Avatar

I've heard good things about it from many people.
However, that is besides the point that I think Human's would


NUKE IT FROM ORBIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111

so?

So good. Didn't see it in 3D.

Spoiler:

I loved when he was giving the speech, and he said "This...this is OUR LAND!" And i though he was going to say "This...THIS IS SPARTA!

I just got back from Avatar, and I must say, it is a success on every level. I feel like I'm supposed to dig deep into the Thesaurus to find ways to bestow divinity upon it without coming across as sacrilegious, but I find myself unable to do so.

When I saw the previews, I thought it would be a fun romp, Terran Marines versus Night Elves. It was so much more than that, showing how James Cameron is willing to go to extraordinary lengths to create a new world, replete with alien flora and fauna, as well as extrapolating past human behavior into the future, where mecha, space travel, and VTOLs haven't stopped us from being ourselves: Monkeys with machine guns. Although the Na'vi were dangerously close to being inserts of idealized Native Americans, I believe that James Cameron pulled it off, successfully giving the Na'vi a sort of "Purity of Essence" even though they looked a lot like... purple skinned, three meter tall humans. Despite my instinctual dislike for nonhuman sapients, this movie fit the "Humans are Bastards" trope to a T, a trope I regard as true to life and have attempted to write it into my own material.

The Humans are a complex cast of characters. I expected much of the focus of Jake Sully's enthusiasm to be the regaining of his lost legs, and it was true for a while, until he began to delve into the culture of the Na'vi. Sigourney Weaver picked up another starring role as a Ph.D running the Avatar program, and probably got the best lines in the movie. She plays a sort of "Dian Fossey" (Guess who played her in 'Gorillas in the Mist'!) as a doctor who is studying the Na'vi, and is torn between protecting the tribe she is studying and backing the company that backs her. Finally, Stephan Lang plays the Colonel, a Big Bad who, if slightly lacking in the 'deep motivations' department, pulls off an EXCELLENT job as an unkillable badass who takes more killing to put down than an entire platoon of Marines. Not only does he SOUND like Sarge from RvB, but he also LOOKS like the Sarge that Luke McKay drew.

So, this movie gets ten stars out of ten from me, a person who is not only hard on movies, but also a xenophobic speciesist (I'm not sure if I've written that into Gui Montag, or Gui Montag has written it into me.) The technology exhibited by the humans, the complex morality and characterization, the superb dialogue, and the irreproachable camerawork make this an instant favorite of mine, perhaps my most favorite movie of all. But if you do see it, I recommend seeing it in 2D. Sadly, perhaps because of the equipment I was given, some of the closer sections were out of focus or seemed out of place. Ultimately, while the 3-D was never exploited, just tastefully utilized, I feel that it doesn't help with immersion, and prefer the silver screens of yesteryear.