"I see you."
Hello everyone!
This week, we're taking a little break from Bollywood so that I can backtrack to some other favourites I have.
To be honest, I'm actually going to be diving into Disney again pretty soon, if I'm looking at some of my scribbled notes correctly, er, reading them I mean, though it does look like chicken scratch.
But before that, we have to go back.
And I mean, WAY back.
Seventeen years back, to be exact, which is ... something. Then again, the LOTR trilogy is hitting those 20 year milestones, and I'm sitting here like WUUUUUT.
Without further ado, let's go back in time, back into space, and back into sci-fi, bby!
There's more than one movie now but, back then, it was only the one Avatar.
As this is the first movie in the series (yes, I will be covering them all ... eventually) there aren't any links down at the bottom of the page. Yet.
Avatar was one of those movies that, when it released, made shockwaves because Cameron had done what everyone thought couldn't be done. He literally took the actors' faces off-screen and instead had them running around (for the most part) as 10 feet tall blue aliens with tails!
Now you tell me how that doesn't sound bizarre lol.
The story goes like this: it's about a hundred years, or hundred and fifty, give or take, into the future, and Earth is ... not doing too good. See, people are greedy by nature, and it doesn't surprise anyone that we've exhausted our resources and turned it all into mush, so we're now mining on a different moon in a faraway star system, called Pandora.
Pandora's home to the Na'vi, humanoid creatures that are, as mentioned previously, TALL, have a lot of animalistic qualities, and live in harmony with nature, which is a complete opposite from what humans do on a regular basis.
Jake Sully (Worthington) gets recruited into this program that takes him to Pandora which was, originally, something his identical twin brother did, but then he dies, and they need someone to drive the Na'vi 'avatar' they have for exploring the world. Grace, the lead doctor in said program (Sigourney Weaver), is like urgh, a MARINE, he's useless, but he does need him to use that avatar so, despite her objections, he stays.
And gets into a whole lot of trouble right off the bat.
Chased into the jungle and depths of Pandora by wild animals trying to take a bite out of him, he only makes it through the night because he gets rescued - by a native Na'vi, Neytiri (Saldana).
Now begins the Pandoran version of Pocahontas and John Smith, in which the Na'vi goddess Eywa herself apparently chooses Jake for ... something. Neytiri isn't exactly sure what but, she reads the signs, and drags him in front of her clan, specifically, her parents, in the world's weirdest meet-the-parents moment to ever exist.
Her mother, the clan's spiritual leader, instructs her to teach him their ways, so basically, Jake begins the process of assimilation through his avatar, spending more and more time in said avatar, since he can move around freely.
Important to note here: Jake's a paraplegic, and so using his avatar is a dream come true for him. Equally, the security chief, Quaritch (Lang), promises him the use of his legs again if he helps them figure out how to get what they need from Pandora and to get the Na'vi out of the way. Basically, Jake is a planted spy but, well, he's too eager to try and fight back just yet.
Grace sees what's happening and relocates the entire team to a different scientific outpost, ensuring that Jake has the space he needs to actually join the clan, something no one has ever been able to do no matter how long they've been training.
So Jake goes down in history as the clumsiest Na'vi in existence, but does learn to bond with a horse like creature, and then also a flying dinosaur-looking thing, using special nerves hidden in his avatar's hair to literally CONNECT with the animals, feeling what they feel and controlling them that way.
He honestly wouldn't mind just staying Na'vi if he could, but things are now happening outside his avatar that need addressing.
Quaritch promises his employers that he can get them the unobtanium element they're mining for, the largest deposit of which is right under the Na'vi Hometree, which will, without a doubt, ruin them as a whole. Not that the humans care - well, Grace and her team care, and so does Jake, because he's fallen for Neytiri and this way of life harder than a stone falls into water.
Hometree gets attacked, however, no matter how much he pleads, and no matter how much he tries to get the Na'vi to leave. After exposing himself and Quaritch's plans, he gets shackled for his effort, released too late to be of any use, and Neytiri literally kicks him out on his ass.
This is AFTER they've admitted they love one another and chosen each other as mates, mind you (in probably the world's prettiest and most beautiful scene ever filmed, and entirely CGI at that).
Severed from their avatars (and, in Jake's case, also left behind in avatar form because the Na'vi apparently REALLY don't like him, lol), Jake and Grace get tossed into a prison cell with the rest of those opposed to this brutal vandalizing of Pandora. Their only saving grace (see what I did here) is the pilot Trudy, who doesn't like where this is going, and springs them all, having them feel to that scientific outpost so Jake can get back to the Na'vi.
He does it in epic style, too, bonding the fiercest predator Pandora has produced: Toruk, which looks somewhere between a dragon and a dinosaur and just ... scary, okay? There've only been five instances in Na'vi history that anyone has ever ridden one of these beasts.
But he pops back up with his people, shows off to his waifu who looks at him with stars in her eyes, and promises to fight for the Na'vi, as a Na'vi.
He also begs them for help saving Grace - who was shot on their way out of base, and is dying of that wound. They try to switch her to her Na'vi form permanently, but unfortunately she passes before that can happen. Even more determined, Jake prays to Eywa at the Na'vi's sacred Tree of Souls, asking for a little help, and then heads to battle after the call goes out to other clans so they can band together and defeat the humans.
The battle actually swings this way and that for a bit, with fighters dropping on either side, until Eywa answers Jake's prayer and sends the animals to help fight Quaritch and his little warband. Choosing to go off solo, Quaritch finds where Jake's human form is, and severs the avatar link, exposing Jake to the poisonous Pandoran air.
An enraged Neytiri, however, kills Quaritch, and grasps everything quickly enough to put the breathing mask onto her mate's human face, and in another beautiful moment they reaffirm their love for one another, despite the fact one is human and the other Na'vi.
With the humans defeated, they get kicked off-planet (except for a select few who're tasked to help rebuild), and Jake undergoes the ceremony they tried with Grace, moving fully into his avatar body, and leaving his human form behind forever.
The movie ends when he opens his eyes to this new life he's chosen, and it's STUNNING.
I remember absolutely loving it the first time I watched it, and then I sort of forgot about the thing until Way of Water started its promotional cycle. I have yet to watch that, or Fire and Ash but, I have plans to watch them all eventually, collecting them on here.
But Cameron knew what he was doing, grabbed a magical cast from the onset, and somehow created everything out of motion capture and green screen, which is a FEAT.
Plus the story is something we can identify with in a sense: the invaders, the natives, the fight for survival, and love that survives impossible odds, blooming in the most unlikely of places you could think of.
Not to mention the colour scheme that looks just UNREAL.
I'm so here for it. I can't wait to watch the rest!
10/10 recommend.
xx
*images and video not mine
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