The other day a mate and I went to experience Avatar, James Cameron’s new epic 3D science-fiction film.

I feel it necessary to re-disclose what most people know about Avatar: The film has been in active development for over 15 years, at varying levels of secrecy. It wasn’t until about a year ago, when a teaser was finally released, that we could be certain the film was actually going ahead. The film cost (roughly) $350 million to make, with a further $150 million spent on publicity and marketing. Aussie actor Sam Worthington is in the lead role as Jake Sully, a crippled Marine sent to a (relatively) nearby Earth-like planet to take up his dead brother’s place in the Avatar program, whereby a human consciousness is temporarily transplanted into the body of a specially-grown Avatar.

The premise, characters, locations, technology, production, nigh on everything about this project is epic. The director himself is renowned as a visionary perfectionist who will stop at nothing to get it done his way (Worthington, in an interview with Rove McManus, relayed a story of Cameron nail-gunning a mobile phone to a tree because it rang on set).

Avatar is set on Pandora, a mere four or five light years from Earth. The amount of detail, research and wordbuilding prowess displayed in the design of Pandora is immense. From a blade of grass to an enormous tree, to floating islands to vines that run for kilometres around cliff faces, the world of Pandora is as alien as it is familiar. The Na’Vi, the humanoid inhabitants of Pandora, are somewhat akin to humans, but Cameron has said that they represent a higher plane of human existence, so attuned to nature as to be completely communal and respectful of their world.

Avatar, then, is a movie with a message. Usually a dangerous thing, and something that I’ve been known to dislike, but in this instance, it is layered so deeply and rooted so far down into the world of the film, the ethos of the narrative, and the spectacle of the technology used to make the thing, that I can not only let it pass, but praise its meaning.

Avatar is not the best film ever made. Better films have gone before, and more will come. But for a massive, epic blockbuster, it is wonderful, immersive, and innovative. Let’s hope the sequel doesn’t suck.

Until next time…

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