So James Cameron’s long awaited film Avatar finally hit my local cinemas yesterday and in my opinion, it lives up to all the hype that had been buzzing around long before the movie was released. For so many reasons.

For those who don’t know what Avatar is, I highly suggest you go wiki it and read up on it. It’s definitely one for the books.

So why is it so awesome? First and foremost is probably the world of Pandora itself.

After watching the movie, it struck me that Avatar in 2009 is similar to what Star Wars was to 1977, except on a much smaller scale. Both universes were the brainchilds of 2 indviduals, James Cameron and George Lucas respectively of course. However, Avatar’s new universe is on a much smaller scale than Star Wars, because while Star Wars literally creates an entire universe, Avatar only depicts a single fictional planet. However, what this movie lacks in breadth, it more than makes up for in it’s depth.

In Star Wars, the universe isn’t very closely explored. Much of what the world is like is left to the audience’s imagination (hence the Extended Universe of books/comics/games/etc.). On the other hand, the world of Pandora is completely fleshed out, every single detail is explored and there are so many little touches that makes Pandora feel like a real place. It’s amazing how much painstaking work the graphics artists had to go through to create each and every frame of the movie, because there’s so much detail in each and every frame of the movie that I kept wishing I could pause the movie in between just to admire a particular scene. Everything from the colours of the jungle, to the creatures to the flora all around is just stunning to look at. Words really can’t describe the beauty of the world of Pandora and you really have to see it to understand the feeling that anyone who watches this movie will get.

Now the 3D technology is just amazing. It’s partly due to the way each frame is designed I guess, because everything just pops in 3D. There’re ambient particles in certain scenes that truly do seem to be floating around right in front of your face, and every time there’s a rear shot of one of the Na’vi, I felt like tugging at their tails. I never thought it’d be possible to create a movie that uses 3D technology that isn’t in the style of a Pixar film, but Cameron really managed to pull it off spectacularly.

Is this the greatest movie ever made? Not really. To me there are pacing issues and the story isn’t that great. The third act of the movie seemed to drag on for ages and I kept wanting the plot to just move along. Yet, even when it was getting slow, I was still in awe the entire time I was watching the screen. The story on the other hand is pretty ‘meh’.

Go see this movie while you have the chance to. Go watch it in the cinemas because that’s the only way to experience it properly, and watch it in 3D. You won’t regret it this one time.

Tags: avatar, james cameron, pandora