Avatar

Avatar

Language : English
Year : 2009
Medical Theme : Environmental health/ Disability/ Cloning
Actors : Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang
Storyline : James Cameron has a very special talent to turn everything he touches to solid gold. His film Avatar is just another example that proves yet again the fact that Cameron’s themes are truly global and they work well with any type of audience, effortlessly transcending over different cultures and breaking the barriers of nation-state boundaries, while also appealing fully to the global audience by being very commercial at the same time. For those of us who thought Cameron’s previous masterpiece Titanic was huge and its box-office performance was untouchable, his latest film Avatar comes as a pleasant surprise while we sit back and see the film effortlessly break the records previously set by Titanic at the box-office.

Avatar is a science fiction film that has the environmental crisis as its central theme and that sets Avatar apart from the rest of James Cameron films. The film is in 3D and James Cameron had to wait for almost a decade to make this film after he had made Titanic, because the director felt the existing technology available then was inept and without doubt, the film’s technical superiority surely stands out to be one of the finest the world has witnessed so far.

The story of Avatar is set in the future, when humans, through their scientific advancements are having a stronger grip over earth’s resources and also the resources of the wider universe they are part of. Pandora is a habitable moon that has many species of animals, plants and other living forms living in harmony with Nature and Unobtainium is a very rare and also an invaluable mineral resource found in Pandora. So humans decide to start mining in Pandora to have access to the precious mineral with no regard to the environmental damages such a move could do to Pandora’s habitat. In Pandora however things are no more idyllic and the rest of the film is about the conflict that arises between the humans, the local inhabitants in Pandora and the genetically modified avatars sent from earth to do research in Pandora. In terms of script and characterization the film has not achieved much, but the message the film carries and the way it is packed is simply brilliant, because in the end it leaves no room for anyone to go against the cause the film stands for. Avatar is truly a modern masterpiece, in terms of its contribution in taking 3D technology to the next level and also for being a larger than life epic that takes the viewers through a never before seen visual experience.