In one of the central scenes of Avatar, James Cameron’s (Sam Worthington) Jack Sully gazes at the world around him in awe. He travels in a spaceship around the floating mountains of the fictional world of Pandora and the scenery couldn’t be more stunning. You should see your face, pilot Trudy Chacon (Michelle Rodriguez) says with satisfaction.
But she also has an expression of deep elation the beauty that surrounds them is wild, unknown and total. A snapshot of an impossible landscape that opens around the characters in all its power.
It’s likely that the theatrical re-release of the Avatar movie will have a similar effect on audiences. The blue landscapes of Pandora, with their abundance of unknown flora and fauna, remain great filming locations.
Even for an audience accustomed to all sorts of special effects and reinventions of reality through digital technology. Despite its thirteen years of existence, Avatar remains a landmark in Hollywood history.
From the dazzling skies of Pandora
Not only thanks to its visuals, whose precision is even more remarkable, but also thanks to its scenario, of a singular spirituality. It has become a pop culture classic meant to unite multiple generations of fans, Avatar is a rarity. Beyond its virtues as a high-level production and commercial product, it is also a journey through still new ideas.
Most of them, of an atypical depth in the cinema of science fiction, adventure and action. Underpinned by the familiar idea of man assimilating a foreign culture like his own, the love that Pandora awakens in Sully is symbolic.
The one that deepens the perception of nature as a living entity capable of containing all the abstractions of transcendence. Much more, it embraces a version of the individual in the midst of a deep connection with the immaterial.
Avatar more than a commercial return
What was the highest-grossing film in history for ten years has unquestionable value as a feature film. At the same time, it’s an emotional journey through a narrative that raises questions more relevant than ever today.
From colonialism to ecology, through the link with the invisible and the perception of the spiritual as a common thread. Avatar was ahead of its time and took the first step towards a type of cinematic work with a particular allegorical weight..
Pandora, a pristine, wild and dazzling world, emerged from special effects to delve into human nature. The future that Cameron portrays so much like the pessimist he explored in Aliens leaves Earth like a painful memory.
You can look at what they’ve done to our world and what they want to do to it, says Jack Sully as he attempts to bond with Eywa, the guiding deity of the Na’vi. It’s not hard to imagine the dystopian future from which the colony of humans seek to explore a thriving planet.
A film lesson in images and narration
It’s money, it’s all about money, and it’s money we’re here, says Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi), as he tries to explain his intentions in Pandora . No matter how we disguise it, it’s the wealth we seek. Cameron, who could have transformed the environmentalist epic of Avatar into a moralizing and preachy product, he avoids it by his simplicity.
Neither the men and women who gaze upon the hostile planet of the floating mountains through the crystals, nor those who venture there, know what they will find. It’s the fiercest and most toxic ecosystem you’ll ever face, Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) tells a tense crowd. Everything out there will want to kill you one way or another.
But, in reality, Pandora is much more than its aggressive atmosphere or its unfamiliar natives. Cameron created a mythology attached to every fact and circumstance surrounding his world. Likewise, it underlies every decision of the creatures that inhabit it. When Jack Sully, assimilated into the Na’vi culture, mercifully kills an animal, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) looks at him with respect. You’re ready, she said softly. Suddenly this brutal planet, capable of killing with a mere breath of air, becomes a challenge. It also becomes a multicolored, radiant landscape, with a subtle tenderness. On Avatar, nature is transformed into refuge and home.
Avatar Returning to Movies as an Amazing Show
Nothing in Avatar is casual and it took Cameron 13 years to rehearse the important connection between technique and subject matter he wants to show. The director even makes it known in this festive return to theaters. The re-release includes ten minutes of Avatar: The Path of Water, the long-awaited sequel to the original film. and the sequence is astonishing in its subtlety.
It is not a Hollywood-style reinvention of a louder, bigger or more sophisticated concept, but a refinement of the one from which it came. Now, instead of the floating mountains, it is the sea, of an extraordinary blue, which spreads out in a magical moment that the camera sublimates with delicacy. This little scene demonstrates the obvious.
Cameron has again managed to make his film an allegory that encompasses many others. It’s also a great glimpse into a world tied to something bigger and purer. Undoubtedly the greatest merit of a production that returns to the screen to amaze a whole new audience.
Avatar returns to theaters in a climate of nostalgia and expectation