I finally had the chance to see Avatar.  I was turned away from the theater twice due to sold out shows for the entire day, but I finally got a ticket and marched in with my popcorn bucket in hand and wife in tow.  Reports of varying reliability repeatedly told me that: 1) I have to see this movie 2) I have to see it in theaters and 3) You have to see in with funny 3D glasses on.

With such a large variety of folks telling me to watch it and stressing to see it in 3D, I decided to go big and get all the theater up charges I could find.  So I went out and saw Avatar in 3D on an Imax screen.  That is why it was sold out for the whole day the first two times I went to see it.  Even when I went an hour early for the first show of the day, the showing was sold out.  This time not for the day though and my wife and I got our tickets and had a four hour wait.  We went home and ate sandwiches or something stupid like that.

Then off to the movie theater we drove.  Cutting it a little close I sent her in to pick out the seats and I went to snag the stale popcorn with cold butter flavored oils.  Thank god for previews!

I get in to find the place jam packed and no sign of girl anywhere.  Eyes adjust to the darkness and there she is, best seats in the house.  Well, best seats in the house is where I was looking for her.  Where we actually ended up sitting was closer to the front than ideal.  Our seats were so close that the 3d effects weren’t as spectacular as I imagine they would be without them.  That part was somewhat of a downer.

Oh and even worse, the movie had already started.  Apparently there aren’t quite as many previews on Imax size screens.  Good thing there was about half an hour of exposition at the beginning of the movie.  But of course that brings me to the movie itself.

Avatar…

Avatar is about a guy who is linked up to a smurf body and goes to live in the forest with the gentile smurfs.  He works hard to learn their smurf ways and is eventually accepted into the smurf village.  It is inevitable that he falls in love with Smurfette.  Oh wait, that is Cartman in ‘Dances with Smurfs‘

James Cameron’s use of CGI has certainly improved since the iceberg in Titanic that looked like a four year old drew a blob of jello.  Now he has got us in the magical world of Naboo Pandora where mountains can float and cockraoch-zombie-dogs can run free.

Before I go any further, I will say this movie is dumb.  The story is very formula and predictable every step of the way.  Aside from that, if you can ignore the fact that you can see everything happening beforehand, it is a neat movie with some different ideas.

The alien world was really pretty.  And it was actually an alien world with it’s own rules, flora, and fauna.  Animals and plants behaved differently from everything on Earth.  So that was cool and fun.

One thing that was super gross was the way they communicated with animals.  All the little phalanges coming out of the tentacles and braiding together was gross!  Did anybody else squirm just a little every time?  And I would have liked to see a little more to show the connection between the two.  Even if it is just a suction-cup noise.  Something to illustrate their brains are synced up.

Then there were the points where they kept on yanking people out of the matrix buy slamming on the big red button conveniently placed right by the cyro-tube (or whatever you call it).  Boy that really made me mad each time it happened.  Why would they place that there?  Don’t they know you can kill a person if their mind isn’t ready to exit the matrix just yet?

That bothered me more than it should have.  Yes this movie world has it’s own rules and structures that are separate from other ones, but still!  Didn’t they see the part in the Matrix where Cypher was dropping the freedom fighters like flies?

Speaking of concepts that were stolen from the Matrix. (Although I don’t know if it counts because you need to discount the sequels out of existence to maintain your sanity!) What is the deal with the robot suits?  No kidding, if they life way off in the future should we honestly believe that a clunky robot limited to the strength of a slow clumsy human is the best technology has to offer?

Even if I could forgive having a humanoid battle robot with no weapons built on,  I still don’t know what the deal was with the robot kung-fu action.  Those robots were to clunky for MY future invasions of foreign planets ruled by tribal smurfs.

Let me see what I’ve got next on my list for this movie… Dances with smurfs, check.  Pretty alien world, check.  Gross tentacle connections, check.  Pulling each other out of the matrix, check. Stupid robots, check.  I know I’m missing something stupid from the movie.  Oh yea, the reason humans were there.

Humans were waging war in order to get something they actually called “Unobtainium.”  At this point I’m really wondering what the hell is wrong with the world.  That is seriously worse than George Lucas letting his kids name alien species in the newer star wars films.

How much thought did it really take to come up with that name?  And what were the rejects? “Cantfindium?” I could come up with more, but I think I have already done more brainstorming on the topic than James Cameron and others who helped write this thing.

Well that just about wraps up this session.  Just a recommendation left to give.  Should you see this movie?  Okay sure, but only with the funny 3D glasses.  If you can’t get to a 3D theater, then wait until you can rent the movie on dvd.

*Also when the big bulldozers rolled up, my wife apparently wasn’t the only one who immediately thought of Fern Gully