I said I have not seen Avatar yet, but just couldn’t wait for December 17. Cameron’s answer was: “I hope you’ll like it,” and I could only reply with: “I am sure I will”.

(And yes, it was December 17, as Russia saw Avatar one day before the rest of the planet.)

If I was 7 years old I wouldn’t have survived this movie, having died of joy somewhere in the middle. I am older, but I really felt like a kid, because Avatar is absolutely amazing and cinema will never be the same again after its release, especially, the type of films we call blockbusters.

Of course you all know the plot, in which handicapped marine Jack Sully (Sam Worthington) arrives on the remote moon of Pandora. Humans are mining valuable minerals there, but the local population of Na’vi strongly oppose the intruders’ actions. Jack is sent to spy on the aborigines using his brand new, genetically-bred human-Na’vi body known as the Avatar. But after encountering the Na’vi’s eco-friendly culture and falling in love with a local girl – Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), he realizes that they are not violent savages, as he was told, but victims in need of his protection in order to survive.

Cameron wrote this script back in 1994 and for over a decade waited for the development of the technologies that would allow him to fulfill his ideas in full. But now – with the current level of CG – he said: “We can do anything”, and he wasn’t exaggerating.

Avatar is the first movie in history of the industry, where the director’s imagination was not limited by technology in any way.

Now I know why God gave me my eyes – to see the beauties of the Pandora jungle and its three-meter-tall blue-skinned inhabitants. I tell you, the CGs have never looked so real, and you just forget that you are looking at computer generated images.

And it would be a crime not to watch Avatar in 3D because the Fusion Camera System makes you part of the action, but not just a beholder. (Ever wondered of the origins of Cameron’s surname? I think it comes from the word ‘camera’.)

I wear glasses, so I usually have some problems watching 3D-movies, because I have to put on 3D glasses on the ones I already have (and I can be called “six-eyes” when that happens), but it took me just a few minutes to leave all the inconvenience behind.

And despite paying so much attention to the visual part, Cameron didn’t forget about the story. Because he’s always been a great story teller, not only a special effects supervisor, like Michael Bay, for example.

The plot focuses on three main characters – Jack, Neytiri and the moon Pandora itself – and all the others are there only to help develop them, including those played by Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez and Stephen Lang’s evil SecFor Colonel.

And the relations within this trio deliver everything a moviegoer can ever desire – action, drama, comedy, some PG-13 erotic and moments to make your eyes wet.

Cameron feared that Avatar would be ignored by the female audience, as the stakes were put on action scenes in the promo campaign. But there’s a love story in the film, which can easily challenge the one in Titanic. And James shouldn’t worry: there were a lot of ladies in the theatre.

The 161-minute-long movie consists of two parts. The first is a slow one, which looks more like a Discovery Channel program on Pandora’s colorful, but dangerous wild life, and the Na’vi culture, while the second is an epic battle in the air and on the ground, in which bows and arrows go against guns and armored vehicles.

Humans, who won’t hesitate to destroy and kill in order to get what they want, are pictured as forces of evil in Avatar, which you won’t see very often.

But, according to Cameron, in his film the marines represent the bad features of mankind, while the Na’vi are there to show its brightest sides.

Unlike many blockbusters Avatar has a message, which is very clear and simple – if we won’t start solving our ecology problems we’ll be in big trouble. And of course, those who watch the news on regular basis would find the scenario, in which a strong race invades a weaker one for its resources, annoyingly familiar.

It’s always good to criticize in order to make your readers disagree and as a result receive more comments, but I am having serious problems in finding anything to attack in Avatar.

Maybe it’s only side effect is that it makes you feel sorry for the ordinary life you lead and the boring environment around you. Especially, when you leave the cinema and find yourself in a snow-covered Moscow street, with the temperature at minus 20 Celsius (where the only analogy with Pandora is the color of the local resident, who are also blue… because of the cold.)

Cameron and Co. promised to show us something we’ve never seen before and they did it.

Avatar is not a movie, but an adventure – a flight to another universe for a price of a cinema ticket. An absolute must see.

Thank you, James. Thank you very much.

Other RT's materials on Avatar:

Interview with Sam Worthington
Interview with Zoe Saldana
Interview with producer Jon Landau