Avatar is a live action/animated film with spectacular new generation of special effects.  James Cameron, the Oscar-winning director of Titanic, first conceived the film twelve years ago, when the means to make the film didn’t yet exist.  Now, after four years in production, Avatar delivers a fully immersive 3D cinematic  experience.

The story’s hero, Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington), is a former Marine confined to a wheelchair.  He has been recruited to join an expedition to the moon Pandora, where corporate interests are strip-mining for a mineral worth $20 million per kilo on Earth.  To facilitate their work, the humans use a human-Na’vi hybrid – a fully living, breathing body that resembles the Na’vi but possesses the individual human controller’s thoughts, feelings and personality.  It is called an “avatar”.  In his new avatar form, Jake can walk again.  His mission is to interact with and infiltrate the Na’vi with the hope of broaching a treaty – or at least their acquiescence – in order to mine the ore.

I was fairly circumspect about seeing Avatar both because I am not exactly a fan of Titanic and I have long viewed 3D as little more than an old-fashioned gimmick that makes it impossible to actually immerse yourself in the film.  Tape measures that poke out at you in an office scene never really added to the movie in my opinion.  Furthermore, before I knew the production history, the title suggested to me that Cameron was simply cashing in on the whole World of Warcraft / Second Life phenomenon.

Even though it seemed to take me a good third of the film to get used to the glasses (having to try and resist the urge to flip them on and off to see the difference in what was happening on screen), once the story gets into the jungles of Pandora, I was totally hypnotised by the intensity of the 3D experience and quickly forgot to be distracted.  Pandora is, I think, the perfect world for the 3D genre.  Its differences in colour from Earth jungle allows the film to compensate for the colour issues that 3D used to have.  In fact James Cameron takes full advantage of this to make the jungle seem more magical.  Also, the new polarised glasses solve most of the green tinge problems of the past anyway.

The story really is just Dances with Wolves meets Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but the “Toon Town” similarity didn’t occur to me until the next day, as the story seamlessly moves from live-action to full animation and back again throughout the film, with no film stock variation or even changes to the feel of the film.

However, do not go to this film expecting much of an original plot.  What you expect to happen, does, and who you expect to be bad and die, do.  But I don’t think that is the point of watching this film.  To see Avatar in a non-3D screening would be a huge waste – it MUST be viewed with the geeky glasses on.  And don’t worry, the session I was in was packed with the most eclectic  audience I think I have ever seen in a cinema, so you won’t be alone when you slip those suckers over your eyes.  It’s definitely worth it.  I give this film 4 stars.