My Full Avatar Review - Spoiler Alert

This may look and read differently than anything else I've written, but that's because it's basically a transcript for my long video review of Avatar I hope to post on YouTube soon.

This review contains a lot of spoilers. Maybe I said too much about Avatar, but I really had to write down everything I love about the amazing film. And, I can't help but want to share my feelings with my readers.

Avatar.... What is there to say about Avatar...?

I can say for argument sake that Avatar is a brilliant name for this film....

I can say that Avatar is a brilliant film....

I can even say that Avatar may be the greatest film of the decade....

That is a pretty profound statement for a film that features 10-foot tall, blue, cat people...

But, it's not quite as profound as stating that Titanic was the greatest film of the 1990s....

After all, to me, the 1990s were one of the greatest decades in the history of film....

So, what makes Avatar, a sci-fi adventure film featuring a relatively unknown cast - with the exception of Sigourney Weaver - the greatest film of the 2000s...?

Well, let's look at all of the top films of the last 9 to 10 years for example....

In the beginning, there was Russell Crowe in Gladiator and Tom Hanks in Cast Away....

Were these great or brilliant films...?

Yes.

Were these films as spectacular or enlightening as Avatar...?

No. They were not.

Moving on through the next few years with such mega hits as The Lord of The Rings trilogy....

That includes The Fellowship of the Ring in 2001, The Two Towers in 2002, and The Return of the King in 2003....

Again. Were they brilliant or great in any way...?

Well, let's just say, the 9 to 12 hour-long trilogy about hobbits saving the world didn't get 11 Oscars for nothing....

Was The Lord of the Rings better than Avatar....?

No.

Why...?

Well, The Lord of the Rings is a 12 hour movie, chopped up and served to us in three pieces....

No one wants to sit through 12 hours of walking....

Surely, something could've been down in the plotting or editing of these three great films to make them tighter and put them over....

Then, in the next 6 to 7 years, Hollywood started punching out less blockbuster masterpieces and more blockbuster junk in my opinion....

Even the technical brilliance of such superhero classics of Spider-Man 2 and X2: X-Men United were laid to waste by inferior sequels and copies....

The "prequel" took off - and George Lucas with his latest Star Wars trilogy has a lot to blame for this....

Said prequels have slowly but surely been giving a black eye to filmmaking in my opinion....

Prequels seem to be doing nothing more than trying to resurrect a dead horse....

You've heard the expression, "kicking a dead horse"?

Well, prequels are trying to bring that dead horse back to life. And, unless Hollywood turns into Dr. Frankenstein, for the most part, that just ain't gonna happen.

Obviously, like in the last few years, you could say Hollywood has achieved this, creating brilliant monstrosities from older and arguably better parts....

Look at the latest re-tellings of Batman for instance....

The Batman franchise died off after Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Clooney and Alicia Silverstone got starring roles in Batman & Robin....

Warner Bros wanted to bring this series back to life by giving us... something.... A prequel...? A re-imagining...? A remake...? I don't rightly know what was Batman Begins could be classified as....

What I do know is that for superhero films, Batman Begins and its sequel, The Dark Knight were brilliantly written films that brought a lot... and I mean, A LOT of attention back to the caped crusader.

You've also got the more recent Star Trek prequel / remake / re-imagining. A lot of people loved this film, almost to the point of forgetting every other Star Trek film ever made... And, personally, as a long-time Trekkie... that's just wrong.

Now, on the opposite side of the spectrum, Hollywood has been punching out a horde of low-budget, brilliant... to strange and unusual art house films....

No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, a few recent movies by or featuring George Clooney, etc, etc....

Are these films worth seeing...?

Hell yes.

Are these films as spectacular and great as Hollywood wanted us to believe...?

Um... not in my opinion.

Some of the best films to win Best Picture at the Oscars have been really and truly great and some of them have been really, truly lame....

Take for example movies like Crash....

Some may have loved its racist, political statement...

And, it may have been the best film of 2005, but that really isn't saying that much about 2005.

Personally, my favorite film of 2005 was Walk The Line, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon.

But, there was a large group of people who preferred Crash and there was a large group that preferred... that gay cowboy thing... and that to me was nothing more than political....

The next time year, Martin Scorcese returned to great filmmaking with a vengeance, giving us a truly great film in The Departed. But, since The Departed was almost a word for word remake of a foreign film... I can't really say it was even close to the best film of decade.

Back in 2004, we got a few great movies, including Million Dollar Baby, Ray and Scorcese's own Aviator....

Mark my words, these movies were great and you should definitely rent them to see what all the hubbub is about. BUT, none of them really were the greatest films of the 2000s.

That brings us to 2008's Slumdog Millionaire.

It's like the cheap, Bollywood version of Titanic.

Slumdog Millionaire is an interesting study about growing up in India.

But, as a love story, it sinks more than almost every other love story put on film.

Okay.

Enough about every 2000 film before Avatar.

Now, let's get down to business.

Master filmmaker, James Cameron hasn't made a feature film in 12 years - not since he became "king of the world" with Titanic. Unless of course, you want to take into account his dappling in the documentary genre with Ghosts of the Abyss and Aliens of the Deep. But, for the most part, James Cameron has been sitting back, just waiting for the time when he could resurface and show us all - once again - what great filmmaking is all about.

You see, James Cameron had written Avatar 13 odd years ago. He wanted to put Avatar into production after Titanic.

But... the cost would've been far too daunting, because they would have had to create the technology from scratch.

And, as Cameron admitted, he did need a break.

So, Cameron waited for that technology to catch up to his wild, brilliant vision of the future in Avatar.

We saw it part of the magic behind Avatar in The Lord of the Rings' own Gollum. His character was such a break-through for CGI technology that the actor behind the performance, Andy Serkis was thought of for a nomination in The Return of The King.

And, I was impressed back in the day.

However, I must admit... looking back, Gollum was like a stick figure is to the Sistteenth Chapel when comparing him to everything James Cameron has done in Avatar.

There was something severely wrong with the CGI animation used for Gollum. I just couldn't put my finger on it.

He still looked far cartoonish to be real.

More advancements came and went.

Gore Verbinski showed us how great it looks when you paint a character into a film with CGI with his vision of Davy Jones in The Pirates of the Caribbean sequels. But, unfortunately, he left the writing of those films up to people who are on drugs or insane. I'm not sure which.

Peter Jackson who made The Lord of The Rings trilogy advanced the Gollum technology and produced a brilliant CGI version of the original stop-motion animation King Kong. This giant beast had the life Gollum should've had. But, there was so many other, cheaper-looking CGI shots in that film, it's hard to remember and appreciate how great the new Kong looked.

The CGI effects company behind Gollum and King Kong, WETA was now ready to bring James Cameron's Avatar to life.

And, life is exactly what they create in Avatar.

Back in 1977, Cameron became a big fan of Star Wars, but he was also very jealous of George Lucas. Inspired by countless sci-fi books and westerns, Cameron had created his own space opera when he was a kid. He just couldn't get this remarkable vision on film. He wasn't a filmmaker by this point. So - in short - you could say George Lucas had beaten to the punch with Star Wars.

So, you might say, Avatar has been Cameron's lifelong dream.

Ever since then, Cameron has strived to put this film together and as he said himself, "Out Lucas George Lucas."

In Avatar, Sam Worthington plays a former marine, Jake Sully who was handicapped by an engagement in battle. Unfortunately, in 2154, the economy sucks so bad, a veteran like Jake Sully can't afford the surgery to correct his handicap.

You might say people like Bernie Madoff are controlling health care in the future.

Since Jake is a paraplegic, he's having to use a wheelchair.

Trust me. Cameron's vision of real-life people like paraplegic war veterans is spot on, respectful and somewhat disturbing.

Also in Avatar, Sigourney Weaver plays a significant role as Grace Augustine, a researcher and a scientist with a quick and ruthless tongue when she wants to use it.

Grace don't take no guff.

But, for all of you fellow Cameron fans out there, make no mistake. Grace is nothing like Ellen Ripley in Aliens.

Also cast as humans in Avatar is Michelle Rodriguez as cool, short-lived, Trudy Chacon and Stephen Lang as the ruthless villain, Colonel Miles Quaritch.

The real heart of the film belongs to Zoe Saldana and her performance as the native alien, Neytiri....

This is where all of that time Cameron was away really pays off.

If they used the technology they had before Gollum, I can't imagine how awful this beautiful, 10-foot tall, blue alien woman would look.

And make no mistake, Cameron and the effects company, WETA made Neytiri incredibly beautiful. And, that was on purpose....

But, I'll get to that later.

For now, let's discuss the story behind the events of Avatar.

This mining company called, RDA is seeking a rock that Cameron has fiendishly called, "unobtainium."

Giovanni Ribisi's character, Parker Selfridge shows us exactly what it looks like... but doesn't give us any clues as to what it actually is and what it's actually used for.

According to Cameron's Avatar story, humans have killed mother Earth by using up every resource on the planet. So, we've gone into space, seeking the next best resources from other planets.

RDA has its sights on unobtainium in the ground of this alien moon called, Pandora.... like "Pandora's box."

And trust me, there are plenty of other metaphors where that came from in Avatar.

The biggest deposit of this ore is located under the home of a tribe of an indigenous people called, the Na'vi.

As I've hinted at before, these Na'vi are blue, 10-feet tall and very cat-like.

You might remember the criticisms that came up after the designs of these creature were revealed. They were called, "Smurfs."

Well, I'm here to assure you, the Na'vi design is nothing short of brilliant and is so far from the design of Smurfs, it's not even funny.

Now, back to the plot of the film...

The main guy behind the mining of Pandora, Parker Selfridge wants someone to infiltrate this native tribe of Na''vi and get them to move out of their home....

Which happens to be inside the biggest freakin' tree ever put on film.

Parker doesn't want to forcibly remove the Na'vi with the help of Lang's macho character, Quaritch.

So, what does he do? He gets the twin brother of a Pandora researcher who was killed in a hold-up, Tom Sully to do his bidding.

Since Jake Sully is a former marine, Parker simply thinks he's worth using, probably because he won't fight or dispute any orders given to him.

However, Parker obviously doesn't know Jake Sully like we grow to know him.

There is one catch....

Since the air on Pandora is so toxic to humans, we have to use masks or specially designed and created avatars.

These avatars look a lot like the native Na'vi.

They are grown from DNA of the human "driver" and the DNA of the Na'vi.

They are put to good use on Pandora.

There are a chosen who seem to hate playing basketball outside with masks on. And, I think I would too.

But, these avatars prove especially helpful when dealing with the Na'vi.

I mean, these natives are so huge compared to humans, they could easily be called giants.

Plus, the Na'vi would probably kill any human they see in the jungle without thinking twice.

The avatars are also helpful when confronting other, much more lethal life on Pandora.

Jake quickly falls in love with the idea of his avatar, getting new legs and basically, a new life... even if it comes in the form of this blue, cat-like giant.

Using his avatar, Jake outruns the dreaded and lethal, thanator....

This is an alien beast with a mouth two times the size of Jake's head....

Then, Jake is stuck, alone in this alien jungle without his weapon....

He fascines himself a spear....

He does his best to fight off some more local and smaller predators called, viper wolves....

Then, Jake meets this beautiful native woman, Neytiri.

At first, Neytiri is understandably hostile toward Jake.

We humans or "sky people" just can't seem to respect anything the Na'vi value.

So, Neytiri seems to hate the way we sky people think and act.

All of a sudden, before our very eyes, this typical-looking jungle lights up with the same beauty you can only find in classic Disney cartoons.

This is bioluminessence as Cameron calls it.

This is some of the real magic on Pandora, created in glorious and seamless CGI.

This is when we really start falling in love with this alien moon and this movie.

I'm not gonna give away much more of the film.

I just thought you should know hints of what you can really expect from watching Avatar.

Arguably, the biggest breakthrough of Avatar is James Cameron's ingenius use of 3D technology. With the help of a technician, Cameron created a 3D camera better than any before it, employing better lenses to reduce headaches and really bring out its greatness. It was previously used for films like Spy Kids 3D and Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D.

But, Cameron shows us how it really should be used in Avatar.

There are no more blunt objects to poke you in the eye.

Cameron uses his camera to lure and immerse audiences deeper into the film than ever before.

In fact, while we're watching Jake wander through the jungles of Pandora, we can't help but feel like we're right behind him or right next to him.

But, this film is no Pandora tour guide.

Avatar is a rock 'em, sock 'em, spectacular adventure film.

Eventually, Jake gains Neytiri's trust. As you might expect, these two unusual lead characters fall in love in the process.

To see their love story blossom may seem like every other love story you've ever seen, but it's really something awe-inspiring to behold.

Finally, after countless years of watching humans falling in love with humans, we get to see two aliens fall in love.

Well, technically, Jake is still human. But, the idea is there.

After all, Jake's avatar looks no different than a Na'vi.

For a cynic, it really could be easy to call these alien designs, "cartoonish." But, James Cameron knows what he's doing.

Cameron really transports us onto Pandora through every means imaginable.

Some of them are fairly typical methods.

Like usual, James Cameron peppers the script with wonderful bits of humor, causing us to care about characters.

But, some of the methods employed for Avatar are brand, spanking new. And it's not just due to the incredible CGI and incredible 3D technology.

Cameron's editing technique is a wonder to behold by itself.

Just when you think speeding through backstory is a horrible way to start a movie, Cameron proves otherwise.

James Cameron wants us to care more about than the Na'vi - an alien race mind you - than our own people. In Avatar, the humans really are the alien invaders that we love to hate in movies like War of the Worlds or Independence Day. And, by the end of the film, if you're not cheering on the giant, cat-like natives of Pandora, you just didn't get it.

How does Cameron choose to bridge the gap, change the way we think and feel about this alien species. He creates one of the greatest female characters - or should I say, one of the greatest characters in film history with Saldana's Neytiri.

Sure, she has the nastiest temper imaginable.

Sure, she's got the face, tail, and reflexes of a cat.

But, there's no denying how alluring Zoe Saldana's Neytiri actually is.

Neytiri can be seen as beautiful and sexy by both men and women.

And Zoe Saldana's amazing performance really brings this great cat woman to life.

She gives Neytiri the biggest heart and soul a cat-like native woman could ever have.

Just when you think Neytiri could cut your head off without hesitation, Zoe gives her such indelible sweetness and vulnerablility that she becomes everything we could ever want in a human being. And yet, Saldana's Neytiri is undeniably alien in her physical appearance.

Even the degree of her beauty is almost alien to us.

The remarkable thing is how wonderfully Zoe's performance shines through what you might call, "CGI make-up."

Before finishing, I should mention how extraordinary it is to watch Sam Worthington's Jake Sully change in Avatar.

From a proud paraplegic and former marine to a full-blown Na'vi warrior, Worthington's Sully turns into quite an amazing hero.

Jake's speech to the Na'vi people is nothing short of inspirational.

At first, Worthington plays Jake with such an innocent, peaceful air about him that it's hard not to consider him an alien.

I mean, Jake is basically lost in the beginning of the film, without meaning or purpose in his life.

But, as Jake learns what really matters to him, there's no denying how much passion comes out of this unusual hero.

And, once again, the most remarkable thing is that you can see and feel these emotions through Jake's CGI face and eyes.

Now that I've told you more than I should have about this remarkable film, I'll try to explain exactly why I think Avatar could be the greatest film of the decade.

The use of CGI in Avatar is the best we've ever seen.

James Cameron's use of 3D is sure to open up doors in filmmaking not unlike that moment when Dorothy Gale steps out of her house and into breathtaking technicolor in The Wizard of Oz.

But, those aren't the only reasons for Avatar greatness.

Cameron has crafted a film so well told, so undeniably alluring that it would not be easy to change one thing about it.

Avatar is not a perfect.

Neither was Titanic for that matter.

But, where Avatar succeeds and so many others in the last decade have failed is in the way its told.

There is not one unnecessary frame.

There is not one scene that feels like it's been drug out for no reason.

The storytelling is tighter, more comprehensive and hypnotizing that any other Hollywood film of the 2000s.

Yes, it may be predictable to some people. But, Titanic was the most predictable film ever made.

I mean, everyone knew the ship would sink.

But, what Cameron did so well is to appreciate and understand how the audience was thinking and feeling. Instead of dwelling on the sinking, Cameron told the story from the perspective of two lovable fictional characters.

In Avatar, Cameron's approach is no different. He tells another great love story against the backdrop of chaos and dramatic change in the distant future.

What does all of these things mean in the end?

Quite a lot actually.

Cameron's basically showing us a reflection of humanity in general, both good and bad.

His visual storytelling is quite remarkable.

So many people have unfortunately called Avatar's story, "simplistic." But, the messages behind it all are anything but simple.

Even the love story between this fragile and weak human man and this giant, alien warrior woman has an amazing message behind it.

So, what makes Avatar the greatest film of the decade?

It's the most important, and most entertaining film I've seen in 10 years.