Avatar, the movie

- Worthington as disabled Marine Jake Sully in Avatar

Today I saw a trailer for a film probably everyone else already knows about but me :) .... Avatar. This science fiction movie by James Cameron and starring Sam Worthington has already premiered in the UK but won't start here til next week. It's a unique blend of live and 3-D computer generated action that tells about a future in which a military Earth force tries to appropriate the valuable natural resources of another world, a world where intelligent life lives in harmony with its environment.


- flying through the environment of Pandora

The story incorporates elements from old sci fi novels like Call Me Joe and John Carter of Mars .... a paralyzed US Marine gets the chance to walk again through the use of an avatar - a human/alien hybrid body created in his image. The downside is that he must use this body to infiltrate the peaceful indigenous alien community. As you would suppose, he has a change of heart and ends up helping the aliens fight a war of resistance against his own kind.


- interesting that an avatar, like Krishna, is in Hinduism one of the incarnations of Vishnu who helps people find their way. Maybe Cameron is presenting the character of Jake as a combination of the religious sense of avator with the iconic avatar of the computer-role-playing sense of the word

You can read Roger Ebert's four star review of the movie here.

And here's the trailer ........