Watched Avatar tonight.

[elisi]

It was a Christmas present, and both Miss M and Impish Girl have a friend over to stay the night. (You should DEFINITELY watch this film with two 10 year olds by the way. Raucous laughter at unintentionally hilarious moments was par for the course. And there was SWAYING whilst giggling uncontrollably. ♥)

Anyway. Thoughts. No spoilers.

1. Gosh darn it is GORGEOUS. (Will someone PRETTY PLEASE make movies of the Pern books now? They could do the dragons perfectly!) ETA: We have a projector, and a big pull-down screen, so we enjoyed the pretty properly. Although not in 3D.

2. Gosh darn it is terrible. I mean, the ‘noble savages’ thing is painful. I wouldn't even know where to begin. *hands*

3. Gosh darn it is PREDICTABLE. I’m kind in awe. I mean, that was 2+ hours without a SINGLE narrative surprise. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Did they use some kind of computer programme to plot it?

4. Hey - they made a film starring Riley Finn! And a whole other bunch of stereotypes (sometimes even casting the actual actors from the stuff they were paying homage to).

5. This is SO AMERICAN I CAN’T EVEN.

6. But it SURE is pretty.

And those are my thoughts.

Comments

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

The only thing that made me not completely hate that movie, apary from the visuals, was the thought that it's basically Aliens from thealiens' POV. Look at it that way, and it's almost not dumb.

[elisi]

You know, I thought this too, but it would really have helped if the human's motivations had been clearer. They wanted this 'unobtanium', but it never came across as more than greed, and everyone was horrible and unpleasant, apart from our intrepid heroes. (Actually it was like a Western from the Indians' perspective. Or, like Petzi said above, Dances With Smurfs. SO AMERICAN. Also shades of Vietnam and 9/11 and corporate greed and White Guilt. Hey, layers! *g*)

[infinitewhale.livejournal.com]

There's an onrunning chan joke about the Avatar script being Dances With Wolves ran through a search/replace.

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

Actually it's Disney's 'Pocahontas' ran through a search/replace.

[infinitewhale.livejournal.com]

Yeah! That's right.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Actually it was like a Western from the Indians' perspective.

Yeah. Actually, you could probably make a pretty good argument that almost all American war movies, whether they're set in WWII or Vietnam or outer space or Iraq or Somalia (Blackhawk Down, urgh) or urban New York, are essentially Westerns. Defend the fort against the savages, or vice versa.

ETA: But yes, seeing it in 3D really is something. That scene where they blow up the tree? The ashes are literally falling in your lap. You'll want to brush them off.