One of my favourite films of all-time is Avatar. Why is that, you ask? It is the perfect example of how a film can balance science and fantasy in a way that makes everything you hear and see logical, magical, and more importantly, real too! Avatar was also the first major film to start the trend of 3D filmmaking, with every scene designed to pop out and make you feel everything as well as hear and see everything. Avatar was a blockbuster unlike any other.
This leads us to today’s blog. Italian Cinematographer Mauro Fiore and filmmaker James Cameron had to build a world up from scratch in Avatar. The world they created is Pandora, which is home to local alien indigenous lifeforms known as the Na’vi, who speak in a language that was created from scratch too. A bit like how Tolkien created Middle-Earth in his Lord of the Rings series, James Cameron had also finally created his magnum opus with the world of Pandora.
The first shot I want to go into is where we see the planet Polyphemus in the night’s sky from the moon of Pandora. James Cameron is great at world-building, with each shot constantly reminding us that there is more to this world than what we are seeing ourselves. We do explore a bit of space, and there’s even a prologue set on Earth, but the emphasis of the story is to show us, the audience, what life is like on this alien moon. The colours feel very natural, with Earth-like flora and fauna scattered about the human base. This careful balance brings us into the world without any of it feeling alienating or implausible.
The film slowly takes us down further into the rabbit hole of Pandora, with different aspects of the planet being explored by Jake, Professor Augustine, Trudy and Norm throughout the film. We see monolithic wonders such as the Home Tree and the Tree of Souls, but nothing is more breathtaking than the first time we fly through the Floating Mountains. With the late James Horner’s score blasting us into this fantasy world, we see Jake and Norm’s look in awe at the magnificence and beauty of the illogical Floating Mountains. This scene reminds me a lot of when Alan Grant, Ian Malcolm and Ellie Sattler first see the herd of Brachiosaurus in Jurassic Park, with the main fanfare roaring to life against the grand scale of a never-before-seen event on the big screen. This truly is the magic of Cinema.
Throughout Avatar we learn about the creatures and habitats of the planet, with dangerous dinosaur-like animals roaming the wilds and beautiful plants that behave in mysterious ways dominating the forests and plains. James Cameron had a lot of influence from underwater sea-life when creating his world, and a great example of this is the nighttime scenes where we see the bioluminescence of nature come to life. In vivid colour, we see that this planet is full of life. Jake and Neytiri are at this point discovering more about each other and they learn more about themselves as the local wildlife attracts itself to Jake. This scene highlights how the visual image can say more than a thousand words, with the audience now fully pulled into the world of Pandora.
There’s so much more that I could say about this film. I didn’t even get a chance to talk about the human elements of the film, and how the military presence on the moon creates a look at the destructive nature of mankind. Avatar has a lot to say about itself and how we should look at our own world and how we should look after it. It was a blockbuster that has gradually become known now as a classic, and with more films on the way you can bet we will be seeing a lot more of the world of Pandora in the years to come.
Thanks for reading today’s blog!
Alex Murray, the Head of Eyesight Productions
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