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 20th
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