In the movie, Sam Worthington plays Jake Sully, a U.S. marine who is paralyzed from the waist down. Sully is recruited to travel to a planet called Pandora, a beautiful moon covered with deep forests and magnificent waterfalls and inhabited by a wide array of incredible life forms including the planet’s indigenous population known as the Na’vi. Sully will participate in the Avatar program, whereby he will inhabit the body of a genetically-engineered Na’vi hybrid known as an Avatar.

When Sully transforms to an Avatar, his life changes. He is blue, he is 10-feet tall and he can walk freely around the planet (humans cannot breathe Pandoran air). During his initial rendezvous on the planet, Sully meets a beautiful female Na’vi named Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and for different reasons, he is accepted into the tribe. The Na’vi are fully aware that Sully is a hybrid so obviously not everyone in the tribe is happy about his presence. But Sully is not there to cause problems. He has simply been asked to observe the Na’vi, to learn about their culture and their habits. It turns out that the main Na’vi camp is situated on top of the largest deposit of a rich mineral that the humans are there to extract. With Sully’s help, the humans are hoping to move the Na’vi off the land peacefully. Unfortunately, this is sacred land for the Na’vi and when they refuse to cooperate with the humans, they do what often happens when it comes to greed, power and money. They decide they are going to forcefully move the Na’vi. This leaves Sully caught in a war between the group of humans who brought him to Pandora to help them out, and Neytiri and the rest of the Na’vi, to whom he has quickly grown very close and attached. An epic battle ensues and the fate of Pandora and the Na’vi rests in the hands of the Americans who have invaded the planet.

I had the opportunity to see Avatar in 3D, a technology of which I have never been a huge fan. I find it sometimes makes the film appear dark and at times, a bit blurry. With Avatar the 3D, for the most part, worked quite well. Where this movie triumphed was in the special effects. The CGI in Avatar has to rank as the best ever in a movie — simply unbelievable. Watching this movie you would never guess it was taking place on an imaginary planet and you actually might believe the Na’vi are a genuine culture. The visual effects in Avatar are outstanding.

With all that being said, I did immensely enjoy Avatar. It is an outstanding movie to watch and well worth the price of admission. They really did some remarkable work on this film that should impress millions of movie fans around the world.