In then end, however, they liked the film; thought it looked amazing in 3D but are not clamoring to see it again (like with Star Wars or Up).

Did you see David Brooks review? Read it and you’ll feel a lot better about your own review (IMO, yours was the most thoughtful I’ve seen).

The point you bring up about “creating art along the way” is one I probably should heed more often. Sometimes I get frustrated (with myself?) when I get hung up on the politics/message of a work of “art” and perhaps fail to appreciate it more as *art*. I almost deleted (more specifically marked as “private”) this review out of fear I was being overly critical.

Your second to last paragraph nails it – especially the last sentence thereof.

Perhaps I should take my girls (who have expressed some interest but are not keen on *three hours*) who are 13 and 14. Give Cameron more of my mo-nay!

Well… I am aching to see “Moon” which comes out on DVD January 12. Makes me angry it only released in 2 cities. And then critics tell us all we need to go see it! Or do they think no one lives outside LA/NYC?!?

I had heard so much about what was “wrong” with the message (Pocahontas meets Star Wars, US Military Bad/Indigenous Peoples Good, Gaia worship elevated to high art, etc…) that I confess to going in expecting a message film. I also confess that all of this made me not likely to see the movie until the rest of my family begged to go.

Since you’ve done a very thorough job, I’ll just toss out the bullet points…

- I’m a sucker for wounded Marines who want to keep going.
- Stephen Lang’s Col. Quaritch may have been the best performance of the film.
- For me, Sigourney Weaver will always be a character from Aliens.
- Too many political references (“Shock and Awe”, etc…). Boring.
- 9/11 was the first thing that came to mind during the frame showing the tree columns on fire…it drove home to me at the moment that the columns began to buckle. The scene where our hero walks through the ash had to have been done with 9/11 in mind.
- So just which civilization was the more technologically advanced? The humans who came up with the Avatar tech (using all of that gear and energy) or the Na’vi who were able to move the essence of a human into the body of a Na’vi permanently using “only” Nature (with its massive organic network)?
- Great point about Sci-Fi films not needing to be bound to scientific consistency (fiction, duh!).
- The Na’vi people were simply beautiful.

But I walked out of the theater thinking that I really liked the film…because of the stunning visuals (yes, we ponied up for the 3D tickets). I’ve never seen colors pop or relative motion present itself so naturally like this. I’m pretty sure that there was nothing blurred in a single frame (not even the ordinance trails). The way that the ground lit up each time a native’s foot touched it was cool.

In the end, though, Cameron was too clever by half. Folks will go to see this because of how cool it is (and how cool some folks find it to go to an “event film”) and when reminded about the Message, will shrug their shoulders and continue talking about how cool the thing looked. This reminds me of how many fans of the West Wing used to talk about the show. “Great acting!” “Best writing since the Andy Griffith Show!” When I asked about the repeated “Right/Bad Left/Righteous” themes, these folks would get irritated and accuse me of harshing their mellow and say something like “shut up and watch!”

They were (mostly) right.

Cameron clearly joins his fellow lazy thinkers (who have such comfortable lifestyles that they almost live within an Avatar and see themselves as hovering over the planet rather than living within it…until the next time a small person ignites a big explosion near them) in playing the moral equivalence card and wanting to sermonizing yet again from their false self-loathing perspective. But on the way, he has created a work of art.

Avatar will not make my top 5 list of this year or top 10 alltime. But it was a beautiful film.