Are The Effects Worthy Of A Best Picture Oscar Nomination?
One thing to consider, as this film leads the pack in the number of Academy Award nominations this year – something James Cameron is very familiar with – is whether or not the technology and the spectacle of the entire experience warrants this kind of critical acclaim. The film follows Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic former Marine who’s shipped off to an alien moon, called Pandora, in order to take his brother’s place as the operator of an Avatar – an artificial facsimile of the Na’Vi, who are blue, catlike creatures that are indigenous to Pandora – and attempt to convince them to relocate, so an Earth-based corporation can mine for the precious mineral that just so happens to reside under their territory. As can be expected with these kinds of films, eventually Sully and his friends start to question the ethics of what they’re doing, and begin to fight for the Na’Vi against their human oppressors. All of this is filmed very beautifully, and the world-building that Cameron a
