James Cameron's Avatar the best film of our time!

Avatar is a 2009 American epic science fiction film written and directed by James Cameron and starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez, and Stephen Lang. The film is set in the year 2154, when humans are mining a precious mineral called unobtanium on Pandora, a lush moon of a gas giant in the Alpha Centauri star system.The expansion of the mining colony threatens the continued existence of a local tribe of Na'vi—a sentient humanoid species indigenous to Pandora. The film's title refers to the genetically engineered Na'vi-human hybrid bodies used by a team of researchers to interact with the natives of Pandora.
Development on Avatar began in 1994, when Cameron wrote an 80-page scriptment for the film.Filming was supposed to take place after the completion of Cameron's 1997 film Titanic, for a planned release in 1999,but according to Cameron, the necessary technology was not yet available to achieve his vision of the film.Work on the language for the film's extraterrestrial beings began in summer 2005, and Cameron began developing the screenplay and fictional universe in early 2006.
Avatar was officially budgeted at $237 million. Other estimates put the cost between $280 million and $310 million for production, and at $150 million for promotion.The film was released for traditional two-dimensional projectors, as well as in 3D, using the RealD 3D, Dolby 3D, XpanD 3D and IMAX 3D formats, and also in 4D.The stereoscopic filmmaking was touted as a breakthrough in cinematic technology.
Avatar premiered in London on December 10, 2009, and was released overseas on December 16 and in North America on December 18, to critical acclaim and commercial success.The film broke several box office records during its release and became the highest-grossing film of all time in North America and worldwide, surpassing Titanic, which had held the records for the previous 12 years. It also became the first film to gross more than $2 billion.Following the film's success, Cameron stated that there will be at least two sequels.Avatar was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director,and won three, for Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, and Best Art Direction.




The story takes place in the year 2154 on Pandora, a lush, Earth-like moon of the planet Polyphemus in the Alpha Centauri star system.The RDA corporation is mining a valuable mineral called unobtanium. Administrator Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) heads the mining operation of the RDA colony, which has a private security force called SecOps.Pandora's atmosphere is toxic to humans, forcing them to use breathing masks.
Pandora is inhabited by the Na'vi, a ten-foot-tall (3 m) blue-skinned species of sapient humanoids,who live in harmony with nature, worshiping a mother goddess called Eywa. To facilitate relations with the Na'vi and research of Pandora's biosphere, scientists grow Na'vi-human hybrid bodies called avatars that are operated via mental link by genetically matching humans.Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic former Marine, replaces his twin brother, a scientist trained as an avatar operator who was murdered in a robbery. Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), head of the Avatar Program, considers Sully an inadequate replacement for his brother and assigns him as a bodyguard.
As Grace, scientist Norm Spellman (Joel David Moore) and Jake collect biological samples and data in the forest in their avatar forms, a thanator's attack separates Jake from the group. Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), a female Na'vi, rescues Jake from predators in the forest, and seeing portents from Eywa, brings him to Hometree, where her clan, the Omaticaya, live. Neytiri's mother Mo'at (C. C. H. Pounder), the clan's spiritual leader, shows interest in the "warrior dreamwalker" and instructs her daughter to teach Jake their ways.
The head of Sec-Ops, Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), promises Jake restorative treatment for his paraplegia in exchange for intelligence that would enable Quaritch to force the cooperation of the Na'vi.Hometree is on top of massive deposits of unobtanium, and RDA wants the site. As Jake starts delivering information to Quaritch, Grace becomes suspicious and relocates herself, Jake and Norm to a remote outpost with avatar link units. Over three months, Jake grows close to Neytiri and the Omaticaya, eventually rejecting RDA's agenda. After Jake is initiated into the Omaticaya, he and Neytiri choose each other as mates. Jake reveals his change of allegiance when he attempts to disable a bulldozer as it destroys the tribe's Tree of Voices. Quaritch presents Selfridge with Jake's video diary, in which Jake admits that the Omaticaya will never abandon Hometree. Selfridge orders Hometree destroyed.
Despite Grace's argument that the destruction of Hometree could affect the bio-botanical neural network to which Pandoran organisms are connected, Selfridge gives Jake and Grace one hour to convince the Na'vi to leave Hometree. Jake reveals his original mission to the Omaticaya, and Neytiri accuses him of betrayal. Jake and Grace's avatars are taken captive. Quaritch's forces destroy Hometree, killing Neytiri's father, the clan chief Eytukan (Wes Studi), and many others. Jake, Grace and Norm are imprisoned for betraying the RDA. Trudy Chacón (Michelle Rodriguez), a security force pilot disgusted with Quaritch's methods, breaks them out, flies them to the outpost and helps relocate it. During the escape Quaritch shoots Grace, seriously wounding her.
To regain the Omaticaya's trust, Jake tames a Toruk, a powerful flying predator that only five Na'vi have ever tamed. Jake finds the Omaticaya at the sacred Tree of Souls and pleads with Mo'at to heal Grace. The clan attempts to transfer Grace from her dying human body into her unconscious avatar with the aid of the Tree, but she succumbs to her injuries before the transfer is complete. Mo'at declares that "she is with Eywa now".
Assisted by Neytiri and the new leader of the Omaticaya Tsu'tey (Laz Alonso), Jake unites thousands of warriors from many Na'vi clans in a bid to repel the humans. Jake prays to Eywa, via neural connection to the Tree of Souls, to intercede on behalf of the Na'vi in the coming battle. Quaritch notes the mobilization of the Na'vi and convinces Selfridge to authorize a preemptive strike on the Tree of Souls, reckoning that the destruction of this hub of Na'vi religion and culture will demoralize them into submission.
As the security forces attack, the Na'vi retaliate but suffer heavy casualties, including Tsu'tey and Trudy. The Pandoran wildlife suddenly joins the attack on the corporation's forces, overwhelming them, an event that Neytiri interprets as Eywa answering Jake's prayer. Jake destroys the bomber before it can reach the Tree of Souls. Quaritch finds and attacks the avatar link unit where Jake's human body is located, exposing Jake to Pandora's atmosphere. Neytiri kills Quaritch and locates Jake in time to save him. With the attack repelled, Neytiri and Jake reaffirm their love as she sees his human body for the first time.
Selfridge and the remaining corporate personnel are expelled from Pandora, while Jake, Norm, and several other scientists are allowed to remain. Jake is seen wearing the insignia of the Omaticaya leader. The clan performs the ritual that permanently transfers Jake from his human body into his Na'vi body.




See also: Fictional universe of Avatar
Humans
Sam Worthington as Corporal Jake Sully. Sully, the film's protagonist, is a disabled former Marine who becomes part of the Avatar Program. His military background helps the Na'vi warriors relate to him. Cameron cast the Australian actor after a worldwide search for promising young actors, preferring relative unknowns to keep the budget down.Worthington, who was living in his car at the time,auditioned twice early in development,and he has signed on for possible sequels.Cameron felt that because Worthington had not done a major film, he would give the character "a quality that is really real". Cameron said he "has that quality of being a guy you'd want to have a beer with, and he ultimately becomes a leader who transforms the world".
Stephen Lang as Colonel Miles Quaritch. Quaritch is the head of the mining operation's security detail. Fiercely loyal to his military code, he has a profound disregard for Pandora's inhabitants and serves as the film's primary antagonist. Lang had unsuccessfully auditioned for a role in Cameron's Aliens (1986), but the director remembered Lang and sought him for Avatar.Michael Biehn, who was in Aliens, read the script and watched some of the 3D footage with Cameron,but was ultimately not cast in the role.
Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Grace Augustine. Augustine is an exobiologist and head of the Avatar Program. She mentors Sully and is an advocate of peaceful relations with the Na'vi, having set up a school to teach them English.
Michelle Rodriguez as Trudy Chacón. Chacón is a combat pilot assigned to support the Avatar Program who is sympathetic to the Na'vi. Cameron had wanted to work with Rodriguez since seeing her in Girlfight.
Giovanni Ribisi as Parker Selfridge. Selfridge is the corporate administrator for the RDA mining operation and one of the film's primary antagonists.Despite being the human in charge of the mining project, he only reluctantly authorises the attacks on the Na'vi after being persuaded by Quaritch that it is necessary, and the attacks will be humane. When the attacks are broadcast to the base, Selfridge displays discomfort at the violence.
Joel David Moore as Dr. Norm Spellman. Spellman is a xenoanthropologist,who studies plant and animal life as part of the Avatar Program.He arrives on Pandora at the same time as Sully and operates an avatar. Although he is expected to lead the diplomatic contact with the Na'vi, it turns out that Jake has the personality better suited to win the natives' respect.
Dileep Rao as Dr. Max Patel, a scientist who works in the Avatar Program.








Zoe Saldana as Neytiri. Neytiri is the film's female Na'vi protagonist, princess of the Omaticaya, the Na'vi clan central to the story, who is attracted to Jake because of his bravery.The character, like all the Na'vi, was created using performance capture, and its visual aspect is entirely computer generated.Saldana has also signed on for potential sequels.
C. C. H. Pounder as Mo'at. Mo'at is the Omaticaya's spiritual leader, Neytiri's mother, and consort to clan leader Eytukan.
Laz Alonso as Tsu'tey. Tsu'tey is heir to the chieftainship of the tribe, and at the beginning of the film's story, he is betrothed to Neytiri.
Wes Studi as Eytukan. Eytukan is the Omaticaya's clan leader, Neytiri's father and Mo'at's mate.
Production
Origins
In 1994, director James Cameron wrote an 80-page scriptment for Avatar.In August 1996, he announced that after completing Titanic, he would film Avatar, which would make use of synthetic, or computer-generated, actors.The project would cost $100 million and involve at least six actors in leading roles "who appear to be real but do not exist in the physical world".[51] Visual effects house Digital Domain, with whom Cameron has a partnership, joined the project, which was supposed to begin production in the summer of 1997 for a 1999 release.However, Cameron felt that the technology had not caught up with the story and vision that he intended to tell. He decided to concentrate on making documentaries and refining the technology for the next few years.
In June 2005, Cameron was announced to be working on a project tentatively titled Project 880, concurrently with another project, Battle Angel.It was later revealed in a Bloomberg BusinessWeek cover story that 20th Century Fox had fronted $10 million to Cameron to film a proof-of-concept clip for Avatar, which he showed to Fox execs in October 2005.By December, he said he planned to film Battle Angel first for a mid 2007 release, and to film Project 880 for a 2009 release. In February 2006, he said he had switched goals for the two film projects – Project 880 was now scheduled for 2007 and Battle Angel for 2009. He indicated that the release of Project 880 would possibly be delayed until 2008.
Later that February, Cameron revealed that Project 880 was "a retooled version of Avatar", a film that he had tried to make years earlier, citing the technological advances in the creation of the computer-generated characters Gollum, King Kong and Davy Jones. Cameron had chosen Avatar over Battle Angel after completing a five-day camera test in the previous year.

Development

In December 2006, Cameron described Avatar as "a futuristic tale set on a planet 200 years hence ... an old-fashioned jungle adventure with an environmental conscience [that] aspires to a mythic level of storytelling".The January 2007 press release described the film as "an emotional journey of redemption and revolution" and said the story is of "a wounded former Marine, thrust unwillingly into an effort to settle and exploit an exotic planet rich in biodiversity, who eventually crosses over to lead the indigenous race in a battle for survival". The story would be of an entire world complete with an ecosystem of phantasmagorical plants and creatures, and a native people with a rich culture and language.
Estimates put the cost of the film at about $280–310 million to produce and an estimated $150 million for marketing, noting that about $30 million in tax credits will lessen the financial impact on the studio and its financiers. However, a studio spokesperson, speaking with film website The Wrap, said that the budget "is $237 million, with $150 million for promotion, end of story".

Themes and inspirations

Main article: Themes in Avatar
Avatar is primarily an action-adventure journey of self-discovery, in the context of imperialism and deep ecology.Cameron said his inspiration was "every single science fiction book I read as a kid", and that he was particularly striving to update the style of Edgar Rice Burroughs's John Carter series.The director has acknowledged that Avatar shares themes with the films At Play in the Fields of the Lord, The Emerald Forest, and Princess Mononoke, which feature clashes between cultures and civilizations, and with Dances With Wolves, where a battered soldier finds himself drawn to the culture he was initially fighting against.
In a 2007 interview with Time magazine, Cameron was asked about the meaning of the term avatar, to which he replied, "It's an incarnation of one of the Hindu gods taking a flesh form. In this film what that means is that the human technology in the future is capable of injecting a human's intelligence into a remotely located body, a biological body.
Pandora's floating "Hallelujah Mountains" were inspired in part by the Chinese Huang Shan mountains.
For the film's floating "Hallelujah Mountains", the designers drew inspiration from "many different types of mountains, but mainly the karst limestone formations in China."According to production designer Dylan Cole, the fictional floating rocks were inspired by Mount Huang (also known as Huangshan), Guilin, Zhangjiajie, among others around the world.Director Cameron had noted the influence of the Chinese peaks on the design of the floating mountains.When Cameron was asked if he got the idea for the floating mountains from an album cover of the rock band Yes, he replied with a laugh, "It might have been ... Back in my pot-smoking days.
To create the interiors of the human mining colony on Pandora, production designers visited the Noble Clyde Boudreaux oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico during June 2007. They photographed, measured and filmed every aspect of the platform, which was later replicated on-screen with photorealistic CGI during post-production.
Cameron said that he wanted to make "something that has this spoonful of sugar of all the action and the adventure and all that" but also have a conscience "that maybe in the enjoying of it makes you think a little bit about the way you interact with nature and your fellow man". He added that "the Na'vi represent something that is our higher selves, or our aspirational selves, what we would like to think we are" and that even though there are good humans within the film, the humans "represent what we know to be the parts of ourselves that are trashing our world and maybe condemning ourselves to a grim future".
Cameron acknowledges that Avatar implicitly criticizes America's role in the Iraq War and the impersonal nature of mechanized warfare in general. In reference to the use of the term shock and awe in the film, Cameron said, "We know what it feels like to launch the missiles. We don't know what it feels like for them to land on our home soil, not in America."He said in later interviews, "...I think it's very patriotic to question a system that needs to be corralled..."and, "The film is definitely not anti-American."A scene in the film portrays the violent destruction of the towering Na'vi Hometree, which collapses in flames after a missile attack, coating the landscape with ash and floating embers. Asked about the scene's resemblance to the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Cameron said he had been "surprised at how much it did look like September 11".
Avatar: A Confidential Report on the Biological and Social History of Pandora, a 224-page book in the form of a field guide to the film's fictional setting of the planet of Pandora, was released by Harper Entertainment on November 24, 2009.It is presented as a compilation of data collected by the humans about Pandora and the life on it, written by Maria Wilhelm and Dirk Mathison. HarperFestival also released Wilhelm's 48-page James Cameron's Avatar: The Reusable Scrapbook for children.The Art of Avatar: James Cameron's Epic Adventure was released on November 30, 2009, by Abrams Books.The book features detailed production artwork from the film, including production sketches, illustrations by Lisa Fitzpatrick, and film stills. Producer Jon Landau wrote the foreword, Cameron wrote the epilogue, and director Peter Jackson wrote the preface.
In a 2009 interview, Cameron said that he planned to write a novel version of Avatar after the film was released.In February 2010, producer Jon Landau stated that Cameron plans a prequel novel for Avatar that will "lead up to telling the story of the movie, but it would go into much more depth about all the stories that we didn't have time to deal with", saying that "Jim wants to write a novel that is a big, epic story that fills in a lot of things".

Critical reception

See also: Themes in Avatar
The film received generally positive reviews from film critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 82% of 256 professional critics have given the film a positive review, with a rating average of 7.4 out of 10.Among Rotten Tomatoes' Top Critics, which consists of popular and notable critics from the top newspapers, websites, television and radio programs,the film holds an overall approval rating of 94%, based on a sample of 36 reviews.The site's consensus is that "It might be more impressive on a technical level than as a piece of storytelling, but Avatar reaffirms James Cameron's singular gift for imaginative, absorbing filmmaking."On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted mean rating out of 0–100 reviews from film critics, the film has a rating score of 84 based on 35 reviews.CinemaScore polls conducted during the opening weekend revealed the average grade cinemagoers gave Avatar was A on an A+ to F scale. Every demographic surveyed was reported to give this rating. The main reason given for seeing the film was its use of 3D, as it was considered the main draw.
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called the film "extraordinary" and gave it four stars out of four. "Watching Avatar, I felt sort of the same as when I saw Star Wars in 1977", he said. Like Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings, the film "employs a new generation of special effects".A. O. Scott of At The Movies also compared viewing the film to the first time he viewed Star Wars. He said "the script is a little bit ... obvious" but that "is part of what made it work".Todd McCarthy of Variety praised the film. "The King of the World sets his sights on creating another world entirely in Avatar, and it's very much a place worth visiting."Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a positive review. "The screen is alive with more action and the soundtrack pops with more robust music than any dozen sci-fi shoot-'em-ups you care to mention" he stated.Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers praised the film, giving it three and a half out of four stars and in his print review wrote, "It extends the possibilities of what movies can do. Cameron's talent may just be as big as his dreams."Richard Corliss of Time magazine stated, "Embrace the movie—surely the most vivid and convincing creation of a fantasy world ever seen in the history of moving pictures."Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times felt the film has "powerful" visual accomplishments but "flat dialogue" and "obvious characterization".James Berardinelli, film critic for ReelViews, praised the film and its story, giving it four out of four stars he wrote, "In 3D, it's immersive – but the traditional film elements – story, character, editing, theme, emotional resonance, etc. – are presented with sufficient expertise to make even the 2D version an engrossing 2 1/2-hour experience."
Avatar's underlying social and political themes attracted attention. Armond White of the New York Press wrote that Cameron used villainous American characters to misrepresent facets of militarism, capitalism, and imperialism.Evo Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, praised the film for its "profound show of resistance to capitalism and the struggle for the defense of nature".Russell D. Moore in The Christian Post concluded that propaganda exists in the film and stated, "If you can get a theater full of people in Kentucky to stand and applaud the defeat of their country in war, then you've got some amazing special effects."Adam Cohen of The New York Times was more positive about the film, calling its anti-imperialist message "a 22nd-century version of the American colonists vs. the British, India vs. the Raj, or Latin America vs. United Fruit". Ross Douthat of The New York Times opined that the film is "Cameron's long apologia for pantheism ... Hollywood's religion of choice for a generation now",while Saritha Prabhu of The Tennessean called the film a misportrayal of pantheism and Eastern spirituality in general.Annalee Newitz of io9 concluded that Avatar is another film that has the recurring "fantasy about race" whereby "some white guy" becomes the "most awesome" member of a non-white culture.Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune called Avatar "the season's ideological Rorschach blot",while Miranda Devine of The Sydney Morning Herald felt that, "It is impossible to watch Avatar without being banged over the head with the director's ideological hammer."
Critics and audiences have cited similarities with other films, literature or media. Ty Burr of the Boston Globe called it "the same movie" as Dances with Wolves.Parallels to the concept and use of an avatar are in Poul Anderson's 1957 short story Call Me Joe, in which a paralyzed man uses his mind remotely to control an alien body.Cameron has rejected these and similar claims that he plagiarised the Noon Universe novels, a 1960's Soviet science-fiction series by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, which are set in the 22nd century on a forested world called Pandora with a sentient indigenous species called the Nave.Boris Strugatsky issued a statement on his website that he does not support the allegations against Cameron. Various reviews have compared Avatar to the films FernGully: The Last Rainforest and Pocahontas. NPR's Morning Edition has compared the film to a montage of tropes, with one commentator stating that Avatar was made by mixing a bunch of film scripts in a blender.Some sources noted similarities to the artwork of Roger Dean, which featured fantastic images of floating rock formations and dragons.
The movie blog /Film accumulated a list of quotes about Avatar from fourteen writers and directors in Hollywood. From Steven Spielberg, "The most evocative and amazing science-fiction movie since Star Wars." Frank Marshall wrote, "Avatar is audacious and awe inspiring. It's truly extraordinary." Richard Kelly called the film "amazing". John August termed it a "master class". Michael Moore recommended, "Go see Avatar, a brilliant movie [for] our times." The only negative reaction in the list was from Duncan Jones: "It's not in my top three Jim Cameron films. ... at what point in the film did you have any doubt what was going to happen next?".

Awards and honors

Main article: List of accolades received by Avatar
Avatar was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.It won the awards for Art Direction, Cinematography, and Visual Effects. The New York Film Critics Online honored the film with its Best Picture award.The film also received nine nominations for the Critics' Choice Awards of the Broadcast Film Critics Association, winning in the Best Action Film and several technical categories.It won two of the St. Louis Film Critics awards: Best Visual Effects and Most Original, Innovative or Creative Film.Avatar also picked up four nominations for the 67th Golden Globe Awards, winning for Best Motion Picture – Drama and Best Director.The film also received eight nominations from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), including Best Film and Director, but won for only Production Design and Special Visual Effects.The film has additionally received various other awards, nominations and honors.

This project was created by Valery

In my opinion is the best epic science-fiction movie,that everybody must see. :)And wait for the Second part.I hope you will enjoy with these photos and information:)Bye-Bye.