A paraplegic ex-marine war veteran is unwillingly sent to establish a human settlement on the distant planet of Pandora, only to find himself battling humankind alongside the planet's indigenous Na'vi race in this ambitious, digital 3-D sci-fi epic from Academy Award-winning
Titanic director
James Cameron. The film, which marks Cameron's first dramatic feature since 1997's
Titanic, will be shot on the proprietary FUSION digital 3-D cameras developed by Cameron in collaboration with Vince Pace, and will offer a groundbreaking mix of live-action dramatic performances and computer-generated effects. Australian actor
Sam Worthington stars as the reluctant human settler Jake Sully, with actress
Zoe Saldana signing on to portray the local woman who enters into a romantic affair with the hero. The revolutionary motion-capture system created for the film allows the facial expressions of actors to be captured as a virtual camera system enables them to see what their computer-generated counterparts will be seeing in the film, and
Peter Jackson's Oscar-winning Weta Digital visual effects house has been hired to supervise Avatar's complex visual effects.
Wes Studi,
Sigourney Weaver,
CCH Pounder, and
Michelle Rodriguez round out the cast. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide