Wizarding Times

Please note that there are plot spoilers in this review!

It's been about a year and a half since we've had a movie which made this much fuss; no movie was as popular as The Dark Knight in the past ten years, until Avatar came out. The only other movie in the past couple of years that had a higher rank than both of them was James Cameron's Titanic, the ultimate romantic tale which seems to have set up itself as the best movie ever made.

So does it come as a surprise that the director of Avatar is actually James Cameron himself? Definitely not. If he was able to enter people's hearts with Terminator and then fully take them over with Titanic, you would certainly expect more awesome watching-material from him. But did he actually meet the expectations of the audience? People seem to have divided their opinions when it comes to Avatar—some agree that it's the best movie ever, others say it was good but it's overrated.

Yet, regardless what their opinion is, nearly everyone has already gone to see Avatar in the cinemas, some even watched it in 3-D. What did that result in? It made Avatar the highest-grossing movie worldwide after just six weeks. It even surpassed Cameron's Titanic which made 1.8 billion dollars and it became the first movie ever that has earned over 2 billion dollars with its 2.1 billion dollars earnings. One of Titanic's records that Avatar hasn't yet beaten is the number of consecutive weeks of being first on the box office, as it has only been released for seven weeks so far (at the time this article was written), and Titanic made a record of mind-blowing fifteen weeks. We can only wait and see if it will beat that record, as well.

On the other side, Titanic won a blockbusting eleven academy awards (Oscars) out of the fourteen it was nominated for, while Avatar was nominated for nine and we have yet to see which ones it will win. But even if it gets all nine of them, it still has no chance of getting more than Titanic. Is that because Avatar comes in a more challenging time, in a period when there are other good movies as well? Or, maybe it's true what some people say—Avatar is overrated.

The only way to check that is to go watch the movie if you haven't done so yet. By what other HOLers say on IRC, and I myself can notice from viewing it, the plot had no originality at all. It was like watching Titanic, Pocahontas, and Atlantis: The Lost Empire at the same time. "A very nice mixture of all three of them with some minor changes" is the best way to describe the whole movie.

The movie takes place in the future on another planet called Pandora, where an ancient race called the Na'vi lives. They have human-like bodies except they are taller and stronger; they have blue skin with light white dots on it; they have tails with which they can create magical bonds with certain creatures and plants on Pandora. But, sadly, under the ground where the Na'vi live there is a huge quantity of a very precious metal which can be sold for 20 million dollars per kilo and of course human beings want access to it. Therefore, two enormous teams of humans work on Pandora: one is a military team which wants to displace the Na'vi, and the other is a group of scientists who want to find a way to let the Na'vi know that they must leave their central lands or risk harm, even death. However, their lead scientist, Grace, wants to learn more about the Na'vi language and culture, and not just to get them to move.

The Avatars are actually bodies with Na'vi and human DNA, but they are controlled by human beings from the science labs. Jake Sully, a paraplegic war veteran, controls the Avatar which was firstly created for his brother who has unexpectedly passed away. At first, Jake reports to the military base's colonel, as well, but then the scientists find out about that, so they move their lab on another place while the military base puts them under pressure. They are given a small period of time in which they must make the Na'vi move or the military will attack them. But things don't go as planned. Jake and the rest of the scientists are so amazed by the magical bond the Na'vi have with their land that they realize they would never be able to leave the place. On top of that, Jake (as his Avatar) falls in love with Neytiri, the daughter of the king and the seeress of the Na'vi.

Things get even more dramatic as the military men start their attack on the Na'vi, and are determined to destroy them. However, Jake and the rest of the scientists won't give up so easily—Jake even goes on the biggest challenge so far and tries to capture the beast Toruk, supposedly the most powerful creature at Pandora. His try is successful, and soon the Na'vi may have a fighting chance. But will it end with a happily-ever-after? I'll let you find out that yourself! Good or not, the movie is definitely worth watching, you yourself can decide how good it is once you've watched it.

Enjoy if you plan on watching it!