Regardless, it sounded pretty cool. Then Cracked.com wrote a review on the movie calling it "Horribly written, way too long, totally worth it." Quite frankly, the writing isn't as bad as has been said, and it's not nearly as long as Forrest Gump or The Shawshank Redemption, both of which are awesome movies. Besides, for the length of the movie, you are entirely entertained. Every. Fucking. Second.
You have no idea what's happening in this picture... neither do I.1. Visuals
The human vehicles, again, make me think of Halo. And honestly, Halo rocks. The Na'vi make me think of StarFox, which also rocks. StarFox and Halo being completely awesome, the technology and opposing races in the movie are simply incredible... IMO. Although that's pretty much in everyone else's opinion as well. So far I haven't heard one bad thing about the visual effects which Cameron himself describes as 60% CGI. It's like a lot of Andy Serkises running around and being transformed into StarFox Adventure characters.
As for the moon Pandora itself... dear God. Dear God. Dear God.
Everything lights up. No seriously. The seeds from the trees are bioluminescent. The moss on the forest floor lights up when the Na'vi step on it. Even the Na'vi themselves have pinpoints of light on them! I'll be pretty much anything that the visual effects team was on acid when they were designing this world. It's pretty much a world made of light. Don't take the acid comment as a bad thing either. The world is AMAZING. You can't help but look and you freaking love it. Avatar would be a work of art simply for the effects in the movie that make you wish forests on Earth lit up randomly.
Sometimes, subtlety just doesn't work.2. Story/Theme
I've heard two sides of this so far. The first side is that the theme is overused, albeit a good one. It's like Dances With Wolves. A heroic imperialist soldier joins a minority native tribe to learn their ways, reports back to military commanders, but suddenly feels a new-found respect for the tribe, joins them, and helps them destroy the invaders. The audience walks away a little wiser for not feeling as imperialistic as before. 'Twere this a average movie, then it'd be cliche and there would be nothing of note. But it's amazing to behold and a cliche theme that has a decent message is ok in my book. After all, "Stop being Imperialistic Swine" isn't such a bad message is it? It's basically an enlarged political thinking of "Don't Fucking Steal."
The other thinking is that the theme and story are liberal propaganda. As Hollywood is decidedly liberal, this really isn't a surprise, but c'mon, not killing the natives of a world just to take the shit under their houses is a step above polite. More or less it's kind of... moral. Imagine that?
Well I've heard the movie take flak because of the way they demean the armed forces by displaying them as trigger-happy pig-dogs.
Of course, being a history major the first thing that caught my eye was the parallel between European colonization of the New World and Avatar. It's basically the same idea in the future. Corporations (Virginia Company in America, RDA in Pandora) ask their governments (England in America, America [conceivably] in Pandora) to send ship on long voyages to take the resources and sell them at low rates at home. Of course, they encounter natives they need to take care of (Amerindians in America, Na'vi in Pandora) and the result is massacre after massacre (Wounded Knee in America to name one, Hometree in Pandora). The Na'vi, unlike the Native Americans, are physically more capable and have a weird bio-mechanical adaptation to Pandora that makes the sci-fi-ness much more awesome to behold.
Imperialism is bad.
Is that such a terrible theme?
If you have not seen the movie, you have no fucking idea how awesome this image is. 3. The Ass-Kicking
Story cliche. Theme simple. Visuals are as good as good can get. What's left? The preposterous amount of ass that is kicked. And I tell you, it is amazing. No seriously. Of the four movies that claim "Awesome" this year, Public Enemies sacrifices massive massive ass kicking for philosophical treatment and historical accuracy. District 9 is more scientific, and has realistic amounts of ass-kicking for taking place in urban South Africa. Avatar is right between District 9's realism and Inglourious Basterds' "HOLY SHIT" category. Of the four movies, Avatar is the only one with armies numbering in the thousands with aerial shots, ground movements, and giant robot knife fights.
Read that again.
Giant. Robot. Knife fights.
Human women don't look too bad either. 4. Conclusion
The point of Science Fiction is to bring us to new worlds to see things different. As I said before, not a lot about Avatar sees the world different if the point is to become another species and see the world through a minorities' eyes. District 9 does that from an alien perspective just as easily as Avatar does. One could argue that Peter Jackson did an even better job displaying the humanity from the prawns while making the prawns completely inhuman. Cameron on the other hand made the Na'vi on the other hand, are a cat/fox mixture with a lot of human thrown in. The Prawns are... bipedal insects. So... yeah.
But I think that's kind of the point. Cameron takes us back to earth by taking us to a new and entirely unbelievable planet... one you believe, frequently throughout the movie, that you're actually there. While you can argue that the Na'vi are more relatable than the Prawns because you can recognize the human in them by sight alone and thus less Science Fiction-y than District 9, it's beautiful to behold. All of it, the Na'vi, Pandora, and the strangely tasteful linked-up sex scene.
What?
Yes. Go see Avatar.
