It has been eleven years since Titanic and almost nineteen since James Cameron’s last science fiction epic Terminator 2. During this time, he has been taken to making documentaries about the ocean in his Ghosts of Titanic and Aliens of the Abyss, working out his supposedly revolutionary 3D technology. He had been promising his re-emergence with a project that would change how movies would be seen. That film would be Avatar, the mother of all science fiction epics, taking everything that Cameron has learned over his 30-year career and making it into a simple and powerful story about connections, which even the Title makes pretty clear.

It is 2153 and on a distant moon known as Pandora, humanity has found remarkable things. The first would be a rare mineral resource that can harvest energy. The second would be a seemingly primitive race of giant purple beings called the Na’vi, whom ride six-legged horses and fly on winged creatures. They fight with bows and arrows and spears and are not too taken with their new neighbors. The company wanting to harvest the mineral are opting for both a diplomatic option as well as a military option, hiring privately-owned military and the leading scientists to do so. The leaders for both camps are Col. Quarrich (Stephen Lang) and Dr. Augustine (Sigourney Weaver).

The film starts off as a young paraplegic Marine named Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is brought to Pandora to operate his dead twin’s Avatar, a genetic cone of the Na’vi that can be operated by someone with the same genetic code. Quarrich wants Sully to find a tactical weakness for the Na’vi that they can exploit to move them from their camp. Augustine wants to use him to get into the good graces with the Na’vi when reluctantly befriends the Na’vi chief’s daughter (Zoe Saldana). He finds himself slowly being attracted to their way of life, which is in delicate harmony with a very hostile world filled with predators of all shapes and sizes. If you have seen Dances with Wolves, you’ll know the territory. If you haven’t, what are you waiting for?

The story itself isn’t very original, but how Cameron tells it is beyond approach. He connects his characters in very unique bonds and requires that they make decisions with full understanding on the implications. Take for example the Sully-Quarrich-Augustine angle. Sully must depend on both in order to achieve his own ends even as they are using him for theirs. The only way he can use the Avatar is through Augustine’s help. The only way he can keep from being pulled out of the program is by appeasing Quarrich’s curiosity. The Na’vi are interconnected in ways I won’t mention in a review and they see in Jake a way to interconnect the humans into this world.

I find it funny that many people see this film as a tree-hugging liberal love-in when it really isn’t. The Na’vi believe in peace, but are not afraid to go to war when necessary. They have a stake on their own planet and cannot get it through to their new neighbors that to live on Pandora is to respect it’s rules. They are physically sensitive to their environment that in a way I am amazed by. It makes me wonder would human beings be so apt to destroy our planet if we had to feel the pain of the destruction personally.

It’s easy to see that Cameron has a great love for classic science fiction by the likes of Bradbury, Asimov, and Ellison as well as classic western and war films. He incorporates all of these themes and motifs seamlessly into his own work and Avatar culminates every film that he has made since The Terminator. We can see physical resemblances with Aliens, Titanic, and The Abyss. And yet it feels completely different, mainly because of his use of 3D technology.

I am a fan of using 3D to create living environments. Robert Zimmeckis is most notable in this aspect as his films aren’t very interested in throwing things at the audience as much as creating a physical environment. Cameron takes it one step further as his 3D is meant to open up Pandora and to make it a real world with weight and gravity. One of the best scenes for 3D is when flying through a series of mountains that are disconnected to the ground. This is not just done for visual flare, but creating a landscape that will be very important as the story goes on. All of the 3D is used this way and yet it still words in 2D.

Even more amazing is the performances created in this film, many of whom are created by actors whom we never really get to see. The Na’vi are created using motion capture technology, played by real actors. Take Zoe Saldana, who is becoming a very talented actress in her own right, while we don’t see her on the film, her performance in movement and tone are delightful and create a fully-realized character. And Sam Worthington, to whom I have said nothing but horrible things about when it came to Terminator Salvation actually impressed me here as he conveys a man who is caught between two worlds and doesn’t want to betray neither, which cannot be done. And it’s always nice seeing Sigourney Weaver play a powerful role in which she can really flex her skills.

But this film is all about James Cameron, who has created his opus. It appears that this might be part of a larger series (trilogy, anyone?) and I am very excited to see what he would do in the next installment. He has created a hype that actually delivered the goods, something that is becoming more uncommon in Hollywood recently. He has created a technology that I believe is still being perfected but as of right now, this is the best there is. If he were running for King of the World again, I’d vote for him.