But the script, if not really all that Shrek-ish, is more like Disney’s Pocahontas and Lion King thrown into a blender with Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers and something swept off the floor from one of the Star Trek franchises. The science is hokum, the level of human technology is wildly inconsistent, and the characters make life-and-death decisions for no good reason but the plot arc. And for all of the depictions of warfare and massacres, all of the formulaic gestures of risk and self-sacrifice, there wasn’t a single moment here that moved me half as much as the drowning scene in The Abyss.

Greg Egan, Avatar Review

He left out Fern Gully, Dances with Wolves, and Lawrence of Arabia. Yes, you’re not really seeing this movie for an amazing plot line. But I can’t just ignore such an integral part of what makes a movie, a movie. This is the reason why I give this one three out of four “strategically-clothed-almost-nude blue aliens”.

This movie could use a few edits to tighten it up, but then again… you’d be missing out of the near 3 hours of awesome visuals.

And I don’t think I have to remind you that this movie has to be seen in IMAX 3D. I probably won’t be seeing it again, although maybe just to see how much information I would miss seeing it on a what feels like an already outdated LCD screen.

This, being my first experience with a stereoscopic 3D movie, let alone an IMAX 3D movie, there was a bit of newness to the movie. I’m not all too sure how other 3D movies are, but I have a feeling Avatar has now set the bar in non-gimmicky 3D. I didn’t see too many things being thrown into my face just to prove that it can be done, but some of the more subtle things, like a water droplet forming in the first shot of the film to the dirt being kicked up in the wake of a Na’vi running, adds so much to an already lush visual buffet.

It wasn’t a horrendously bad movie, it’s just that it felt a lot like a tech demo of what is to come in the world of cinema. The techniques and technology used in this film will become the new foundation of the next generation of computer generated graphics, not only in movies, but in all of visual arts. (Video games? Yes, please.)

For those of you who haven’t seen the movie yet, stop reading here. You’re going to want to see this movie in theaters before time runs out. I mean it. Give your money to James Cameron now.

Plot Holes, Logic Flaws, & WTFs

I know there are more, but I forgot some of them.

Going AWOL from a battle should warrant some kind of discipline. But nope, our heroine Michelle Rodriguez (who seems to be pretty much casted in the same role in every movie she’s in… SWAT, The Fast and The Furious…) runs around serving steaks and taking names. And after that, I love the Na’vi sided humans fly free, nary a chase.

So you have an armada of helicopter-esque hovercrafts coming at you, with what seems to be an incredible weak point in their propulsion system… and all you’ve got are floating rocks and trees… I really thought they were going to pull an Ewok and think smart. Later, a missile is used to jam up the spinning blades of one unlucky aircraft.

I guess by diving with the flying creatures, the arrow gain such a force that it goes through what seemed to be arrow-proof cockpit windows.

I think there’s a clothing requirement near the magical Ewya tree. If you get shot, and you need some heals, you gotta get clothed in this magical tree leaf dress or something.

And, this: Unobtainium. GG.