What is Avatar actually about?
Asked by
MrItty (
17416
)
December 18th, 2009
I’ve been seeing a flood of advertising and promotion for this movie for the past 3 months, dating back to the World Series and earlier. One of the shows I watch (Bones) was even made into a commercial for it a couple weeks back. And yet with all that hype, I still have no clue what the movie is about. What is the plot?!
All I’ve heard from any of the advertising, marketing, and reviews is that the visuals are amazing. That it changes the way CGI movies will be made from now on. Not a single piece of promotion has told me anything about whether or not this movie has an actual story I’d care about. I get that there’s a marine, virtual reality, and aliens, and some interaction involving the three of them. But beyond that, not a friggin clue.
So can someone please indicate to me whether this is a movie I’d have any reason to care about if not for the advances in technology? Any quick synopsis of the plot of the movie?
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17 Answers
In the future, Jake, a paraplegic war veteran, is brought to another planet, Pandora, which is inhabited by the Na’vi, a humanoid race with their own language and culture. Those from Earth find themselves at odds with each other and the local culture.
Read another one here.
Well it’s really better of as a video game but anyway…I am thinking there is this weird species (not human, but human-like with all the tug at the hearstrings abilities to love and cry and feel betrayed) living in the jungle (duh!)...the super gadgety humans find them to be a threat to humanity so they get these agents changed to look like the species…so (are you still with me? cause this plot is like…omg…complicated) and they are supposed to infiltrate the ‘natives’...when they’re doing this…shock, gasp, surprise, the boy human realizes it’s all wrong and he loooves the girl native and the rest is hybrid history…
What I got out of all the trailers was that these marines want to go in to mine this very expensive ore (mineral something like that) and they can’t because this race is living on the land. So they give this guy a body like the race of beings called an Avatar, so he can go in and convince the beings to leave peacefully so there doesn’t have to be any fighting. Though, he ends up joining their side and convinces them to stay and fight against the military.
That’s just a summary what I got out of it, sorry if that is incorrect.
Or read it here -
When his brother is killed in battle, paraplegic Marine Jake Sully decides to take his place in a mission on the distant world of Pandora. There he learns of greedy corporate figurehead Parker Selfridge’s intentions of driving off the native humanoid “Na’vi” in order to mine for the precious material scattered throughout their rich woodland. In exchange for the spinal surgery that will fix his legs, Jake gathers intel for the cooperating military unit spearheaded by gung-ho Colonel Quaritch, while simultaneously attempting to infiltrate the Na’vi people with the use of an “avatar” identity. While Jake begins to bond with the native tribe and quickly falls in love with the beautiful alien Neytiri, the restless Colonel moves forward with his ruthless extermination tactics, forcing the soldier to take a stand – and fight back in an epic battle for the fate of Pandora.
one of the best movies I’ve seen, I had the chance to see it last nigh… one word… amazing!
Thanks, all. Honestly, doesn’t sound particularly interesting. Shame they couldn’t have combined stunning new technology with a stunning new story. The “people from opposite worlds get together to conquer evil” thing has been done to death.
The bare plot line is fish-out-of-water (or, a stranger comes to town). It is also David battling Goliath in the Matrix.
We saw it this afternoon. I commented on the way out, “We’ve seen this one lots of times before—but it was never like that.” It is visually rich and very beautiful. We saw it in “Real 3D.” If you have a chance to do that, don’t miss it.
What I want out of a movie is
— that it make me feel as though I’d had an experience,
— that it deliver what it promises,
— that it obey its own internal logic, and
— that it satisfy me in the end.
This one scores on all four dimensions. It also has a high-impact environmental message as well as something strong to say about ravaging other cultures for the sake of corporate greed.
In its essential story it is not so very original (there are only so many basic plotlines, after all), but there is a lot of originality within it, and it has a singing imaginative quality that tops most everything I’ve seen in some time.
I am always a little bit behind! So I just saw Avatar and I loved it. The story was pretty good but I loved all those critters, I want a horse thing like that and I want to fly around on a bird thing. Actually there are birds here called Ibis (I think they are in southern USA as well) and when you see them flying overhead they look like those creatures only not as pretty colored. So I am with @Jeruba it had everything it needed to make it worth while watching.
It’s a morality tale that demonstrates that you can still make billions of dolllars with sub par nonsense as long as you do it in 3D.
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