Avatar Review with Spoilers *warning*

Ok, so I went to see Avatar last night with the hubs. It is definitely an experience that I recommend. We went to the see it in 3D in the IMAX theater just to be sure we got the full effect. What did I think? Well, let me tell you.

First off, it is a long ass movie. I mean, I went in one day and came out the next. The effects were AMAZING, the story had flaws, the romance was lovely, the villains were so very predictable and done before, the action was neat, but by the 6th freaking hour, I was ready to just not care about any of the story if James Cameron would just wrap it up already. It's like he said, "You know what I always regretted? That I didn't make Titanic longer." So he went ape shit on this one.

The first three hours are pretty much Jake, the male lead, flitting through the forest with his new buds the Na'Vi, the native people, while reporting back to his white buddies that want to destroy them *cue evol laugh*. Seriously, the movie could just have been that. I loved the CGI and the Na'Vi people were beautiful and their world was so vivid and deep and Jake was almost likeable with them, almost. It's a big joke in the movie how everyone, from the white military peeps, to the scientists to the Na'Vi call him a moron. Hehehe. Yeah, well, after watching him flit through the wilderness for three fucking hours, go through the rite of passage to become a one of them and never say a damn thing about how the bad guys are gonna come and blow up your home soon, I was ready to jump up and scream "PICK A LANE!" Moron. I mean, what did he think was going to happen? His peeps would come in and destroy their way of life, but he could still spend weekends frolicking with his good blue buddies after that? Or that the bad guys would even let him? Dumbass. And then the lovely, Neytiri, spends all this freaking time showing him how he can literally physically and mentally bond with the local flora and fauna, he's still all, "Whoa, I don't know about all this tree hugger crap." Swear to God, I was like, dumbest hero ever.

I could have easily just watched Jake and the Na'Vi frolick through the beautiful and lush and often dangerous world of Pandora, but oh yeah, we still have the humans to deal with.

It upset me that the humans were almost all bad. They were either evil corporate types or evil military types, or Jake who was too stupid to be truly evil ::snort:: or the lovely scientists which are apparently the only good people around. And seriously, we've gotten to the point of cryogenic sleep so we can travel to far off planets and we still have the corporate pin head that puts in his 3D office? Really?
Ok, I guess I lean towards Gene Roddenberry's vision of a future where we've evolved a bit before we tumble out into space and we're not completely irredeemable as a species, but I digress.

James Cameron is not subtle. I knew the humans didn't belong on the damn planet when they couldn't even survive in the atmosphere without oxygen masks and yet the indigenous people thrived under the same conditions. There was a lot of non-subtle foreshadowing. My husbands theory was that he didn't have to be subtle because the movie was so long that we all forgot what was alluded to five hours ago anyway.

These are some complaints that I had, but overall the movie was very beautiful and seriously, Neytiri is a fabulous character. So beautiful and fierce and all female and all warrior. I thought she and her people were done wonderfully. I thought the planet and it's flora and fauna were fascinating, it could almost have been a Scifi documentary of an alien planet. The romance was sweet and sincere and Jake did finally screw his head on straight, better late than never, right? It was a story we've seen many times before, but it is worth seeing again. It could have been shorter and not lost the spirit of the story and I felt like there were a few too many tidy fixes to everything, but again it is a beautiful story that is worth experiencing, because it really is an experience more than a movie.