Avatar, the Short Review...

Three notes:

1.  This review contains spoilers.

2.  I recommend seeing this movie.

3.  If you haven't seen it already, none of this will make sense.

That having been said, there's an old expression, "amateurs borrow, professionals steal."  James Cameron is perhaps the most professional movie maker, ever.

The basic premise for this movie traces strong roots back to the Matrix, where people plug themselves into a machine to control a version of themselves elsewhere.  It gets even more Matrixy because the blue people have pony tails that let them jack-in to everything from trees to flying lizards.

Second, if you removed all the special effects and blue people, this movie is Dances With Wolves. 

Third, what is James Cameron's deal with giant humanoid robots?  Robots which, by the way, look a lot like the weaponized robots in one of the Matrix sequels.

Fourth, why does everybody's blue avatar look like a cat, but Sigourney Weaver's looks like Sigourney Weaver.  It was creepy... and keep in mind, it was creepy in comparison to gigantic blue cat people.

Fifth, how convenient that this particular planet revolves around a tree that can take a person's consciousness out of a human body and put it into an artificially constructed cat person's body... um... how much need was there for that prior to the humans arriving?  And how did anybody know the tree could do this? 

Sixth, if the whole point of these movies is to show how meaningful and spiritually wonderful the lives of indiginous savages is, and how superior they are to us, why is it that it always takes a white guy entering the society to provide the leadership to save it.  That sort of argues that we ARE actually better, doesn't it?

Seventh, in the final scenes, with the music, the plot and the cat people, I felt like I was watching the Lion King.

Eighth, dude had a flying lizard that could f-up a helicopter.  Why did he only do it once?  Shouldn't he have kept at it?

Ninth, "unobtanium"?  Seriously?  Why not call it "Bling fo' shizzle"?  The word has been around and it's used facetiously.

Tenth, this movie is bad sci-fi.  Science fiction doesn't fabricate fantasy, it extrapolates on feasible technology.  The movie is chock full of scientific black holes, such as how these folks achieve speed-of-light interplanetary travel, etc.  So, if you're waiting for the best sci-fi movie of 2009, it's still "District 9".  This one is firmly in the fantasy camp. 

Eleventh, it borrows pretty heavily from the fantasy genre, too.  The flying dragons that bond with only one rider?  Wasn't that from Dragonriders of Pern or something? 

Okay, so, was it a good movie?  Yes.  Not worth a second watch, though, IMHO.  I don't understand all the hubub about how this is James Cameron's long-awaited masterpiece or that it was the most expensive movie ever made, etc. 

It's basically a really good cartoon.  Really, really good, but still had the feel of a fantasy cartoon to me. 

Is anybody else a little intrigued by how many blockbusters are animated these days?  Our pop music sounds fake as all get-out and our movies look the same way.  There's got to be a social commentary in there somewhere.

As a final note, when folks started talking about this movie, I thought they were talking about the M. Night Shayamalan movie, "Avatar, the Last Airbender".  Apparently, they changed the name of that movie to, simply, "The Last Airbender" to avoid confusion with the movie "Avatar".  I used to catch the Avatar cartoon once in a while when Logan would watch it on Nick.  I'm actually looking forward to that movie moreso than this one.