A visually refreshed version of James Cameron’s Avatar made its way back to theaters almost 13 years after its original premiere. How does it compare to this year’s blockbusters? Read on below.
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Avatar – a description of the plot of the film
The chronicler’s duty and the fact that there are probably also younger readers who have not seen the movie ” Avatar ” yet, mean that I have to describe the plot of Cameron’s film in a few sentences. So getting to the point – the action takes place in the future, specifically in 2154 .
Earthlings come to the lush planet of Pandora with the intention of extracting valuable resources there. A large corporation is responsible for the entire operation, but a military led by Colonel Miles Quaritch ( Stephen Lang ) is on hand to provide protection and support. Human attempts to contact the indigenous humanoid population, 10 feet tall, blue-skinned Na’vi, were tense, bordering on hostile.
For a time, Dr. Grace Augustine ( Sigourney Weaver) has had some success with the natives, using “avatars” (synthetic Na’vi remotely controlled by humans) to provide education and technological progress, but progress has slowed. Meanwhile, Jake Sully ( Sam Worthington ) arrives on Pandora, confined to an ex-Marine’s wheelchair.
With the help of an avatar, Jake is able to navigate normally in this world, but is caught between the actions of Colonel Quartich, who wants the soldier to bond with the Na’vi so that he can provide valuable tactical information, and Grace, who wants to rebuild lines of communication. A series of jungle events separate Jake from the other avatars and put him in mortal danger. His life is saved by Neytiri ( Zoe Saldana ), who does not trust him but believes that the god Na’vi touched him.
Avatar – is it still an all-time spectacle?
Avatar hits cinemas at an interesting time. We can say that we are after a period of a pandemic, or at least global lockdowns, which were a strong financial blow also for cinemas and the filmmakers themselves. So the industry is slowly recovering from lethargy, but still has not fully woken up. In addition, topics related to political correctness and racial representation seem to dominate Hollywood and be treated as more important than the plot itself and providing the viewers with good entertainment.
As a result, the sequel to the hit from over 30 years ago, or ” Top Gun: Maverick. “ Is probably the best blockbuster from Hollywood since 2018. Everything else is a series of big disappointments in the entertainment cinema. I have not experienced such a gap so far. And “Avatar” takes us back in time to 2009, before all the madness of the current years, and reminds us of what a Hollywood blockbuster of the highest order should look like.
Of course, the plot is still problematic in that “Avatar” is actually a modern version of “Pocahontas” . James Cameron Whether someone likes it or not, he devoted most of his attention to the visual and technological layer of his film, and he treated the script as a necessary, but still a means to an end. Otherwise, “Avatar” would be the longest tech demo in history.
So the plot of Cameron’s work tells us a fairly predictable, well-known and not very inventive story of discovering a new land, love (echoes of “Romeo and Juliet), struggle for survival, ecological topics and clashes with a large corporation (which is also nothing new in Cameron’s artistic output). ). However, as we know, “Avatar” performs much better as a show. I admit that although I like this film, it has never been one that I wanted to watch again.
One screening was enough for me, but the impression that its formal layer made on me stayed with me for longer, and I cannot say that about most films. It’s a pity it was at the expense of the script, but I admit that the tremendous work that Cameron and his team put into fine-tuning the visuals in the greatest detail, creating the Na’vi language, and creating the entire world of Pandora depicted is amazing.
Thanks to this, the viewer’s immersion into this world is unheard of in the history of cinema. Hence the phenomenon of “Avatar” and the fact that many viewers wanted so much to come back to Pandora. Also, the 3D effect itself turned out to be phenomenal, and “Avatar” is the only blockbuster in which the three-dimensional effect was real, visible, and not just a marketing fake aimed at increasing the ticket price and increasing the viewer’s interest.
Avatar – the experience of watching the new version
The first thing that comes to my mind when watching “Avatar” in the cinema in 2022 is how great the movie still looks after so many years . I have a feeling that the year 2009, when Cameron’s film originally premiered, was an apogee in terms of the cinema’s technical capabilities, and more specifically in terms of the development of special effects and CGI.
“Avatar” is not only a perfection in this regard, but actually nothing has aged and even today visually beats the films from 2022. From 2009 until today, cinema has made virtually no step forward in CGI. It seems to me that mainly because we have achieved everything in this regard, and “Avatar” was just the crowning achievement of this branch of film art.
Of course, Cameron announces further breakthroughs in as many as four sequels of “Avatar”, which will soon appear in cinemas, but they will not be as dramatic as well. The trailer of the movie ” Avatar: The way of water ” looks fantastic from the visual side, but there is no gap in relation to the first part. Cameron, however, announces a 3D effect without the need for glasses, allegedly a breakthrough water rendering technology and the like.
I have no doubts that these will be unique and impressive aspects, but despite everything, the next “Avatars” will in fact present on a similar visual level as the first part. And this one, as I wrote above, still looks insane. In addition, the whole thing has been remastered in 4K with HDR so the image is razor-sharp and the colors caress the eyes in every frame.
And the subject matter taken up by Cameron, although I will repeat myself, is enclosed in a rather banal and simple story, seems to resonate with the events of today’s world much more than in 2009. Somehow the authors made Avatar more relevant in 2022 than it was over a decade ago. So if you are wondering whether it is worth going to the cinema from 13 years ago again, my answer is – absolutely! You will not see a spectacle of such magnitude at least until December 16, 2022 , when the movie “Avatar: The way of water” will have its premiere.
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