I went to watch this movie with my friends last week. Directed by award-winning director James Cameron, we had high hopes. Of course, Avatar turned out to be even better than I expected it to be. The storyline and plot is not new – main themes of human greed, exploitation, disregard for nature and so on is typical in movies where conflicts between man and nature arise.

In this movie however, what is really incredible is the setting where it all takes place. The movie has managed to capture my imagination with the world of Pandora – an Earth-like world where curious and wonderful creatures and beasts live on. The whole time setting is set in the future, where man has achieved advanced technology of space travel and advanced weaponry.

As the storyline progresses, it is really good and satisfying to see how conscience finally beats submission to authority as is seen in the main character. He controls an avatar, which looks exactly like one of the natives called Na’Vi. Over time, as he learnt the ways of the natives, he becomes captivated by a girl, the daughter of the tribe he is infiltrating to obtain information for the operation commander that wants to destroy the natives’ home for financial gain.

Another amazing point about the movie is the incredible wealth of emotions that are expressed by the 3D characters. Even though many of the characters are computer generated images, still, the human emotions like anger, contempt, hatred, grief and fear can be clearly seen and are expressed very well. Take for example the tribe leader’s daughter. Even though sometimes I cannot understand what she is saying (because all the subtitles were in Czech), I could figure out what she means by her expressions in relative to the whole dialog.

The movie comes to a big climax which depicts a final showdown between the human and the natives. A really incredible battle ensued after which the natives gained victory and the humans had to leave the planet. As for the main character, he chose to become one of the native forever and leave his human body to go into his avatar, which of course provides for a really wonderful ending.

My verdict? Two thumbs up. One of the best movies I have watched in my entire life. Too bad we could not watch it in 3D.