The unimaginable alien world is brought to life by James Cameron in the 2009 film, Avatar. It is known to be the world’s highest-grossing film of all time. The development of this was thought of by Cameron in an eighty-page treatment of the film, in the year 1994. With plans to film Avatar right after the completion of Cameron’s outstanding film, Titanic, in 1997, Cameron denied the production of the film. The planned release date was scheduled for the year 1999. The reason was, according to Cameron, that the necessary technology for capturing his exact vision of this film was not yet available.
However, that didn’t stop Cameron from originating an extravagant science fiction film. From the creation of the language of extraterrestrial beings to the screenplay of a fictional universe, the pre-production for this film began in the year 2005. After concluding the final details of Cameron’s vision, the premier of Avatar aired on December 18, 2009.
The public was amazed with Cameron’s creation of a worldwide phenomenon.
Therefore, the film gained positive critical reviews, with critics highly praising its groundbreaking visual effects. However, what made this film so groundbreaking would have to be because of the messages Cameron depicted in his film. Within the extraterrestrial universe lies the political message: The American Military-Industrial Complex will utterly destroy the known universe. In other words, it seems to be that advanced countries are exploiting stagnated countries for their resources and will stop at nothing to get their hands on them. Aside from confronting the political realm, Cameron seems to have a view on the environmental realm as well.
Within this film, he seems to hint at a radical environmental message that is: nature will always win.
The film is set in the mid-twenty second century. In an alienated exoplanetary moon located in the Alpha Centauri star system known as Pandora, and is home to hundreds of hybrid human-aliens referred to as Avatars. It all begins when the US Military-Industrial Complex (system of individuals and institutions involved in the production of weaponry and military technologies) is determined to invade Pandora in order to mine the room-temperature superconductor, Unobtanium. With its anti-gravitational properties, Unobtanium is very important to our planet Earth because it will somehow resolve the problem of its terminal decline. In addition, this mineral will permit the colonization of more planets. However, the expansion of this mining colony threatens the existence of a local tribe of Na’vi—humanoid species native to the universe of Pandora.
In order to go through such invasion, the US Military-Industrial Complex sends individuals to implant themselves into a ten-foot tall, blue-skinned Na’vi Avatar. This genetically modified Na’vi body is only possible to access via a brain-computer interface (BCI). A BCI is controlled by the brain of a remotely located human. This BCI is utilized to interact via telepresence with the native of Pandora. This is crucial to Avatars because they are in need to connect with a human mind in order to survive the poisonous environment of their planet. When connecting to the human mind, Avatars are able to move about freely in Pandora.
Hence, Jake Sully, the protagonist of this film, is a paraplegic ex-marine who became paralyzed from the waist down as a result of a US military intervention. Jake is brought into a high-level research project ran by the lead scientist, Dr. Grace Augustine. Jake finds his solution to his problem through the body of a blue-skinned avatar. Being summoned into the avatar body for the first time, Jake discovers the use of his legs is once again a possibility. However, Jake soon finds himself lost in the universe of Pandora and is caught in between grave dangers. Waiting for a type of rescue, Jake meets his savior, the princess royal of the Omaticaya clan, Neytiry. After establishing acquaintances, Jake is welcomed into the Pandoran culture.
He welcoming pleases Dr. Augustine as well as Jake’s commander, Miles Quaritch. However, Jake’s conversion into becoming a Pandoran Na’vi might please Dr. Augustine and Commander Quaritch, but this may result into apocalyptic consequences that threatens the existence of their mother planet, Earth. Avatar depicts a war in heaven. For instance, in this film, the exoplanetary moon, Pandora, is represented as a heavenly universe that is soon invaded with evil demons that are set loose to destroy humanity. Us human beings are pictured as these evil demons. We tend to destroy whatever gets in our path—no matter what it is—in order to obtain resources, we think are beneficial to us.
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