Quick Thoughts on Avatar

It was an exceptionally well crafted movie. The film was visually stunning and emotionally engaging. The CGI was possibly the best ever achieved. The language one would expect from a PG-13 film was present and a little much at times. The main military figure was stereo-typed to the point of being the most one dimensional and therefore unrealistic character in the story. There are people who want to believe that all people in the military are this hard assed, but I don't find it very likely. If that character had even one moment of self doubt or introspection, it would have made him not seem less real than the CGI aliens he fights.

The message of the film fails as an allegorical take on our relationship to the environment since biology doesn't simply doesn't work as well on planet Earth as it does on the alien moon of Pandora. If that world was supposed to represent a product of evolution, then it fails on that level too. I only wish I could talk to a horse or a pine tree via a tentacled USB plug. Having said that, I liked the emphasis of the 'spiritual' as a pervasive element of Pandora's ecology. I think that points to more than natural selection as a mechanism for an ordered eco-system... especially one like that on the world of Pandora.

The movie looked amazing and functions best to show that love matters and that one should not simply TAKE what one wants. Greed is bad. Caring for others is good. It has too many intellectual inconsistencies for one to draw anything more from it than that. So, the message is a good one unless one looks too deeply....

It was a fun ride and a visual feast. It also had me rooting for the underdog. The last act of The Return of the Jedi will never be the same again, though. :-)

I'm glad I saw it, as, despite my observations, I liked it a lot!