Avatar

Avatar (2009) came from a treatment James Cameron wrote in 1994 and then waited fifteen years to make. The delay was not the script but the technology: he waited for the tools that could produce the image he wanted. The 22nd century. Jake Sully, a paraplegic marine, is sent to the moon Pandora. His assignment is to move among the native Na'vi, and to do it he is linked into a genetically grown Na'vi body. In that body he can walk. Over time which side he belongs to stops being clear. The story is familiar: a colonial narrative, an indigenous people, a mining company. The film does not disguise the resemblance and most of the criticism came from there. The real point is not what Cameron did but how. The performance capture system was developed to record actors' facial muscles individually, and the result did not look like anything before it. Three dimensional projection also became a cinema standard through this film. It became the highest grossing film in the world. Avengers: Endgame took the record in 2019, and Avatar took it back after a 2021 reissue in China. There is also a strange running argument: that a film watched by so many people left no cultural trace. Nobody quotes its lines. It runs 162 minutes. Good for: large scale science fiction, effects driven cinema, and adventure. Less good for: the story is predictable, the running time is long, and the battle scenes are hard.