Avatar

Taking a breather from Video Game tributes... and I'm sure that will be a delight to most people who read this blog. I thought I'd write about a movie I saw recently at Ye Old Theater... which I'm sure you've already deducted from the title of this particular post... Avatar.

The truth is, I went into this film with incredibly skeptical eyes. The first time I saw the trailer, I really assumed the worst about this film. Fluorescent colors and massive amounts of CGI... I thought I was watching a teaser for a new Joel Schumacher film... in addition to this, I had just heard they were making a film based off the cartoon "Avatar" from Nickelodeon, so I was annoyed that THIS movie was titled Avatar and the other was titled... something I don't remember... Maybe something like "Fuzzy Giant Cat People in Space"... wouldn't that be ironic though?

I will never doubt Sir James Cameron again.

I have to be honest, the movie blew me away... But not on any real deep level... more so on the level of a baby being brought into the world and seeing color for the first time. I haven't seen a movie in 3D since Michael Jackson's Captain EO at Disney World when I was 4 years old... and there's a good chance that I may have suppressed that memory until now... so needless to say, I've been seriously missing out on some good cinema over the years. There were moments in this movie where I felt like I was there... One scene in particular comes to mind... The main character is on his way to catch his own Banshee (basically a big flying dragon... and I'm not even going to pretend to remember it's Cat-Person name), and there's a moment where he's climbing these vines high up in the air on floating mountains and I felt like I was going to fall off a cliff... it's eerie how well 3D glasses pull you into that atmosphere. I still check myself for arrow wounds at night...

But I should be real for a moment... Avatar was a 3 hour piece of eye candy. To expect anything more than this would be a disappointing preconception going into this film. I went in with zero expectations and left feeling like I had traveled through space, lived on a beautiful foreign planet... then blew it up and came home. It was that awesome an experience... but I have to emphasize the word "experience"... This movie is pure beauty. This film, I don't believe, was ever meant to inspire great thinking... only great art.

The concepts here are basic at best:

Save the planet, respect nature, don't give in to greed... and never pull on a cat's tail, because there's creepy tentacle things inside of it which connect to nature... and nature is good. Yeah, the film is pretty New-Agey, it'd be a good film to watch on Earth Day...

I should also mention there's a pretty odd emphasis on interracial/inter species dating... eHarmony may need to rethink their strategies... For $49.99 a month, get your own free Avatar and mingle with hundreds of Na'Li singles today!

So overall, this movie is a real experience that you need to see in theaters to really appreciate... To simply rent it and watch it expecting something like Braveheart or Dark Knight would be a mild disappointment... Get your hide to the theaters and watch this movie... and be nice to cats, you may fall in love with one some day...

I see you,
~ Mark