The animals have six limbs instead of four, but they move so convincingly the extra legs make perfect sense.Īnd then of course, there are the Na’vi. Much of the vegetation is based on sea creatures on Earth, giving it an alien but familiar feel. The plants and animals are bizarre and unusual, but plausible. Avatar succeeds because Pandora is one of the most well-crafted, beautiful and immersive fictional worlds I’ve ever seen. I’m referring, of course, to the glowing plants and animals of Pandora. And despite its similarities to other stories, Avatar manages to shine. So yes, Avatar is Dances with Wolves in space, with strong overtones of Fern Gully and Star Wars. It’s an extremely effective story, and I’m a sucker for it every time. Dances with Wolves, Shogun, and many other stories follow the same pattern, with a main character “going native” and switching loyalties as they learn about a supposedly backward culture. His mission is to learn about the Na’vi and convince them to move away from the ore deposit, but the more he learns the more he realizes that his species may not be the good guys. Jake was brought in because he is the genetic match to his dead twin brother’s avatar: a lab-grown Na’vi body that can be remotely inhabited and mind-controlled by a human operator.

The indigenous people, the Na’vi, are not too happy that the humans are bulldozing their forest paradise, and the humans aren’t too happy that the Na’vi live atop the richest ore deposit around. The story follows the crippled marine Jake Sully ( Sam Worthington) as he arrives on the tropical moon Pandora as part of a human mining operation. It is genuinely original, an unfortunate rarity these days. And even better, it is not a sequel or a remake or based on a comic book or novel. It is probably the most beautiful movie I’ve ever seen and one of the best sci-fi movies in recent memory. I always worry when a movie gets as much hype as Avatar did that in the end it will not live up to expectations, but Avatar delivers.

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