Tuesday, March 16, 2010

A movie review: AVATAR




Jake Sully is a paralytic marine, but once his twin, who was taking part in an investigation in the exotic planet Pandora, looking for an important mineral for us, was killed in a robbery, the authorities tell him to emplace his brother’s place in the mission. Here, Jake starts like assistant of the commander armies in the place and his task was explore the planet using a native body too, the technology mix the human DNA and the native and with this, by a machine, it can control the body remotely.
The plot takes form when the marine, using the native body decides to help them when saw that the army was starting to destroy the environment for find the appreciated mineral. Jake and his team had to go out from the established area and find a security area where any can attack him. Here, Jake and the doctor who help him in the mission, start helps the native to win the war against humans.
The actions pass, most of time, in two places:

• The forest where lives the natives and where it’s located the center of their lives, an amazing tree where they lives and work around it. Here, all the animals and lifestyles are amazing and the film pretends to reflect a mistic enviroment because the plants, vegetables, trees and animals, the plants maybe more, are dressed with bright colours.



• The army operation center. The place where there are all the war machines, weapons, vehicles… and where the militaries decide what attack, where and how. Here is where inicially Jake and company did their introduccions in the Na'vi world. (Na'vi is the native population who life in the forest).

About camerawork, what say about this? This was an exceptional and laborious work. All the scenes had to be captured using special cameras and searching the perfect movements cause the actors used sensorial dresses. All the camerawork needed a lot of preparation, thinking and accuracy to do it.


Here, you can see the main actors and what characters they represents at the movie. The fact that they aren't known represents a freshness at the film, new faces for a new movie.

Sam Worthington
... Jake Sully is protagonist of the movie. All rounds around him.

Zoe Saldana
... Neytiri is a Na’vi native. She meets Jake (native body).

Sigourney Weaver
... Dr. Grace Augustine. Likes Jake, one of the members in the mission to discover Na’vi world.

Stephen Lang
... Colonel Miles Quaritch, represents the villain of the movie. Who attack the natives and their forest to catch the precious mineral.

Joel Moore
... Norm Spellman, member in the Jakes team.

Giovanni Ribisi
... Parker Selfridge, one of the antagonists of the movie. He’s who direct the missions.
Michelle Rodriguez
... Trudy Chacon is the helicopter driver


Now it's time to talk about the soundtrack. Excepcional music sang by the singer Leona Lewis. She has an amazing voice and here, when can hear and check it. This isn’t like all the other soundtracks movies, which are classic and all instrumental. In Avatar, the experts are assured to give another type of sense when the audience saw the film; this fact represents an output and an innovation in the soundtracks world.





Another characteristic and what do a reference from this film are the FX. After approximately two decades, James Cameron has been evolved by the best specialists in FX for make the best movie even seen. Here, you can see what said Cameron in FX, where aired a 30 minutes special called: <>
During the “Casting” segment, we briefly got to see the initial screen tests from Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana, and we learned about the exhaustive training the latter had to endure during to “become” a Na’vi (e.g. archery instruction, horseback-riding training, dialect lessons). The program reinforced the idea that Saldana and her costars weren’t merely “voice actors.” Instead, their whole performance — body movements, facial expressions, and so forth — was the basis for what eventually became digital characters. The cast also trekked through the rainforests of Hawaii to get an idea of what it would feel like to step foot on Pandora.
The “Performance Capture” chapter of the show discussed the Virtual Camera designed specifically for Avatar, which allowed Cameron to move around an L.A. warehouse and see real-time CG renderings of his characters and landscapes. Simply by manipulating the Virtual Camera, Cameron could map out the camera movements he wanted in Pandora as if he were really there with an actual camera. Then there was the 3-D Fusion Camera, which Cameron used to shoot all of the live-action scenes. And just when you thought you’ve seen all the revolutionary cameras your noggin can handle, Cameron started talking about the Simul-Cam, which integrated the two aforementioned cameras to allow him to view various CG creatures on his screen while shooting a live-action scene. It gives me a headache just thinking about the complexity of this technology.

Another thing to say is that with Avatar, is the development configurations with the Avatar was the creation of a virtual coach that allows the director see the results of capturing movement in real time, using this, the director haven’t wait for the team edition to make the images.

Personaly, I thing that this is an amazing progress in the FX world and only for this, the film academy should have to give an award to Cameron recognizing the development of FX in his movie.




If you loves de FX, amazing creatures, weapons and a passionate plot, Avatar is your movie. Here you can find a love story, war, nature and humanity, all this mixed here, where the reality seems like fake and the imagination seems like true.