Avatar (2009)

Avatar (2009) (newmovietop.blogspot.com)

As we all know Avatar is  one of a greatest movie ever made in history.  During its theatrical run, the film broke several box office records and became the highest-grossing film of all time surpassing Titanic also directed by James Cameron. And it is still holding the record for highest grossing film in history.In my opinion this record can’t be broken at least for another decades. I assume you also agree with me.

 Avatar is a 2009 American epic science fiction film directed, written, produced, and co-edited by James Cameron and starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, and Sigourney Weaver. The film is set in the mid-22nd century, when humans are colonizing Pandora, a lush habitable moon of a gas giant in the Alpha Centauri star system, in order to mine the mineral unobtanium, a room-temperature superconductor. The film's title refers to a genetically engineered Na'vi body (local tribe exist in Pandora named Navi) with the mind of a remotely located human that is used to interact with the natives of Pandora. 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 made extensive use of new motion capture filming techniques.

 Avatar premiered in London on December 10, 2009, and was internationally released on December 16.It met positive critical reviews, with critics highly praising its groundbreaking visual effects. During its theatrical run, the film broke several box office records and became the highest-grossing film of all time surpassing Titanic also directed by James Cameron. Avatar was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won three of them. Three sequels, all directed and co-written by Cameron, will be released each year starting from December 2017 to 2019.This is the official movie trailer for Avatar.

The Avatar directed, written, produced, and co-edited by James Cameron, Produced Jon Landau, music by James Horner. Cinematography by Mauro Fiore, Edited by John Refoua and Stephen E. Rivkin , while Production companies were Lightstrom Entertainment and Dune Entertainment and distributed by 20^th  Century Fox . Film Released December 10, 2009 in London and in December 17, 2009 UK and December 18, 2009 in U.S.A with 161 minutes running time which grossed $2.788 billion against its budget  $237 million.

Plot

Due to the energy crisis in 2154 Resources Development Administration (RDA) mines for a valuable mineral named unobtanium on Pandora , a densely forested habitable moon orbiting the gas giant Polyphemus in the Alpha Centauri star system. Pandora, whose atmosphere is poisonous to humans, is inhabited by the Na'vi, 10-foot tall blue-skinned, sapient humanoids who live in harmony with nature and worship a mother goddess called Eywa. o explore Pandora's biosphere, scientists use Na'vi-human hybrids called "avatars", operated by genetically matched humans; Jake Sully, a paraplegic former Marine, replaces his deceased twin brother as an operator of one. Dr. Grace Augustine, head of the Avatar Program, considers Sully an inadequate replacement but accepts his assignment as a bodyguard. While they were collecting biological data Jake's avatar is attacked by a thanator and flees into the forest, where he is rescued by Neytiri, a female Na'vi. Witnessing an auspicious sign, she takes him to her clan, whereupon Neytiri's mother Mo'at, the clan's spiritual leader, orders her daughter to initiate Jake into their society.

Despite Grace's argument that destroying Hometree could damage the biological neural network native to Pandora, Selfridge gives Jake and Grace one hour to convince the Na'vi to evacuate before commencing the attack. Jake confesses to being a spy and the Na'vi take him and Grace captive. Seeing this, Quaritch's men destroy Hometree, killing Neytiri's father and many others. Mo'at frees Jake and Grace, but they are detached from their avatars and imprisoned by Quaritch's forces. Pilot Trudy Chacón, disgusted by Quaritch's brutality, carries them to Grace's outpost, but during the escape, Quaritch fires at them, hitting Grace. To regain the Na'vi's trust, Jake connects his mind to that of Toruk, a dragon-like predator feared and honored by the Na'vi.they tries to save Grace with the help of three of souls in Pandora but failed.

Jake speaks to unite the clan and gather all of the clans to battle against the RDA. Noticing the impending gathering Quaritch organizes a pre-emptive strike against the Tree of Souls, believing it will destroy entire Navi. Jake prays to Eywa, via a neural connection to the Tree of Souls, to intercede on behalf of the Na'vi. During the subsequent battle, the Na'vi suffer heavy casualties, including Tsu'tey and Trudy; but are rescued when Pandoran wildlife unexpectedly join the attack and overwhelm the humans, which Neytiri interprets as Eywa's answer to Jake's prayer. Then Jake destroys a makeshift bomber before it can reach the Tree of Souls; Quaritch escapes from his own damaged aircraft, wearing an AMP suit and breaks open the avatar link unit containing Jake's human body, exposing it to Pandora's poisonous atmosphere. Quaritch then prepares to slit the throat of Jake's avatar, but Neytiri kills Quaritch and saves Jake from suffocation.

With the exceptions of Jake, Norm, Max and a select few others, all humans are expelled from Pandora and sent back to Earth, after which Jake is transferred permanently into his avatar with the aid of the Tree of Souls.Here is the ending Avatar shows us.

Cast

·         Sam Worthington as Jake Sully

·         Zoe Saldana as Neytiri

·         Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Grace Augustine

·         Giovanni Ribisi as Parker Selfridge

·         Stephen Lang as Colonel Miles Quaritch

·         Michelle Rodriguez as Trudy Chacón

·         Joel David Moore as Dr. Norm Spellman

·         Dileep Rao as Dr. Max Patel

·         Wes Studi as Eytukan, the Omaticaya's clan leader

·         Laz Alonso as Tsu'tey

Production and filming

In 1994, James Cameron wrote an 80-page treatment for Avatar but drop it down due to the lack of digital technology for film. From January to April 2006, Cameron worked on the script and developed a culture for the film's aliens, the Na'vi. In 2007 the visual effects studio Weta Digital signed on to help Cameron produce Avatar. Stan Winston, who had collaborated with Cameron in the past, joined Avatar to help with the film's designs. In September 2006, Cameron was announced to be using his own Reality Camera System to film in 3-D. Fox was wavering because of its painful experience with cost overruns and delays on Cameron's previous picture, Titanic but in In October 2006, Fox finally agreed to commit to making Avatar . After Fox accepted Avatar, one skeptical Fox executive shook his head and told Cameron and Landau, "I don't know if we're crazier for letting you do this, or if you're crazier for thinking you can do this ..." A studio spokesperson said that the budget was "$237 million, with $150 million for promotion, end of story.

Avatar is primarily an action-adventure journey of self-discovery, in the context of imperialism and deep ecology. 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 for time magazine. For the love story between characters Jake and Neytiri, Cameron applied a star-crossed love theme. 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.

Principal photography for Avatar began in April 2007 in Los Angeles and Wellington, New Zealand. Cameron described the film as a hybrid with a full live-action shoot in combination with computer-generated characters and live environments. The live action was shot with a modified version of the proprietary digital 3-D Fusion Camera System, developed by Cameron and Vince Pace. Live action photography began in October 2007 at Stone Street Studios in Wellington, New Zealand, and was scheduled to last 31 days. Before shooting the film, Cameron also sent the cast to the Hawaiian tropical rainforests to get a feel for a rainforest setting before shooting on the soundstage. Cameron gave fellow directors Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson a chance to test the new technology.

A number of innovative visual effects techniques were used during production. The director planned to make use of photorealistic computer-generated characters, created using new motion capture animation technologies he had been developing in the 14 months. The lead visual effects company was Weta Digital in Wellington, New Zealand, at one point employing 900 people to work on the film. Because of the huge amount of data which needed to be stored a new cloud computing and Digital Asset Management system named Gaia was created by Microsoft especially for Avatar. o render Avatar, Weta used a 10,000 sq ft server farm making use of 4,000 Hewlett-Packard servers with 35,000 processor cores with 104 terabytes of RAM and three petabytes of network area storage running Ubuntu Linux, Grid Engine cluster manager, and 2 of the animation software and managers, Pixar's RenderMan and Pixar's Alfred queue management system.Composer James Horner scored the film and he stated in an interview, "Avatar has been the most difficult film I have worked on and the biggest job I have undertaken.Watch this video.

The 129-second trailer was released online on August 20, 2009 and The new 210-second trailer was premiered in theatres on October 23, 2009, then soon after premiered online on Yahoo! on October 29, 2009, to positive reviews. The teaser has been among the most viewed trailers in the history of film marketing, reaching the first place of all trailers viewed on Apple.com with 4 million views. 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. Ubisoft Montreal released a game for Avatar in 2009.

Critical Response And Box office

Avatar premiered in London on December 10, 2009, and was released theatrically worldwide from December 16 to 18. Internationally, Avatar opened on a total of 14,604 screens in 106 territories, of which 3,671 were showing the film in 3D. The film received mostly positive reviews. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 83% of 292 professional critics have given the film a positive review, with a rating average of 7.4 out of 10. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called the film "extraordinary" and gave it four stars out of four. CinemaScore gave A on an A+ to F scale for Avartar. And received huge positive reviews for it ground breaking visual effects alike fans. Avatar received compliments from filmmakers, with Steven Spielberg praising it as "the most evocative and amazing science-fiction movie since Star Wars" and others calling it "audacious and awe inspiring", "master class", and "brilliant". Noted art director-turned-filmmaker Roger Christian is also a noted fan of the film.

The film earned $26,752,099 on its opening day, and $77,025,481 over its opening weekend, making it the second largest December opening ever behind I Am Legend. he film also set an IMAX opening weekend record, with 178 theaters generating approximately $9.5 million, 12% of the film's $77 million North American gross on less than 3% of the screens. Avatar's worldwide gross was US$241.6 million after five days, the ninth largest opening-weekend gross of all time, and the largest for a non-franchise, non-sequel and original film. Avatar crossed the $1 billion mark on the 19th day of its international release, making it the first film to reach this mark in only 19 days. It is the fastest film to gross $600 million domestically, on its 47th day in theatres.

On January 31, it became the first film to earn over $2 billion worldwide, and it became the first film to gross over $700 million in North America. By the end of its first theatrical release Avatar had grossed for a worldwide total of $2,749,064,328. Including the revenue from a re-release of Avatar featuring extended footage, Avatar grossed for a worldwide total of $2,787,965,087. It became the highest-grossing film of all time in at least 30 other countries and is the first film to earn over $2 billion in foreign box office receipts.

Awards

Avatar won the 82nd Academy Awards for Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, and Best Visual Effects, and was nominated for a total of nine. Avatar also won the 67th Golden Globe Awards for Best Motion Picture – Drama and Best Director, and was nominated for two others. At the 36th Saturn Awards, Avatar won all ten awards it was nominated for: Best Science Fiction Film, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Director, Best Writing, Best Music, Best Production Design and Best Special Effects and many more from around the world.

Source;Avatar Wikipedia

Author : Anuradha

Share this

Related Posts