Yet again, the world of film has been revolutionised. James Cameron’s blockbuster Avatar (the second film of its name, the first being a feature length version of Avatar: The Legend of Aang named Avatar: The Last Airbender) is a signal to other directors, and those who specialise in CGI and animation especially, that modern films are getting stale and cliché. Whether or not Avatar lives up to the hype, it certainly screams ‘look what we can do!’ in the quivering ears of producers and directors across the world. It’s not an unfamiliar scenario. Each decade has brought us a ground breaking flick that makes everyone wake up and smell the squishy prosthetic elf ears and hobbit feet. The seventies saw the beginning of the Star Wars Trilogy, the eighties saw the beginning of the Indiana Jones Trilogy, the nineties saw the beginning of the Jurassic Park Trilogy and the naughties saw the beginning, and the ending, of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Are you sensing a pattern? Throw Back to the Future in there too, and the pieces will quickly tumble into place.

So 2009/2010 has produced Avatar. Is there going to be a film that outdoes Cameron’s ‘masterpiece’ before the end of the decade? We don’t doubt that there is something waiting in the wings, ready to leap off the careering bandwagon and create something no one has ever witnessed before. With the traffic jam of ‘adaptations’ and ‘re-envisionings’, it really is about time we got to see something entirely inspired and original, a shining beacon amongst the mass-produced tripe hitting cinema screens each year, something that isn’t just nice to look at either. Avatar is to the film universe what Sargent’s Chess Players is to the art world. People desperately try to attach significance and profundity when, in the end, the only thing to see is another example of beauty triumphing over substance.