Avatar

(Fig.1) Film Poster Avatar, this title holds a lot of weight in this day and age. Remembered as the film that reshaped cinema, like a modern day Metropolis. Now what kind of film could stand to a claim like that you ask? Well, Avatar. The 2009 title by the renowned James Cameron beat the box office into submission after clearing the record that he had made with Titanic and even Terminator. The film, which marks Cameron's first dramatic feature since 1997's Titanic... ~ Rotten Tomatoes (fig.4) Avatar is a sci-fi war film with action and adventure, love and betrayal. The plot is simple and arguable too small for the story it's telling. Though you could argue that if the film was any more complex then you would have less access to long scenes of flying and fighting and more scenes of someone telling you about them and why it's so symbolic and what it has to do with Vietnam. It is a valid statement, however, that much is left to artistic license and we have a lot of merchandises available to us for those who are interested in the lore of this distant planet Pandora and it's inhabitants. Avatar was officially budgeted at $237 million. Other estimates put the cost between $280 million and $310 million for production and at $150 million for promotion.~Wikipedia(fig .5) The Na'vi are a humanoid cat-like race that live on Pandora. Their charm comes from their love for living creatures and their view of how sacred life is. The are portrayed a primitive race and are given the stereotypes of an African tribe. This is a beautiful contrast to the humans who, like in Ridley Scott's Alien, have a bulky industrial feel to them. The artists wanted them to be dark and grimy. Showing in physicality the lust for power and money.

(Fig.2) Film Still

This is so true of the age that Mr. Cameron lived and watching Avatar you can really feel that vibrant 70's atmosphere in the amazing environmental forest scenes. It's almost like the Mr. Cameron saw the bureaucratic advance of Modernism and how the bright and vivid colours were being torn down around him. This new era saw a boom in industry and if you were to look you can see layer upon layer of these heavy block-like buildings that replaced those vibrant and colourful years. You could even go as faras to say, with irony, that the post modernism movement is trying to fix it by going in the the completely opposite direction. The problem that now remains is that over the years each generation is trying to right it's predecessor's wrongs, and now we have lost which way is forward.

(Fig.3) Film Still 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. ~ IMDb (fig.6) Avatar is a story about a man that is trying to see the end of an age. The difference in this story is that the revolutionary Jake Sully saw that the future that he fought for was empty and void of life. Turning his back on humanity, Jake tried to right the wrongs that he caused and in a very flashy Hollywood Style, he does.

Bibliography Images Fig.1 Film Poster, Avatar, James Cameron, 2009 , USA, http://www.imdb.com/media/rm843615744/tt0499549 Fig.2 Film Still, Avatar, James Cameron, 2009 , USA, http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100807172359/jamescameronsavatar/de/images /c/c2/Sow-avatar.1080p_3844.jpg Fig.3 Film Still, Avatar, James Cameron, 2009 , USA, http://kanaguonline.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/avatar_2.jpg Quotes Fig.4 Rotten Tomatoes, Web, Avatar, http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/avatar/ Fig.5 Wikipedia, Web, Avatar, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film) Fig.6 IMDb, Web, Avatar, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/