Movie o' the day: Avatar

I know, I know, I don't usually catch movies on opening weekend... but a slow day at work combined with the hype-storm around this movie got me into the theater.

So, first things first... Avatar is a very pretty movie. It pulls off the "you are there" vibe as well or better than the Lord of the Rings films did, which is all the more impressive considering the alien landscape and critters involved. However, it's not a very deep movie... it's a pretty standard representative-of-the-outsiders-goes-native sort of flick, just a bit more so than you might see elsewhere, thanks to the sci-fi nature of the beast.

Wait, strike that... sci-fi it ain't. Yes, it's in a futuristic setting, and technology is involved in getting the hero "in the wild"... but, in truth, this is a fantasy film. I understand that they had to do some things in service to the story, and to make this alien world acceptably palatable to the mass audience it hopes to draw, but there are just too many such concessions to call it anything but fantasy. Heck, they could likely have replaced the sentient aliens with elves, set the scene in the faery realm instead of an alien planet, and not had to change a whole lot else in the process.

I'll just add one more niggling point before I conclude... and that's how, for lack of a better term, uneven the alien-ness of things are. Plants are as you might expect, with analogues of ferns, trees, and the like. Animals tend to be of the "add bits on to make it alien" school... so you end up with "horses" that have extra legs up front, but still move like horses. The sentients are the most human-like... down to neural interfaces that are made to look like long, braided hair, to add to the "native" look they have. Beyond that, there are the "cute" bits, things added solely for visual effect (like mosses that light up when you step on them) or, again, in service to the story (floating, fairy-like "seeds" that act as a "sign" when they clump about the hero). I guess I'm still stuck at Darwin, wanting my alien life to be different not just to be different, but for a demonstrable reason.

So, my final take: if you're mainly looking for something pretty to watch with an enjoyable-enough story that won't tax you intellectually or emotionally, catch this film... heck, do the IMAX 3D if that's your thing. Otherwise... well, it's still worth watching on the big screen, because it's that pretty, but I'd save it for matinee fare, after the hordes have passed.