Last week, in lieu of a Christmas bonus (you know, the economy and all) my boss took our team to see James Cameron's new movie, Avatar in IMAX 3D. Overall I enjoyed the movie and found it to be very entertaining. There were however some aspects of the film I thought were poorly placed and could have been left out. Let me also say that I am a Sci-Fi fan, as long as it's not too far out in left field. There has to be some tie back in to a sense of reality for me to enjoy it. My Avatar pros and cons are:
Pros:
- Fantastic special effects - What do you expect for a movie costing hundreds of millions of dollars to create.
- Likable main character - It's hard not to like the main character, Jake Sully.
- Very imaginative - While the Na'vi and Pandora are very cool, I personally found all the technology used by the military to be much more fascinating.
Cons:
- 'Unobtanium' - Seriously?! What kind of name is that for the 'unobtainable' resource found under the Na'vi's 'home tree'? For all the creativity elsewhere, this was laughable.
- Am I watching a video game trailer? - Many of the special effect scenes were so complex they were entirely computer generated. This felt a little too much like the little video segments you get between the levels of a video game.
- Thank you Al Gore - 'We sent the humans back to their dead planet', 'they had killed everything green'. Why does every movie coming out of Hollywood these days insist on having some sort of political agenda or slam towards those with differing views? Just the other day my wife and I rented 'Julia and Julia'. Even that movie contained a Republican slam.
- Lacking in originality - As far as the plot goes there are too many other movies I can point to and say, 'That was basically what happened in xyz'.
This list is by no means exhaustive, but gives some of my first impressions of the film. Though there were plenty of cons I was still able to get past them and find the movie very entertaining. I will not however be buying the DVD.
