Avatarrrrr

WARNING: This post contains spoilers (i.e. the entire plot of the movie) so if you don't want to know that, don't read this post. Go to www.thatispriceless.blogspot.com and read some of their posts instead because they are fucking funny.

I went to see Avatar in 3D tonight! First off, it is an extremely pretty movie - as some dude at the party I went to (not the dude who looked like Lucius Malfoy, although he was pretty awesome) said, "If you have a hard-on for CGI, you have to watch this." It is groundbreakingly spectacular. I also loved it because I have hardly any depth perception (you know how you can tell how far away things are because they stand out from each other? yeah, I don't have that) so seeing anything in 3D is pretty exciting.

The plot is pretty typical Hollywood - think Fern Gully in space - but that's ok because it's not the sort of movie you watch for the plot. Mind you, we had a family dinner this afternoon and I mentioned to my uncle that I enjoyed it but thought the high-cheese script let it down, and he shouted at me for five minutes: "WHO ARE YOU TO JUDGE??"

At least I don't spend my life trying to meet young Asian women on the internet, Uncle Sleaze. SLEEEAZY UNCLLLLLLLE, everybody's got a SLEEEEEAZY UNNNNCLLLLLE. (It's a song.)

The basic premise is this: Sully, handsome wheelchair-bound Marine (joke: what's the hardest part to eat of a vegetable? The wheelchair) takes the place of his dead scientist twin brother on a mission to Pandora, which is a subtly named planet. Earth people, led by Giovanni Ribisi, have colonised Pandora because it is home to a highly expensive metal (?) called, subtly, Unobtanium. (I did not make that up.) Sadly, the indigenous people of Pandora, who are called the Nav'i or something like that, live in a huge tree directly over a whacking great deposit of Unobtanium. (Seriously, you would think the name of the metal would be a clue to fuck off back to Earth.) Sully is put into an alien body and sent to infiltrate the natives' camp - he goes rogue, falls in love with an alien chick (the fact that this is technically interspecies mating (or, in layman's terms, bestiality) is never really addressed because love crosses all boundaries and therefore it is OK for James Cameron to shag spiders which is totally what he is doing for a lot of this movie) and learns to ride dragons, along with many other lovingly rendered alien animals / alienimals. Large war ensues. Natives win, humans shipped back to Earth, all live happily ever after (especially the planet).


Best moment of the film is when Sully is talking to the native Goddess, asking for help in the upcoming battle. "Look into her memories," he says (about a dead human character), "& you'll see that their planet is grey and dead. They killed their mother." And then James Cameron, wearing a Captain Planet costume, pops up and points a huge 3D finger at the audience, who quake in their boots and stop killing seals.

You should go and watch it just for the special effects but if you don't that's OK because it will probably be pretty good on DVD.