Evaluating Movies

Think about your favorite movie or another movie that you think is an example of a really good movie. Think about why you respond to it the way you do. Do you respond more to formal elements (camerawork, lighting, sound, art design, editing, acting, narrative) or to cultural ones (assumptions, moral codes, and/or prejudices about gender, class, race, ethnicity, etc.)? What matters most to you? 

When I think of really good movie one of the first movies that I think about is the 2009 Avatar film written and produced by James Cameron. The movie stars Sam Worthington as Jake Sully, a wheelchair bound former marine, who comes to the Na’vi’s native planet, Pandora, to assists a mining corporation looking for unobtanium. Because of the lack of natural resources on Earth, The Resources Development Administration (RDA) recruits Jake as a spy to convince the Na’vi clan to leave Hometree, which sits on the largest amount of unobtanium in the area. While acting as a spy, Colonel Miles Quaritch, head of security, promises Jake that the RDA would pay for a spinal surgery that will restore his legs in exchange for intel about the Na’vi the lives resides in Hometree.  Unexpectedly Jakes falls in love with the ways of the Na’vi and with Neytiri, the daughter of the clan chief, and decides to take a stand against the RDA, resulting in the human being forced out of Pandora, back to their dying planet.  

 The thing that draws me into the movie is the idea of discovering and living among an entirely different species. As expected when two drastically different cultures collide with one another there was conflicted. The conflict between the Na’vi and the humans lead to violence but there where a handful of characters that tried to have a peaceful relationship with the Na’vi that was beneficial for the both of them. I think that I have always been interested in movies that has a nice combination of action, romance, and  the questioning of one's morals.