Welcome back, James Cameron.
After a 12-year hiatus, the revolutionary director best known for helming Titanic, has once again produced a truly major motion picture, Avatar. The dual writer-director of the highest-grossing movie of all time (Titanic took in 600 million dollars along with 11 Academy Awards) also tackled the roles of scribe and director for Avatar. Set to release December 18 of this year, the film looks to prove that Cameron has found another way to invigorate the filmmaking industry with his inherent ingenuity. The movie trailer itself, a two-minute tease of the film that is expected to act as a stepping stone to the cinematic future, has the notion of “movie buzz” ablaze: the expectations surrounding Avatar are substantially higher than most movies.
However, Avatar has garnered such profound intrigue for reasons other than its high-profile director: It combines elements of both 3-D filming and live action – and from the teaser trailer the two seem nearly indistinguishable. Cameron’s film sheds light on the epic story that takes place on a far-away moon called Pandora. The celestial body, home to a civilization of blue-hued, tribal-looking beings serves as the foreground for a scientific, as well as spiritual, breakthrough.
From the trailer, the film almost appears to be a futuristic Pocahontas, in which two groups of individuals collide tumultuously, and where love crosses yet another boundary to bring together two would-be-enemies.
Jake Sully, played by Sam Worthington (Terminator Salvation), is a wheelchair-bound ex-marine whose mind is transferred into the body of one of the alien life-forms on Pandora. The procedure gives him control of his borrowed body, and a means to traverse the planet, which is inhospitable to humans.
Zoe Saldana (Star Trek) inhabits the role of a native of Pandora, Neytiri, who develops a bond with Jake, one that places him in the throes of internal and external conflict. Sigourney Weaver, who previously starred in Cameron’s late-80’s film Aliens, and Michele Rodriguez, former “Lost” star and no stranger to science fiction, star alongside Worthington as ethics-challenging humans. Avatar follows our ambivalent hero as he seeks to protect the race of savage-looking entities he has, in essence, become part of, while he struggles to fulfill his human desire for freedom from his handicap.
The film’s trailer featured many scenes pertaining to scientific experimentation put into effect – full-fledged battle and inter-species interaction, layered over in a glossy, luminescent color spectrum that looks to vibrantly excite the film industry to new heights and expectations.
It looks as if James Cameron has been struck by lightning twice; he has seemingly managed to shatter the cinematic mold, and to change movie-making once again.
Movies, long esteemed as a form of escapism, will, at least in the case of Avatar, truly allow the audience to delve out of their present lives and settle into the unimaginable lives that only James Cameron could engender.
