Honestly, when I saw the theatrical promo of this movie I found it quite an ordinary subject with aliens flying on the top of dragons and man-meets-aliens film which has been shown 100 times before including our Bollywood’s “Koi Mil Gaya” which sheepishly copied the animated alien from their counterparts! However when I read it's review on the premiere day and the fact that Mr. Cameron spent a shocking 15yrs in its making I jumped on to the 3-D version of this saga…
Straight into the theatre you are found in a serious mission at the pandora (a world set in 2154) with a committed scientist and her team working on AVATAR project to meet the “blue monkeys” – that’s what the bad man of the movie says about our adorable creatures of Cameron. Brains are read and mapped (to create AVATAR of humans to walk into the alien’s land), the handicapped hero is brought to the mission just because his twin brother died (and their genes matched), warriors and giant walking man-controlled robots make up for the first few scenes. But as you keep waiting to see what you’ve come to see in the movie, the blue monkeys first show up in their development stages in the research lab. And as the scene opens up when they become real, run around (rather fly n hop) in an awestruck world of Jungle you are no more yourself, you are completely taken and transformed into that alien world as sky people (that’s what the Na’vi think about humans)!
As the hero and his old scientist transform into the world of Na’vi and back to the sky people, you’re totally with them. You are awed by the initial fight he encounters with a gigantic animated animal and the entry of alien heroine who tries to kill him just as signs of the Jungle stop her! You’re walked into the beautiful world we all saw sometime or the other only in our dreams… colorful Jungle paths, flashy flowers and animals (who’re also your friends – like those Panchatantra tales), huge fluorescent trees where you all fly (remembering Jungle Book), huge hanging mountains and waterfalls, and then best of all – the magical 'tree of souls' that connects with your nerves and can hear your prayers and even answer you! ‘She doesn’t take sides, she just helps in balancing’ is what Cameron let’s his animated heroine tell us about nature!
As you would expect the story unfolds into a war between the sky people and the Na’vi world when a piece of land takes the centre stage! And as it has always happened, this movie is also about good winning against the evil. But the emotions that Cameron portrays I would say stand stronger than his own romantic epic ‘Titanic’. If your heart went out to the sinking ship and the lovers, you might be found weeping for the havoc created by your race – Mankind! How we’ve destroyed our own earth and outside it, how we wont let any animal kill us rather kill them for fun and how much we ever cared for various gifts of nature that let us survive and rule and do everything that we want and still call it ‘humane’! Cameron wins in this aspect of his story telling which he tells you after you’ve completely sunk in his world. You curse the sky people and pray along with the blue monkeys for their survival and for the restoration of their beautiful Jungle!
As I got up from the seat, I felt bad about being back among the sky people… I once, for again, want to go and feel the AVATAR, for its an experience like never before and can be never after!
P.S.: I didn’t write about the technical aspects of the movie coz it takes a simple google search to paste it here, what I really didn’t want to let go was the experience I just had to be written over!
