It’s worth the money to see it, even if the story line is so predictable.Avatar was an amazing experience.
In this economy, a night at the movies for a family is a luxury. .
Whatever way you choose to look at it, "Avatar’s" shock and awe demand to be seen.
You’ve never experienced anything like it, and neither has anyone else.
Say what you like about writer-director Cameron - and take it from me, people have - he has always been a visionary in terms of film technology, as his pioneering computer-generated effects in "The Abyss" and "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" testify. He is not a director you want to underestimate, and with "Avatar’s" story of futurist adventures on a moon called Pandora, he restores a sense of wonder to the moviegoing experience that has been missing for far too long.
An extraordinary act of visual imagination, "Avatar" is not the first of the new generation of 3-D films, just as "Jazz Singer" was not the first time people had spoken on screen. But like the Al Jolson vehicle, it’s the one that’s going to energize audiences about the full potential of this medium.
That’s because to see "Avatar" is to feel like you understand filmmaking in three dimensions for the first time. In Cameron’s hands, 3-D is not the forced gimmick it’s often been, but a way to create an alternate reality and insert us so completely and seamlessly into it that we feel like we’ve actually been there, not watched it on a screen. If taking pleasure in spectacle and adventure is one of the reasons you go to the movies, this is something you won’t want to miss.
A total immersion accomplishment like that did not come easily or for that matter, cheaply: 2, 000 people worked on the project for three years and estimates of "Avatar’s" budget put it in the neighborhood of$300 million. Cameron began thinking about the film 15 years ago and had to wait until either his company or someone else’s invented the numerous technologies and cameras, often too complicated to describe easily, that turned his vision into a reality.
It’s not only in 3-D that "Avatar" makes great strides, it’s also in refining a technology called motion capture, which involves filming actors wearing sensors and then running the result through CGI computers. It’s been used with varying degrees of success with Gollum’s role in "The Lord of the Rings" and "Polar Express."