Thursday, January 07, 2010

Obligatory Avatar post:

So, I finally saw Avatar, as is seemingly mandated by geek law. (Not unlike Watchmen, although I guess more of you are going to Avatar.) And...it was OK. I didn't spring for the iMax or 3D, so it didn't floor me, but it was all right. So, intend of being wowed and/or beaten into submission by the visuals, I did notice the movie beating me over the head with the green theme, that mankind should go back to it's grey dead mother homeworld and die. I kinda thought yeah, it's easy to be environmentally friendly when your pets/meat are plug-and-play...and what kind of footprint does a $600 million production leave, to say nothing of the toys or Happy Meals...

I had been watching Star Trek: the Animated Series before I went to Avatar, so of course I thought Captain Kirk would've worked out a peaceful solution. Or blown up Ewya or Enya or whatever their deity/crystal thing was called (the Tree of Souls?) as being too controlling of the people, a la classic episode "the Apple." Tough to say with Kirk, could've gone either way. If a pile of Avatar figures fell into my lap, I'll do a strip for it, but I'm not buying the damn things.

Also, I think there's been some undeserved criticism of some elements as being taken wholesale from Cameron's prior movies, specifically Aliens: the marines and the gunships have strong resemblances, and you could argue the AMP suits are way too close to the power lifter Ripley used there. Nothing wrong with that: I just took it to mean Avatar and Aliens took place in the same universe. We'll just see how smug those treehuggers are when the bugs come at them...

3 comments:

SallyP said...

I think I'll give this a pass. I've heard it described as Aliens meets Dances with Wolves.

Hell, I still haven't seen Titanic!

chiasaur11 said...

Great. Now I'm torn between wanting to see Kirk deliver an impassioned speech against planetary hiveminds and seeing the Na'vi devoured by Xenomorphs.

Tough decisions.

googum said...

Chiasaur11,
Both!
Sally,
I worked at a FutureShop when Titanic was out on video (and before that chain sank like said Titanic in the states) and for an indeterminable stretch, it was on at work, all day long. Worse, because there's a bit of nudity in the first half, all they played was the second tape. So, I've still never seen it all the way through; and all I can tell you is the boat sinks and some people are unhappy.