Some movies are made for success, and no matter what’s your opinion about it, Avatar is indeed a success.
According to The Money Times the movie’s total income is now well over $650 milion, which makes it the top selling film of all times (more than Cameron’s own Titanic).
Naturally, a movie’s success is not only in money it makes, and Avatar has its big share of critics, concerning mainly the script which to many is way too similar to movies like Pocahontas, Dance with Wolves, The Last Samurai, The New World, FernGully or the italian Aida degli Alberi. The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that people just name the first movie they saw whose story is close to Avatar’s. Don’t get me wrong, personally I saw Dance with Wolves and The Last Samurai and I gotta agree, they both are similar to Cameron’s last work, but still, they are also different.
Every filmmaker is by definition someone who loves movies, and every one of them, if asked, will tell stories about how he got into the idea of becoming what he is by seeing some old movie he still loves. Cameron himself was so amazed after seeing Star Wars in 1977 that he decided to enter the film industry.
A story may be simple, or may be inspired by billion others, but if you ask me, what matters most is if the story works. I’ve seen lots of movies whose story is bad simply because it makes you think the writer had to finish it in a hurry or was running short of ideas, but damn, Cameron said he’s been working on the film since 1995 and that’s a long time to fix a script.
I personally thought, after seeing the movie the first time, that it also has space to show you how the relation between Jake, Norm and Dr. Grace changes, like the scene where we see Norm explaining to Sully what’s the real meaning of the Na’vi phrase “I see you” and Jake’s voice tells us that Norm is getting friendlier but probably still sees him as a moron.
So the idea behind the movie is simple, not the story. After all, when Dance with Wolves came out, nobody said the story was bad. Maybe just because it was somewhat new. The worst thing that comes to my mind about the story is that it’s really predictable, but I still didn’t mind cause that’s not exactly something that happens rarely in movies.
One thing that I really don’t like is people going to see a movie with opinions already formed about them, this makes it pointless to see the movie if you ask me. It ruins the whole experience, cause if you go in thinking that it’s just a blockbuster, you’ll probably end up trying to catch the defects of the movie, not enjoying it for what it is.
I even read a guy saying that the special effects are nothing special, really. That is the perfect example of pointless faultfinding.
In anything, Avatar is a spectacular and compelling visual experience. There are times when Pandora feels so real you’d like to explore its forests for a moment. At first, when the avatars are introduced to you, they feel a bit unreal, mostly like every computer created life-form or character feels in many other movies, but then, after a while, you tend to forget that they are not real, cause they sure look incredibly real and their facial expressions are the best I’ve seen so far.
There are a few moments in which I wasn’t satisfied about them, like when Sully tries to calm Neytiri and to explain her that she changed his view of the Na’vi people. Neytiri’s reaction felt a bit exxagerated to me, so I guess there is still some work before computers can create a perfect virtual character.
Avatar is a fantastic voyage in a an all new world (shameless ripoff from Avatar’s movie posters), a visual experience indeed, 3D or not, that you may like or not, but for me when a movie makes you dream and wonder, it succeeded in what movies are made for. Pandora and the Na’vi can make you wonder, you just have to stop thinking and complaining about Dance with Wolves and Pocahontas, I guess.
P.S. – After Avatar’s enormous success, Cameron said he’s gonna make a sequel (or 2), but first he should proceed with Battle Angel which has been for some time his top priority and was switched with Avatar later on. Let’s just hope it’s gonna be a good movie, cause I loved the manga. 
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