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Epic science fiction
- Avatar is a 2009 epic science fiction film directed, written, co-produced, and co-edited by James Cameron.
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Avatar is a 2009 epic science fiction film directed, written, co-produced, and co-edited by James Cameron. The cast includes Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez and Sigourney Weaver. It is the first installment in the Avatar film series.
Dec 16, 2022 · Avatar: The Way of Water. Jake Sully lives with his newfound family formed on the extrasolar moon Pandora. Once a familiar threat returns to finish what was previously started, Jake must work with Neytiri and the army of the Na'vi race to protect their home.
- (499K)
- Action, Adventure, Fantasy
- James Cameron
- 2022-12-16
- Overview
- Avatar (2009)
- Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
Avatar, American science fiction film series and media franchise created by director James Cameron. The films follow a U.S. Marine named Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) who becomes part of a program in which human colonizers explore and exploit an alien world called Pandora. The humans interact with a humanoid species called the Na’vi by inhabiting ge...
The series began in 2009 with the release of Avatar. The film shattered box office records, becoming the highest grossing film of all time both domestically (until the 2015 release of Star Wars: Episode VII—The Force Awakens) and worldwide (a record lost in 2019 with the release of Avengers: Endgame but reclaimed after a 2021 rerelease of Avatar).
The film stars Sam Worthington as Jake Sully, a disabled Marine who has been sent to Pandora to assist Earth’s Resources Development Administration (RDA) in its search for an exotic substance called “unobtanium.” Because Pandora’s atmosphere is toxic to humans, and because the planet is inhabited by a large humanoid species called the Na’vi that threaten mining operations, a program has been designed to genetically engineer Na’vi bodies with human DNA to produce “avatars” that humans can remotely control. Jake, able to use his legs in this avatar form, serves as a bodyguard for a pair of scientists who use their avatars to explore Pandora. At odds with the ruthless practices of the mining operations, the lead scientist, Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), is determined that humans and Na’vi should coexist peacefully.
When Jake becomes separated from his charges, he is found by Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), a young Na’vi who begins to teach Jake about her clan and its connection to the natural world of Pandora. Jake becomes caught between his growing love for Neytiri and her people and the plans of RDA administrator Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) and Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who threaten the Na’vi clan and the massive tree it calls home in their mission to obtain unobtanium. This leads to open conflict between the humans and the Na’vi, resulting in the destruction of the Hometree and the deaths of Neytiri’s father and Dr. Augustine, among others. Jake persuades the Na’vi to let him lead them in their resistance campaign, though the battle seems lost until Pandora’s wildlife rises up to help repel the human invaders. Jake is transferred permanently to his avatar body by using a connection with the Na’vi sacred tree, the Tree of Souls.
Avatar received generally favorable reviews upon release. The innovative use of computer-generated imagery (CGI) to create the stunning visual world of Pandora thrilled viewers enough that most were willing to forgive a script that was widely dismissed as derivative. Saldana’s performance, though cloaked in CGI, was singled out for particular praise as a stunning marriage of acting skill and performance-capture technology. The film also attracted some controversy, as the film’s colonial themes played into “white savior” tropes.
After the massive success of Avatar, Cameron signed on to make two additional films in the series, initially planned for 2014 and 2015. This plan eventually swelled to include fourth and fifth movies, and the time line for the sequels’ release was pushed back several years. The second film in the series, Avatar: The Way of Water, was finally released in 2022. Like the first film, it was a box office blockbuster.
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The second film takes place years after the first, with Jake and Neytiri now parents to a large family, including their three biological children, the Na’vi daughter of Grace Augustine’s inactive avatar body, and the human son of Miles Quaritch. Though Quaritch was killed in the previous film, he returns in an avatar body seeking revenge against Jake and Neytiri. The family is forced to flee their forest clan and hide with a distant clan of coastal Na’vi who have physical adaptations suited for life in and around the sea. Over the course of the film, the family must adjust to their new surroundings, while the RDA continues its exploitation of Pandora—now brutally focused on the sentient, whale-like tulkun—and Quaritch hunts the family.
- Stephen Eldridge
Dec 29, 2022 · Cameron’s collegiate approach to films made a genre of this kind of documentary storytelling, finding the right balance between description, narrative, reality, and fiction.
- Writer
Avatar is an American epic science fiction media franchise created by James Cameron, which began with the eponymous 2009 film. Produced by Lightstorm Entertainment and distributed by 20th Century Studios, and consists of associated merchandise, video games, and theme park attractions.
Dec 11, 2009 · Advertisement. The story, set in the year 2154, involves a mission by U. S. Armed Forces to an earth-sized moon in orbit around a massive star. This new world, Pandora, is a rich source of a mineral Earth desperately needs.
Dec 18, 2009 · Avatar: Directed by James Cameron. With Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang. A paraplegic Marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home.
