Movie Review: Avatar

I've tried to stay away from the hype surrounding this movie. In years gone by I would have been so excited by the concept I'd have barely been able to sit still through the adverts and trailer reels. With age, and with many experiences of excitement and expectation being dashed on the rocks of reality, I stilled myself. Hoping for the best and fearing for the worst. Having treated ourselves to the PS3 Avatar game and watched Nat playing it for a few minutes, the worst I expected was nearly three hours of video-game footage a la Transformers.

I needn't have worried.

Before the detail, here are the headlines. Avatar is outstanding. A team of creative giants at the peak of their craft, led by a man with a monumental vision, have created a world of beauty and wonder. What else is film-making about? If you haven't seen it, I would urge you to. If you're thinking of waiting for the BD/DVD release, I would politely suggest you go to a theatre to see it in its breathtaking 3D glory. Avatar will not only take you to another world for 162 minutes, it'll make you wish you could stay there.

"Pandora is a moon of the gas giant Polyphemus, which orbits Alpha Centauri A" says the Avatar wiki page, and you've grabbed me right there, from the off. Since the very first time I saw an "artist's impression" of the surface of a world with more than one moon in the sky I've been hooked on those images. Having a gas giant on the horizon just makes it that much more impressive. But this is just one of the jaw-dropping visuals with which you're assaulted in the opening minutes, and there's even better to come later on. Here is a world similar to those previously locked in the imaginations of the likes of Roger Dean and Rodney Matthews. Only it's real.

Undoubtedly using every cycle of processing power on the world's fastest graphics-rendering computers, and every nuance of programming subtlety developed over years to faithfully reproduce real-world physics and biology, Pandora looks real.

I've been impressed with CGI before - from Lord of the Rings to various Terminators - but there's always been something, some little thing, that jarred me out of my suspension of disbelief. That mental hiccup where you think oh yeah, it's just a drawing. Not here. In Avatar, CGI finally comes of age.

And at that point, the only limit is your imagination. From the gently floating seeds of Eywa through the bioluminescent forest pathways to the mighty Leonopteryx (Toruk), Pandora is the world you've only been able to read about up 'til now. Whether it's Hothouse or Hyperion, Halvmork or Helliconia, they've been more real in your head. Now they can be real in front of your eyes.

As good as any visuals are, they can always be lifted with the addition of a good sound track and here again Avatar does not disappoint. From the simplest forest sounds through the Na'vi native music to the soaring and uplifting strains that accompany the Ikran flights, Avatar is as much a joy to listen to as it is to watch. This must surely be the best work of James Horner's career.

Although Avatar pushes the envelope in so many technical ways, and achieves such heights of success with all of them, still it would be a hollow shell without a story to fill it and here, you may read, some critics have fallen short of rapture in their reviews, calling the plot predictable at best. Actually it had the opposite effect on me. The presence of the stereotypical characters - the grizzled military leader out for blood; the impatient businessman with his eyes so fixed on the money he doesn't see the real prize; the suspicious warrior leader; the beautiful native girl who steals the hero's heart; and on; and on - for me merely added a comfort factor. Knowing where the story was headed almost allowed me to relax and enjoy it MORE. There were still enough surprises to keep it interesting, even if the visual delights as each new part of the planet was revealed hadn't.

Scriptwise, some of the early exposition wanders close to the border with the Realms of Woodenness, but all things considered the backstory of how Pandora was found, why humans need masks to survive, why the Na'vi are revolting and what the military forces are really after, is all sorted out in pretty short order, arming the viewer with the necessary information and leaving him or her free to lap up the alien landscape as it unfolds.

Avatar as a whole, and the world of Pandora and the Na'vi in particular, have stayed with me in a way I cannot remember a film ever having done since I first saw 2001: A Space Odyssey at the age of 12. I saw it yesterday and I'd be delighted to go back and watch it again today. I don't think that has ever happened. Simply outstanding in every way. I read one critic's claim that it is the best film of the last thirty years. I couldn't disagree.