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Hello folks. The Doctor has returned. Maybe you don't care. But it's nice to be writing again. I just wanted to give you a quick movie review on Avatar. Because I know there aren't any of THOSE out there. But maybe mine will be a little different and interesting to you. Or not. But hey, give it a read while you're here. After the jump...

Alright. So Avatar. I think I had been anticipating its release for at least 18 months. I spend a great deal of time perusing the big board they have there about what upcoming releases people are interested in. So every few weeks I go down and look through the top 50 and see what might be interesting. I stay abreast (*breast*!!! hahaha) of anything I find interesting. And I become obsessed with movies I think will be amazing. Avatar was one of those movies. From the first time I read that James Cameron had this film coming out until finally seeing late December, I was hooked.

So let's start with what I actually thought of the film. I think there is only one correct word to use: epic. I think that applies in two different senses. First, we'll go with the more complimentary of the two meanings. The movie was an epic undertaking and has paved the way for new and incredibly appealing uses of movie technology in the future. The 3D elements of the film were amazing. They weren't haughty or overdone. They gave depth not only to the screen, but to the characters. They made the world real and accessible and something you cared about. It was an experience I have not had too often. I'd say the closest thing to that was the Star Wars universe, but really this blew that out of the water.

The other way the word "epic" describes the film is through the story line. It's truly epic. Which is a good thing and a bad. It's a good thing insomuch as the storyline feels important and historically significant. The movie allows you to feel as though you are reliving the legendary times of the Na'vi's past while also painting the aggressively expansionary tendencies of the human race as evil and unacceptable. Even though they are fighting for their already established existence, the viewer almost feels as if he's watching the times that truly create the Na'vi as a people. Their origin tale, or something like that.

However, the outcome is almost too good, too squeaky clean to fall in love with. Which is sometimes how epic tales can be given their age-old or classic nature. You feel you already know the ending, so it lacks that literary element of surprise, making the reader miss out on that burning desire to see the story through to the end. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. But with James Cameron's classic Sci-Fi films (take Alien or The Abyss for example), there is something about the movies that make you HAVE to know what is going to happen, that makes you need it. And Avatar isn't that.

But it still is a great movie, more for the 3D and world-crafting elements than anything else. It lived up to and probably exceeded my expectations in a number of ways. I'm glad it was made, and I'm even more glad it was successful, because now more and more films will try and be just as... epic.

One last point before I get you out of here. It's been a successful appointment so far, so hopefully this doesn't take anything away from it. But I have this friend who I've written about before. He's in the army. Definitely a military type. And he had a tremendously different viewing experience than I think most people would. He was rooting for the humans and could not believe that Jake Sully would abandon his race to support a bunch of savages. I thought this through with him, trying to figure out if his viewpoint could be defended by any sort of human logic, and we decided it could not. The reason he admitted this was because the soldiers he identified with were not of the national variety - they were mercenaries who only did these things to make a buck. That is indefensible, and he is a douche for thinking to support them at all.

Consider yourself vaccinated from the Swine Flu.

PS - Apparently there is a Na'vi sex scene that was deleted from the movie to keep it PG-13. And it will be on the DVD. Something to look forward to there...

RX - More Big Budget Science Fiction Films

The Doctor