecting the Na'vi's wishes.

Is It Any Good?

James Cameron , director of the highest-grossing movie ever made ( Titanic ), risked a rumored $500 million on a spectacular futuristic sci-fi epic whose main characters are blue aliens and settings are mostly CGI. The good news for epic movie lovers everywhere is that Avatar was a massive success. It's more like the story of Dances with Wolves crossed with the breathtaking visual effects of Lord of the Rings and the love story of Titanic , with a splash of the assimilation to a native culture aspect of Apocalypse Now thrown in. Even though Cameron seems to have gone to the same hammy dialogue school of screenwriting as George Lucas , he can certainly immerse viewers in a thoroughly enjoyable spectacle. Every shot of Pandora is amazingly detailed, from floating mountains to flying beasts to the feline-featured Na'vi, who are inspired by several Indigenous cultures. The movie's scale is undeniably impressive.

Cameron owes a huge debt to his movie's female characters, all of whom are much more interesting than the stereotypical men -- especially the outlandishly evil Quaritch and Giovanni Ribisi 's greedy corporate overseer. Weaver and Michelle Rodriguez (as soldier Trudy Chacon), like Aliens ' Ripley or Terminator 's Sarah Connor, could take on anything or anyone, and Saldana follows up a memorable turn as Uhura in Star Trek with another strong performance as Neytiri. It's quite a feat to create romantic electricity between fictional alien creatures, but Saldana and Worthington manage it surprisingly well. If you allow yourself to get lost in Cameron's Pandora, it's impossible not to root for the Na'vi (or Neytiri and Jake). Part sci-fi, part romance, all James Cameron, this is the sci-fi epic that will suck everyone in.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Avatar 's revolutionary special effects. Do they overwhelm or support the movie's story? How does the portrayal of the Na'vi affect the movie's emotional impact?

What themes does Cameron consistently work into his films? Compare the strong female characters in Avatar , Terminator , and Titanic . Any similarities?

What political messages is Cameron exploring in the movie? How are its themes relevant to what's going on in today's world? Do you think these messages will stand the test of time?

Why is it important to respect different cultural groups and treat their traditions and practices as valid and important?

How do the Na'vi and human allies use teamwork to achieve their goals? Why is that an important character strength ?

Movie Details

In theaters : December 18, 2009
On DVD or streaming : April 22, 2010
Cast : Michelle Rodriguez , Sam Worthington , Sigourney Weaver , Zoe Saldana
Director : James Cameron
Inclusion Information : Female actors, Latino actors, Black actors
Studio : Twentieth Century Fox
Genre : Science Fiction
Topics : Activism , Magic and Fantasy , Science and Nature , Space and Aliens
Character Strengths : Teamwork
Run time : 161 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : intense epic battle sequences and warfare, sensuality, language and some smoking
Last updated : August 5, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Avatar (2009)

Directed by james cameron.

AllMovie Rating 9
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Description by Wikipedia

Avatar is a 2009 epic science fiction film co-produced, co-edited, written, and directed by James Cameron. The cast includes Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez and Sigourney Weaver. It is the first installment in the Avatar film series. It is set in the mid-22nd century, when humans are colonizing Pandora, a lush habitable moon of a gas giant in the Alpha Centauri star system, in order to mine the valuable mineral unobtanium, the room-temperature superconductor mineral. The expansion of the mining colony threatens the continued existence of a local tribe of Na'vi, a humanoid species indigenous to Pandora. The title of the film refers to a genetically engineered Na'vi body operated from the brain of a remotely located human that is used to interact with the natives of Pandora.

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Avatar Review

17 Dec 2009

161 minutes

Avatar is unequivocally, completely, 100% the film that has been percolating in James Cameron ’s head for the last fourteen years. It is not, in all probability, the film that you had in yours when you first heard that the man who directed Aliens and The Terminator was returning to sci-fi with a movie so ambitious that he had to build the technology to make it happen. If you can let go of your version and embrace Cameron’s – if you’re not, in other words, one of those splenetic internet fanboy types who’ve apparently made their minds up about Avatar before seeing it – then Avatar is a hugely rewarding experience: rich, soulful and exciting in the way that only comes from seeing a master artist at work.

Let’s address the Big Question first: to use the key phrase so often used in connection with the movie, is it a game-changer? Yes, and no would be the cop-out answer, but it’s also the truth. Avatar employs technology necessary to render its largely computer-generated, 3D world that will give directors, including but not limited to Cameron, one heck of a sandbox to play in over the next few years. That’s how the game has changed off screen.

On it, it may not be a game-changer, but no director to date has built a world of this scale, ambition and complexity before, and Avatar – much as the arrival of Raymond van Barneveld forced Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor to up his game – will have rival directors scrambling to keep up with Cameron. Avatar is an astonishing feast for the eyes and ears, with shots and sequences that boggle the mind, from the epic – a floating mountain range in the sky, waterfalls cascading into nothingness – to the tiny details, such as a paraplegic sinking his new, blue and fully operational toes into the sand. The level of immersive detail here is simply amazing.

And Cameron plunges you straight in, not even giving you time to don water wings. In a dizzyingly fast, almost impressionistic opening ten minutes, we’re introduced, in no short order, to everything you need to know for the next 150: about Pandora’s climate and largely deadly population, about Jake Sully’s situation, about the Avatar programme and the ruthless plans of the human invaders (led by Stephen Lang ’s Col. Quaritch and Giovanni Ribisi ’s Selfridge, a clear nod to Aliens ’ Carter Burke, one of several touches reminiscent of Cameron’s earlier masterpiece). And then we’re off and running, literally, into an action sequence where Jake-Avatar barely survives encounters with unfriendly local wildlife that would make Ray Mears cream his shorts.

And it’s here where Cameron begins the detour from the all-out actionfest that many might have expected, choosing instead to slow things down over a three-month time period in which Jake – hair and beard markedly growing in the live-action sequences – immerses himself in the Na’vi culture, and gradually finds himself losing his heart to their ways and practices, and, in particular, Zoë Saldaña ’s fierce warrioress, Neytiri.

The lack of a ticking clock plot device here may deprive Avatar of momentum or drive through its middle-section, but it’s also part of Cameron’s agenda. After all, he’s also the guy who directed Titanic , and Avatar isn’t just about spectacle and stupendous action (though we’ll get both in spades), but a love story. We need hardly be surprised by this – every Cameron film, even True Lies , has a love story at its core – but the surprise here is how effective Avatar ’s central coupling is, the emotion between Jake and Neytiri earthed by Weta’s astonishing digital effects. You can safely stow away all that spurious crap about videogame-style effects, or blue Jar Jars: this is truly next-level stuff, which doesn't smother Worthington and Saldana under a pile of pixels, but rather teases out and enhances the emotion in their excellent performances.

Jake and Neytiri's relationship is genuinely engaging – just because they’re aliens doesn’t mean they have to be alienating.

The Na’vi, each of whom has clearly distinct features (no small feat for a clan of some several hundred creatures) may not always seem photo-real, but they do seem – and this is crucial – alive and extremely expressive, helped by the fact that the dead-eye problem, which has plagued mo-cap movies since their inception, has been well and truly solved.

Worthington, fully justifying all the hullabaloo about him with a controlled, charming and physical performance (both in and out of his Avatar ), may have a magnificent Lee Marvin leading man monotone, but an even bigger asset is his soulful eyes, a quality that is retained and magnified in the larger peepers of the Na’vi. Jake and Neytiri’s burgeoning love is contained in the intricacies of detail in the eyes – a flicker of longing here, a widening of the pupils or a rolling tear there, that further aids the illusion that these conglomerations of ones and zeros actually exist. It’s a genuinely engaging relationship – just because they’re aliens doesn’t mean they have to be alienating.

Mind you, despite all the advances and groundwork laid, we might be not quite ready to see two CG characters effectively dry-hump each other. That’s just wrong…

But, as much as technology aids and defines Avatar , it’s also a love letter to humanity and the glory of mother nature. The analogy with the Vietnam and Iraq wars is obvious, but Cameron, in siding with the insurgents (hardly an all-American move, but then again he is Canadian), is also asking fairly complex questions about what it means to be human. “How does it feel to betray your race?”, Sully is asked at one point, but by then, Cameron’s point has been made: the humans here, Sully and an assortment of ‘good’ scientists, led by Sigourney Weaver ’s Dr. Grace Augustine, aside, are the monsters; avaricious, rapacious, planet-killers. There’s never any doubt that Cameron considers the Na’vi to be more human – freer of spirit and emotion, more connected to the world around them.

At times – and this is perhaps Avatar ’s biggest flaw, even beyond that bloody awful Leona Lewis song which mars the end credits – this manifests itself in New Age-y, hippy-dippy language and images that suggest that Cameron is one mung bean away from dropping out, man, and going all Swampy on our asses.

The human attack on Pandora and the subsequent fightback is a largely sustained setpiece of quite staggering scale, imagination and emotion.

In truth, the big idea here, that Pandora is a giant mass of connected energy and emotional synapses, isn’t really all that far away from Lucas’ The Force, and works just fine in the context of a sci-fi fantasy, which Avatar undoubtedly is, but there’s a fair amount of unintentional laughter to be had from watching hundreds of Na’vi, swaying like extras from the Zion rave scene in The Matrix Reloaded , surrounding something called The Tree Of Souls and banging on about becoming one with Mother Eywa. If there’s one element of Avatar that the made-their-mind-up brigade will use to mercilessly beat the film with, even more so than the somewhat prosaic plot, it’s this.

But it’s hard to imagine even the most jaded and cynical having any issues with the last forty minutes, in which Cameron uncorks the action and shows all the young pretenders – the Bays and the Emmerichs and the Von Triers – how it’s done. The human attack on Pandora and the subsequent fightback, led by Avatar-Jake, is a largely sustained setpiece of quite staggering scale, imagination and emotion that manages to compress both the truly epic – a human attack on a Na’vi landmark that recalls 9/11 in its devastating imagery – and the thrillingly intimate, as Jake finally faces off against the excellent Stephen Lang’s Quaritch, a scenery-chewing bad guy so badass that he can breathe the Pandoran air without a mask.

It’s a relentless sequence which, while not quite matching the emotional punch of Titanic ’s three-hanky conclusion, will still leave you dazed, confused but exhilarated, a feeling that will be enhanced further if you can – and we really, really recommend that you should – catch it in 3D, where Cameron’s unparalleled and meticulously constructed use of the technique expertly envelopes you in the beguiling, exotic sights and sounds of Pandora, a planet (or, to be precise, a moon) that throbs and hums and teems with life and energy in three dimensions.

It’s a world, not to give too much away, that Cameron clearly fully intends to return to and further explore. When he does, our bags are already packed.

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User reviews

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. — The Massie Twins
On the lush alien world of Pandora live the Na'vi, beings who appear primitive but are highly evolved. Because the planet's environment is poisonous, human/Na'vi hybrids, called Avatars, must link to human minds to allow for free movement on Pandora. Jake Sully, a paralyzed former Marine, becomes mobile again through one such Avatar and falls in love with a Na'vi woman. As a bond with her grows, he is drawn into a battle for the survival of her world. — Jwelch5742
Earth, 2154. As part of the ambitious Avatar Program, a project created to explore the hostile environment of Earth-like exomoon Pandora, Jake Sully, a 22-year-old paraplegic Marine veteran, arrives on the mysterious planet. As Sully learns to control his advanced bio-engineered avatar to infiltrate the indigenous Omatikaya clan, a race of sapient humanoids dwelling in Pandora's lush jungles, he undertakes a dangerous mission: build bridges between humans and the blue-skinned, peace-loving Na'vi giants. Sinister forces, however, threaten the verdant extrasolar planet with ulterior motives. Now, torn between two worlds, the earthling in an alien body must pick sides. Can Sully win the natives' trust and help protect the virgin green haven? — Nick Riganas
A scientist discovers a planet named Pandora and after that when he goes there to do research, he finds out that there are strange creatures, animals, trees, leaves, plants, rivers, waterfalls, colorful flowers etc. Scientists send their team there. A boy who is very nimble and courageous but he is handicapped and a soldier, his elder brother takes advantage of his helplessness. — gauravsinghdeepak
In 2154, humans have depleted Earth's natural resources, leading to a severe energy crisis. The Resources Development Administration (RDA) mines a valuable mineral Unobtanium on Pandora, a densely forested habitable moon orbiting Polyphemus, a fictional gas giant in the Alpha Centauri star system. Pandora, whose atmosphere is poisonous to humans, is inhabited by the Na'Vi, a species of 10-foot tall (3.0 m), blue-skinned, sapient humanoids that live in harmony with nature and worship a mother goddess named Eywa. It takes 6 years to get from Earth to Pandora in cryogenic sleep. To explore Pandora's biosphere, scientists use Na'Vi-human hybrids (grown from human + native DNA) called "avatars", operated by genetically matched humans. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic former Marine, replaces his deceased identical twin brother as an operator of one. Jake was leading a purposeless life on Earth and was contacted by RDA when his brother died. his brother represented a significant investment by RDA, since the avatars are linked to the human DNA/genome. Since Jake is a twin, he has the same exact DNA as his brother and can take his place in the Avatar program. Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), head of the Avatar Program, considers Sully an inadequate replacement (as she considers Jake a mere Jarhead) but accepts his assignment as a bodyguard for excursions deep into Na'Vi territory. Tracy (Michelle Rodriguez) is the pilot assigned to Grace and her team of Na'Vis. While escorting the avatars of Grace and fellow scientist Dr. Norm Spellman (Joel David Moore), Jake's avatar is attacked by a Thanator (while they were visiting the school that Grace was operating to teach the Omaticaya. She also does test on tree roots and is developing a theory that all living things on the planet are somehow attached and connected to each other) and flees into the forest, where he is rescued by Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), a female Na'Vi. Witnessing an auspicious sign (Seeds of the sacred tree land on Jake, covering him. Something she later calls Eywa), she takes him to her clan. The Na'Vi respect all living things and Neytiri is angry because to save Jake she had to kill many native species. Neytiri's mother Mo'At (CCH Pounder), the clan's spiritual leader, orders her daughter to initiate Jake into their society. Grace and Tracy return to base camp, as they are not allowed to run night ops as per protocol. The Omaticaya (the Na'Vi clan has its HQ in the Hometree) Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), head of RDA's private security force, promises Jake that the company will restore his legs if he gathers information about the Na'Vi and the clan's gathering place, a giant tree called Hometree, which stands above the richest deposit of Unobtanium in the area. Jake has 3 months to convince the Na'Vi to move as that's when the bulldozers get to the tree. Jake learns that Neytiri and her sister Slywanin studied at Grace's school. Sylwanin is dead. When Grace learns of Jake's work for Miles (she sees him explaining the inner structure of the Hometree to Miles and Parker), she transfers herself, Jake, and Norm to an outpost. Over the following three months, Jake and Neytiri fall in love as Jake grows to sympathize with the natives. Neytiri also teaches Jake about Eywa, the network of energy that flows through all living things. Grace also reveals that one day the Omaticaya destroyed a bulldozer and hid inside her school. Miles's troopers attacked them and Sylwanin died. The Na'Vi never returned. They wanted Grace to protect the Na'Vi. After Jake is initiated into the tribe (he even captures a banshee/Ikran (a flying predator kind of creature), after Neytiri deems him ready to be a warrior. She even takes Jake to the tree of souls, their most sacred site), he and Neytiri choose each other as mates. Jake and Neytiri escape an attack from Toruk, the biggest banshee in the sky. Rider of the Toruk is called Toruk Macto. Soon afterward, Jake reveals his change of allegiance when he attempts to disable a bulldozer that threatens to destroy a sacred Na'Vi site. When Quaritch shows a video recording of Jake's attack on the bulldozer to Administrator Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi), and another in which Jake admits that the Na'Vi will never abandon Hometree, Selfridge orders Hometree destroyed (this was after the Omaticaya retaliated and destroyed the bulldozers and killed 6 humans in the process. Grace thinks the bulldozers were specifically sent to evoke a response and use that as an excuse for war) Despite Grace's argument that destroying Hometree could damage the biological neural network native to Pandora, Selfridge gives Jake and Grace one hour to convince the Na'Vi to evacuate before commencing the attack. Jake confesses to the Na'Vi that he was a spy, and they take him and Grace captive. Quaritch's men destroy Hometree, killing Neytiri's father (the clan chief) and many others. Mo'At frees Jake and Grace, but they are detached from their avatars and imprisoned by Quaritch's forces. Pilot Trudy Chacón, disgusted by Quaritch's brutality, frees Jake, Grace, and Norm, and airlifts them to Grace's outpost, but Grace is shot by Quaritch during the escape. Trudy takes the mobile station and hides it near the tree of souls where Miles cannot find it as the flux vortex scrambles all radars. To regain the Na'Vi's trust, Jake attacks and connects his mind to that of Toruk, a dragon-like predator feared and honored by the Na'Vi. Jake finds the refugees at the sacred Tree of Souls (the Omaticaya are forced to take him seriously due to the power and symbolism of the Toruk) and pleads with Mo'At to heal Grace. The clan attempts to transfer Grace from her human body into her avatar with the aid of the Tree of Souls, but she dies before the process can be completed. Supported by the new chief Tsu'Tey (Laz Alonso), Jake unites the clan and tells them to gather all of the clans to battle the RDA. Quaritch organizes a preemptive strike against the Tree of Souls, believing that its destruction will demoralize the natives. On the eve of battle, Jake prays to Eywa, via a neural connection with the Tree of Souls, to intercede on behalf of the Na'Vi. During the subsequent battle, the Na'Vi suffer heavy casualties, including Tsu'Tey and Trudy, but are rescued when Pandoran wildlife unexpectedly join the attack and overwhelm the humans, which Neytiri interprets as Eywa's answer to Jake's prayer. Jake destroys a makeshift bomber before it can reach the Tree of Souls; Quaritch, wearing an AMP suit, escapes from his own damaged aircraft and breaks open the avatar link unit containing Jake's human body, exposing it to Pandora's poisonous atmosphere. Quaritch prepares to slit the throat of Jake's avatar, but Neytiri kills Quaritch and saves Jake from suffocation, seeing his human form for the first time. With the exceptions of Jake, Norm and a select few others, all humans are expelled from Pandora and sent back to Earth. Jake is permanently transferred into his avatar with the aid of the Tree of Souls.

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In 2009, James Cameron released Avatar , a sci-fi adventure that revolutionized the cinema industry by offering the most realistic digital world ever created. At that point, Cameron had already pushed practical effects to its limits with Titanic , another box office giant still holding strong as one of the most successful films of all time. But with Avatar , he proved that it was possible to develop a movie almost entirely inside a computer and still make it look real. Since then, Hollywood has been trying– and mostly failing–to mimic Cameron’s digital magic. However, after thirteen years, can Avatar still amaze us? After all, technology evolved so much that the movie cannot remain as beautiful as we remembered it, right? Lastly, is it worth spending our hard-earned money on an expensive 3D ticket? Well, unfortunately for your wallet, the 4K remastered version of Avatar is well worth another trip to theaters, especially for the lucky people who can catch it on IMAX 3D.

There’s no question that Avatar ’s stunning digital world and immersive 3D technology helped to boost the original box office beyond Hollywood’s wildest dreams. Avatar eventually became the highest-grossing film ever at the time of its release, and the film remains near the top of all-time box office earners. It’s no wonder that after Avatar ’s release, many big blockbuster titles were distributed in 3D, as big studios tried to make money with the new technology. However, no other movie ever got close to reproducing what Cameron did. That’s mainly because the filmmaker took a long time to make sure Avatar would look as he wanted it to, instead of rushing the post-production and release. So, with an improved image and sound quality, Pandora never looked so good, and the alien planet is ready to suck you again into a world of wonder and mystery.

After more than a decade, we could expect Pandora to be less remarkable, but Avatar might look even better after the new 4K remaster. We’ve been overloaded with CGI-based productions that always feel artificial for a while now. So many movies just feel off that sometimes we wonder if the issue doesn’t come from the technology itself instead of individual productions. With Avatar ’s remastered version hitting theaters, there’s no doubt rushed development is at fault. After thirteen years, Cameron’s classic puts any recent superhero production to shame. Maybe big studios wouldn't be willing to wait a decade before releasing each franchise installment. Still, Avatar stands to the test of time to show how thoughtful post-production can turn some movies into eternal classics.

RELATED: Even If You Hate the Movie, ‘Avatar’s Cultural Impact Can’t Be Ignored

But the new coat of paint Avatar receives in this remaster would be wasted if Cameron’s epic couldn’t move the audience. So what about the story? Does Avatar still have a theme that can resonate in the current cultural landscape? Unfortunately, the movie's ecological message aged too well, as thirteen years later, we face the irreversible destruction of the planet by human hands. The real-world situation is so dire that we've been discussing the colonization of other planets more seriously now, making Avatar all the more relevant. The movie has greedy corporations destroying lives to increase their profits, indigenous communities threatened with extinction due to the predatory exploration of the environment, and even scientists who get ignored when their voices challenge the status quo. It’s somewhat sad to notice how Avatar has become more relevant over time.

Even those unwilling to think about Avatar 's major themes can still have a good time, as the movie is an action-packed crowd-pleaser that hits all the right notes. First, the film is an underdog story in which a broken man finds meaning and becomes a leader against all odds. Second, it is also a military story in which a soldier defies command to fight for what is right. Third, Avatar is a tale of man versus nature, where the symbiotic relationship with the world around us is more powerful than the metal machines humanity builds. Finally, it’s a love story in which two people from different worlds unite their hearts and their tribes. It’s impossible to remain indifferent in theaters, and thanks to more than a decade of distance from the original release, it’s possible to cheer for Jake and the Na’vi as if we were watching their story for the first time.

With the 4K remaster of Avatar hitting theaters, there’s no doubt left about why the movie continues to be an outlier at the box office. Cameron’s epic can still thrill the audience with breathtaking set pieces, bring them to tears with moving moments, and amaze people willing to explore a fantasy land like no other. Every frame is developed with such care that the movie remains one of the most beautiful works of art ever created by Hollywood. The IMAX 3D version of Avatar , in particular, makes revisiting Pandora even more staggering, as it allows us to watch Cameron’s work just as the filmmaker intended. With an ultra-realistic sound and image, Avatar can numb our senses to the outside world and take us on an unforgettable two-and-half-hour trip through a land filled with beauty and amazement.

The remastered version of Avatar is currently available in theaters and IMAX.

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Screen Rant reviews Avatar

So, after endless fanboy hype (and hate) rivaling that of the months leading up to Watchmen, Avatar is finally upon us. The burning question (once again): Is this film worthy of all the hype preceding it?

Well, first let's get to the story...

Sam Worthington plays Jake Sulley, a Marine who lost the use of his legs in battle. He has absolutely nothing to do with the Avatar project until his twin brother is killed (apparently in a senseless mugging). His brother was a scientist who had been working on and preparing for the Avatar project for three years.

This is significant because the bio-engineered Na'vi bodies created for the Avatar project are genetically coded to a specific human - and since Jake is the identical twin of his brother (despite having zero training in the project) the corporation talks him into joining it. Their logic is they can always use a Na'vi Avatar with combat skills on their side. Worthington's character is not only a Na'vi Avatar, but also obviously one for the audience as well... the person who comes onto the scene not knowing anything about what is going on (like the audience) and the film's exposition happens through his point of view for our benefit.

The planet Pandora contains a very rare mineral with extremely valuable properties (that are never explained, no need) called... Unobtainium. Yeah, I know. They only call it that once in the film, thankfully. Anyway, there are pockets of it scattered throughout the planet, but the biggest cache of it happens to be directly beneath the village of the Na'vi we come to know. The goal is to either negotiate with them to get them to move so the bulldozers can come in and mine or to expel them via military force.

Relations with the Na'vi have been shaky at best - it seems that olive branches were extended in the forms of schools, roads and supplies, but the Na'vi are not interested in any of it - and there have been some isolated clashes between them and the military. It's decided that Sully (not being a scientist) would be an ideal mole - he can go in and gain the trust of the locals in order to gather intel that can be used against them should things come to blows. Sully is promised that the expensive surgery which could once again give him use of his legs would be taken care of if he goes along with the plan - which he does. He has three months.

Sigouney Weaver plays Grace, the fairly grizzled, smoking lead scientist on the project who is not happy (to say the least) to see Jake show up to take his brother's place. There's another scientist who was friends with Jake's brother and who comes to resent the fact that after he has put in so much time learning how to be a Na'vi, that a newcomer with no experience comes in and plays a central role in the project. The scientists are determined to find a diplomatic solution (although tasking scientists with this doesn't really make much sense) and are constantly at odds with the military. They relocate their lab far away from central command in hopes that they can function more autonomously, without intervention from the corporation (represented by Giovanni Ribisi as the lead on the project) or the military.

Speaking of the military, Stephen Lang absolutely shines as Colonel Miles Quaritch, a chiseled in stone older soldier with plenty of field experience who is in charge of military operations on Pandora. Scenes with him, Weaver, the sci-fi tech and Cameron at the helm took me back to the most excellent James Cameron film, Aliens . In some ways this almost felt like a continuation of that film - if not in story, then in characters and hardware.

And of course we have Zoe Saldana as Neytiri, who does a fine job as the lead female who is put in charge of teaching (Avatar) Jake the language and culture of the Na'vi. At first she intensely dislikes and mistrusts Jake, but over the course of the film their relationship's development is the focal point as she softens towards him and he comes to respect and understand the Na'vi deeply.

So what's the verdict?

(Click to continue reading our Avatar review)

If you've seen the movie and want to talk about it without worrying about spoilers, please head over to our Avatar Spoilers Discussion .

Please don't discuss movie spoilers here in order to not ruin it for people who haven't seen it yet.

James Cameron has still got it.

Avatar is the most visually amazing film I've ever seen. His boasts were valid: Nothing like this has ever been done or seen on the big screen. The incredible scope and detail is really mesmerizing - he created an entire planet with variety and detail that is unparalleled... and had to maintain it throughout a 2 1/2 hour film. It boggles the mind to think that (by my estimate) at least 80% of the film is fully CGI.

The motion capture (both body and facial) that Cameron employs here is impressive. I would say that he has succeeded in conquering the "uncanny valley" (that last bit of detail in anthropomorphic CGI that bridges that feeling that something's "just not quite right"), except that he is not portraying fully human characters - where the subtle "misses" are most obvious. He wisely changed the appearance of the Na'vi enough that your mind registers them as non-human and thus is more forgiving of anomalies. That could be why he made their eyes so large, in order to make them more overtly expressive. I will say that as Na'vi, I found the physical and facial animation flawless - it seemed to me very natural even when put to the test with subtle, emotional close-up scenes.

The planet is lush, dangerous and believable - populated with dense vegetation and a wild variety of creatures. Everything from delicate, glowing, floating things to scary, aggressive, six-legged carnivores. Cameron has created an entire eco-system here with some interesting details, along with one detail that made me smirk (not really in a good way) in its similarity to "The Force" in Star Wars .

I didn't see it in IMAX, but it was in 3D. I can tell you that in my opinion the 3D only added to the breathtaking visuals on the screen. It was used to good effect - giving depth to scenes, letting the audience share in a sense of vertigo when on the precipice of some huge drop or in flight on one of the local winged creatures. For me, this is exactly how 3D should be used in movies - it was there but not in a way that you were conscious of it, it just sucked you into the film that much more.

The relationship between Neytiri and Jake was well done and believable - you could say that Cameron took so long building the growth of the relationship and Jake's character development that it almost dragged on a bit... but had it not been done the ending would not have worked as well. Supporting characters, however small their roles, all worked and supplemented the primary characters nicely. The one exception might be Ribisi, who while I like him as an actor, seemed a bit miscast here.

What I found predictable was the story. You can pretty much map out what's going to happen 10 minutes in without expending too many brain cells. I was hoping for perhaps something more complex or an unexpected twist of some sort - but the entire film played out pretty much the way you'd expect it to. I'm really not a fan of "humanity as the bad guys/aliens as the good guys" and I don't know what sort of message Cameron was trying to make here (colonization of America and what happened to the native Indian population?), but frankly I found the film entertaining enough that I was able to set that aside - more easily when he actually highlighted a spiritual component of the film as counterpoint to the Sci-Fi tech.

But this has all the Cameron trademarks: Relatable characters you'll care about, a story that makes sense, mind blowing visuals and action sequences that are awesome. The final 20 minutes of the film are just a kick-ass, non-stop ground and air battle that will leave you feeling VERY satisfied.

For the parents out there, the PG-13 is for some repeated mild profanity, partial CGI Na'vi nudity (they're pretty scantily clad), battle violence and a very short scene that's pretty suggestive between two of the big blue characters. Overall I'd definitely take my child to this before I would ever consider letting them watch Transformers 2 when it comes to content.

Overall, Avatar delivers what it promised, and it promised a LOT. In the end I think it will turn out to be a repeat-viewer that you'll want to revisit often - much like most of James Cameron's other films.

Avatar is a sci-fi action/adventure film created by James Cameron and released in 2009. Set in the fictional world of Pandora in the distant future, humans seek a rare mineral found on the planet but find a race of highly-intelligent beings directly in their mining path. To attempt to communicate and work with them, scientists create body replicas called "avatars," and one man will change the destiny of both races using an avatar of his own.

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James Cameron: Pushing The Limits Of Imagination

James Cameron worked with a Cirque du Soleil choreographer to make his Na'vi characters appear graceful on screen. WETA/Twentieth Century Fox Corporation hide caption

James Cameron was working as a truck driver in 1977 when he quit his job and, in his words, "started making little films."

Those "little films" got the attention of someone working for Roger Corman, the producer and director known as the "King of the Bs" — as in B-movies. Corman, who has over 100 low-budget films to his credit, including Little Shop of Horrors, Attack of the Giant Leeches and Last Woman on Earth, taught Cameron the basics of creating special effects with almost no money — lessons that Cameron then applied to his blockbusters Titanic and Avatar .

The official budget of Avatar was $237 million, with an additional $150 million built in for promotional activities. Mark Fellman/Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation hide caption

The official budget of Avatar was $237 million, with an additional $150 million built in for promotional activities.

"What you learn in those early films is that your will is the only thing that makes the difference in getting the job done," Cameron tells Terry Gross. "It teaches you to improvise and to never lose hope — because you're making a movie, and the movie can be what you want it to be ... it's not in control of you, you're in control of it," he says.

"Even though visual effects are not what we use now — there's no film, or glass painting," Cameron says, "the basics of storytelling don't change."

Avatar, Cameron's latest box office hit, was conceived in the mid-'90s, years before the high-tech special effects and cameras Cameron used to create his virtual world existed.

" Avatar comes from a childhood sense of wonder about nature and reading sci-fi and imagining other worlds," says Cameron. "I grew up in a little town in Canada and spent all of my time in the woods, hunting snakes and frogs and doing drawings of protozoa."

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The film, the first in history to gross more than $2 billion worldwide, takes place on the fictional moon Pandora. The people of Pandora — a fictional tribe called the Na'vi — inhabit a lush, pristine rain forest untouched by industrialization. When humans discover that the Na'vi live above a very valuable, very rare natural resource — they travel to the moon to mine the mineral, and the film's main character, a paraplegic marine named Jake Sully, manipulates a genetically engineered human/Na'vi hybrid as a way of learning more about the indigenous culture.

The film combines different genres — the Western, the sci-fi film, the war flick — all of which, Cameron says, were consciously chosen.

"The Iraq stuff and the Vietnam stuff is there by design — and references to the colonial period are there by design," says Cameron. "At a very generalized level, it's saying our attitude about indigenous people and our entitlement about what is rightfully theirs is the same sense of entitlement that lets us bulldoze a forest and not blink an eye. It's just human nature that if we can take it, we will. And sometimes we do it in a very naked and imperialistic way, and other times we do it in a very sophisticated way with lots of rationalization — but it's basically the same thing. A sense of entitlement. And we can't just go on in this unsustainable way, just taking what we want and not giving back."

Cameron says that Avatar is also a comment on "the huge gap or shortfall between what you can imagine and what you can actually do."

"We go from this state as children where we don't know what we can't do. You fly in your dreams as a child, but you tend not to fly in your dreams as an adult," he says. "In the Avatar state, [Jake] is getting to return to that childlike dream state of doing amazing things ... In a funny way, it's actually kind of a comment on the way we find expression for our imagination."

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Avatar Parent Guide

While cameron should be applauded for his advancement of the audience's visual experiences, it is too bad he failed to give the same attention to his characters and story development..

Crippled from the waist down in battle, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) knows he will never walk again. Then he gets the unexpected opportunity to become an Avatar -- the mind link that controls the body of a genetically engineered alien life form. When he is sent to the home planet of the Na'vi and his virtual self begins interacting with the inhabitants, the soldier starts questioning the purpose of his military mission.

Release date December 18, 2009

Run Time: 161 minutes

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The guide to our grades, parent movie review by kerry bennett.

Beating his own box office record for Titanic might be Director James Cameron’s biggest challenge with his latest film. His 1997 blockbuster made a tidal wave of money and still stands as the top-grossing movie to date. Yet, with Avatar’s budget rumored to be between $250 and $300 million, Cameron certainly hasn’t spared any expense in trying to maintain his title as the self-proclaimed King of the World.

To further ensure the success of this endeavor, the director has been hands-on in creating the exquisite details of the futuristic planet Pandora where the gentle Na’vi people live. The spectacular, spellbinding visuals and 3D effects solidify Cameron’s role as a master of the art of eye candy. He also sets an unprecedented standard for the film industry.

The script is as common as last week’s leftovers and riddled with over-the-top, stereotypical depictions of military personnel that can’t do much more than grunt and fire. Among this force is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a war vet who lost the use of his legs during battle. After the death of his brother however, he is called into service at a scientific laboratory on Pandora. Hoping to connect with the local inhabitants, the research group, headed up by the cigarette smoking Dr. Grace Agustine (Sigourney Weaver), is growing their own avatars: living creatures created from human and Na’vi DNA, which are controlled by means of brain waves.

Experiencing the use of his legs again during his first mind link proves to be a heady event for the paraplegic. But Jake isn’t the only one interested in his newfound mobility. Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) heads up the security forces for capitalist Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi), the leader of a mining operation on the planet. More concerned about a bad quarterly report than the survival of the indigenous population, Parker is eager to move the Na’vi tribe from their spot atop the planet’s richest deposit of a highly sought after mineral. The Colonel is more than willing to oblige with the relocation efforts and is happy to do it by force. Nevertheless, after some pointed persuasion, he agrees to give Jake and his avatar three months to negotiate a more civilized move.

During his attempt to integrate with the Na’vis, Jake meets Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), a blue-skinned princess that sports traditional tribal clothing (meaning a loin cloth with a g-string and a carefully placed necklace that usually covers her female body parts). To say Jake is not immediately embraced the alien community is an understatement. (Some intimate embracing does occur later during a mating ceremony though.) It appears these forest people are a little leery of the sky people and rightly so. Yet given the depth and complexity of the plot, it doesn’t take much to predict that Jake will change his attitude about spying on the Na’vi before the Colonel’s time limit is over—necessitating of course, a huge battle scene with lots of opportunity for more visual effects.

While Cameron should be applauded for his advancement of the audience’s visual experiences, it is too bad he failed to give the same attention to his characters and story development.

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Kerry Bennett

Avatar rating & content info.

Why is Avatar rated PG-13? Avatar is rated PG-13 by the MPAA for intense epic battle sequences and warfare, sensuality, language and some smoking.

Members of the Na’vi tribe wear traditional clothing similar to what would be seen in a documentary film about some indigenous groups. A couple embraces and kisses, and participate in a mating ritual (without explicit description). A woman smokes in a laboratory setting on several occasions. She is also seen drinking. Crude comments are made to a paraplegic. Profanities, crude language, scatological slang and terms of Deity are repeatedly used. Characters engage in warfare, resulting in numerous injuries and deaths. Individuals are impaled, shot, blown up and thrown from aircraft. Animals are also shot. Both an animal and human are shown on fire. A man is threatened and attacked by animals. Weapon use includes knives, guns, poisoned arrows and missiles that cause massive explosions and fires. Corpses are seen along with the cremation of one character in a morgue. Characters engage in hand-to-hand combat and verbal arguments.

Page last updated July 17, 2017

Avatar Parents' Guide

How might Cameron’s talent for visually engaging filmmaking contribute to his lack of script development?

Why do people often use the term "savages" to dehumanize another race or group of individuals? Is there any humane way to conduct war?

Cameron’s film appears to attack the ills of capitalism, military invasions and the destruction of the environment. However, what impact does moviemaking itself have on these issues? Does the director’s supposed desire to make money support an anti-capitalist theme? What kind of environmental damage is created during a film’s production? What about the huge amounts of garbage produced in theaters? Does this film glorify violence while appearing to call it down?

The most recent home video release of Avatar movie is October 15, 2012. Here are some details…

Blu-Ray 3D Notes: Avatar

Release Date: 16 October 2012

Avatar is releasing again. This time on Blu-ray in 3D.

DVD and Blu-Ray Notes: Avatar: Extended Collector’s Edition

Release Date: November 16, 2010

The three-disc Avatar: Extended Collector’s Edition is releasing to Blu-ray and DVD on November 16, 2010. Both formats will feature the original theatrical release, a special edition re-release, family audio track with all objectionable language removed and new collector’s extended cut with sixteen more minutes including an exclusive alternate opening Earth scene.

AVATAR Extended Collector’s Edition: (3-Disc) Blu-ray:

- Original Theatrical Version

- Special Edition Re-Release

- Collector’s Extended Cut (16 more minutes and exclusive alternate opening)

- Family Audio Track (All Objectionable Language Removed) of the Original Theatrical Release and Special Edition Re-release

- Capturing Avatar : An in-depth feature length documentary with James Cameron, Jon Landau and cast and crew

- Deleted Scenes: Over 45 minutes of new never-before-seen deleted scenes

- Production Materials

Disc Three: Pandora’s Box

- Interactive Scene Deconstruction: Explore the various stages of production through 3 different viewing modes

- Production Shorts: 17 featurettes covering performance capture, scoring the film, 3D fusion camera, stunts and more

-Avatar Archives including original script, 300-page screenplay and the extensive Pandorapedia

-BD-live Portal with additional bonus materials

AVATAR Collector’s Edition: 3-Disc DVD:

Disc One: Avatar, Part One

-Original Theatrical Edition (includes family audio track with objectionable language removed)

-Special Edition Re-release (includes family audio track with objectionable language removed)

-Collector’s Extended Cut with 16 additional minutes, including alternate opening on earth

Disc Two: Avatar, Part Two

- Continuation of the movies from the first disc

- A Message from Pandora

Disc Three:

- Capturing Avatar: An in-depth feature length documentary with James Cameron, Jon Landau and cast and crew

- Deleted Scenes including over 45 minutes of new never-before-seen deleted scenes

Home Video Notes: Avatar

Release Date: April 22, 2010

Avatar is releasing to Blu-ray and DVD on Thursday, April 22, 2010, in honor of Earth Day. This release will not be in 3D, nor will it offer any bonus extras. Those features will be added to the November 16, 2010 release of Avatar .

Avatar releases as a 2-Disc Blu-Ray / DVD Combo. This package offers:

- Theatrical Feature Blu-ray

-Theatrical Feature DVD

Avatar also releases as a single disc DVD.

Related news about Avatar

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IMAGES

Original Avatar Movie Review
Avatar movie review & film summary (2009)
Avatar Review
Avatar Movie Review & Film Summary (2009)
Original Avatar Movie Poster Wallpaper, HD Movies 4K Wallpapers, Images
Avatar Movie Review and Ratings by Kids

COMMENTS

Avatar movie review & film summary (2009)
Watching "Avatar," I felt sort of the same as when I saw "Star Wars" in 1977. That was another movie I walked into with uncertain expectations. James Cameron's film has been the subject of relentlessly dubious advance buzz, just as his "Titanic" was. Once again, he has silenced the doubters by simply delivering an extraordinary film. There is still at least one man in Hollywood who knows how ...
Avatar
James Cameron's Academy Award®-winning 2009 epic adventure "Avatar", returns to theaters September 23 in stunning 4K High Dynamic Range. On the lush alien world of Pandora live the Na'vi, beings ...
'Avatar' Review: Movie (2009)
This is motion capture brought to a new high where every detail of the actors' performances gets preserved in the final CG character as they appear on the screen. Yes, those eyes are no longer ...
Avatar
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 8, 2024. Preston Barta Fresh Fiction. 'Avatar' is not just a visual display. It contains heart, humor, and all the aspects needed to make it a well-rounded ...
A New Eden, Both Cosmic and Cinematic
NYT Critic's Pick. Directed by James Cameron. Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Sci-Fi. PG-13. 2h 42m. By Manohla Dargis. Dec. 17, 2009. See how this article appeared when it was originally published ...
Avatar (2009)
Avatar: Directed by James Cameron. With Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang. 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.
Avatar (2009)
Stephen Lang, as the rock hard Colonel Miles, takes on a villainous turn to a new level in science fiction. He offers actual emotion and emotes evil to the audience and gains our hatred easily. Sigourney Weaver as the beautiful Dr. Grace, is sufficient enough to have on screen again teamed with Cameron.
Avatar
Jake Sully is a former Marine confined to a wheelchair. But despite his broken body, Jake is still a warrior at heart. He is recruited to travel light years to the human outpost on Pandora, where a corporate consortium is mining a rare mineral that is the key to solving Earth's energy crisis. Because Pandora's atmosphere is toxic, they have created the Avatar Program, in which human "drivers ...
Movie Review
You've seen the stories about the special-effects — but you still may not be prepared for the shock-and-awe tactics of Avatar. Critic Kenneth Turan says James Cameron's new sci-fi epic traffics ...
Avatar Review
Avatar is a landmark film in motion picture history, one that will be remembered 70 years from now as redefining the boundaries of cinema much the way that the films of D.W. Griffith did back in ...
Avatar 2009, directed by James Cameron
On Pandora, Jake meets his avatar, a remote-controlled host body generated from his brother's DNA and designed to blend in among the native Na'vi, a race of nine-foot blue hunter-gatherers ...
Avatar
Visually, Avatar is a feast. Lush colors and spectacular creatures dance and splash (and fight). Cameron has arguably out-Lucased Star Wars creator George Lucas when it comes to imagining and rendering a stunning world in a galaxy far, far way. And Cameron's proprietary 3-D technology will likely enhance the experience for movie "experience ...
Avatar Movie Review
Our review: Parents say ( 257 ): Kids say ( 651 ): James Cameron, director of the highest-grossing movie ever made ( Titanic ), risked a rumored $500 million on a spectacular futuristic sci-fi epic whose main characters are blue aliens and settings are mostly CGI. The good news for epic movie lovers everywhere is that Avatar was a massive success.
Avatar (2009)
Description by Wikipedia. Avatar (marketed as James Cameron's Avatar) is a 2009 American epic science fiction film directed, written, produced, and co-edited by James Cameron, and starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, and Sigourney Weaver. The film is set in the mid-22nd century, when humans are colonizing ...
Avatar (2009 film)
Avatar is a 2009 epic science fiction film co-produced, co-edited, written, and directed by James Cameron.The cast includes Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez and Sigourney Weaver. [6] It is the first installment in the Avatar film series.It is set in the mid-22nd century, when humans are colonizing Pandora, a lush habitable moon of a gas giant in the Alpha Centauri ...
Avatar Review
Avatar is an astonishing feast for the eyes and ears, with shots and sequences that boggle the mind, from the epic - a floating mountain range in the sky, waterfalls cascading into nothingness ...
Avatar: First Movie RECAP
It's been over a decade since the original Avatar dominated theaters in 2009. We all remember it looked super cool in 3D, but what was the story again? I got...
Avatar (2009)
Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic former Marine, replaces his deceased identical twin brother as an operator of one. Jake was leading a purposeless life on Earth and was contacted by RDA when his brother died. his brother represented a significant investment by RDA, since the avatars are linked to the human DNA/genome. Since Jake is a ...
Avatar Review: James Cameron's 4K Re-Release Makes The Movie ...
Even those unwilling to think about Avatar 's major themes can still have a good time, as the movie is an action-packed crowd-pleaser that hits all the right notes. First, the film is an underdog ...
Avatar Review
3.5. Avatar is a sci-fi action/adventure film created by James Cameron and released in 2009. Set in the fictional world of Pandora in the distant future, humans seek a rare mineral found on the planet but find a race of highly-intelligent beings directly in their mining path.
Avatar Movie Review: A complete cinematic experience
Avatar Movie Review: Critics Rating: 5.0 stars, click to give your rating/review,James Cameron chooses to play God and creates a whole new world with such exquisite finesse, aesthet
'Avatar' Director James Cameron Interviewed : NPR
Avatar, Cameron's latest box office hit, was conceived in the mid-'90s, years before the high-tech special effects and cameras Cameron used to create his virtual world existed. " Avatar comes from ...
Avatar Movie Review for Parents
Avatar is releasing to Blu-ray and DVD on Thursday, April 22, 2010, in honor of Earth Day. This release will not be in 3D, nor will it offer any bonus extras. Those features will be added to the November 16, 2010 release of Avatar. Avatar releases as a 2-Disc Blu-Ray / DVD Combo. This package offers: - Theatrical Feature Blu-ray-Theatrical ...

Cameron retains his crown

Roger Ebert

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