Avatar

I am sure that almost everyone reading this review has already seen Avatar but if you haven't you might find this useful and if you have - I welcome your opinion.
Avatar: I didn't get to see Avatar in the movies. And after awhile it had this E.T. effect on me. I didn't see E.T. in the movies because of the insanity over it. It was kind of a turn off. I was sorry I didn't see E.T. in the movie theater and I am sorry I didn't see Avatar as well.
Avatar is not at all what I expected. Just in case you missed it - an avatar is a genetically grown body of the indigenous people of this far away planet. The trick is that this avatar is genetically linked to the human gene donor. Ala the Matrix, the humans are cerebrally linked to their respective avatars so they can go among the natives and try and negotiate with them. That would be to negotiate the natives off of their land so that greedy corporate types can mine some special ore that lies beneath. One of the humans decides that the natives are right to defend their lands and so the story goes. The story is sometimes familiar and a super huge message that Americans know so well. The natives of the planet, Pandora, seem familiar as they have a deep connection to all living things and refer to themselves as the "people." Indigenous people of the Americas know all to well this story. They too were the "people" and thier connection to mother earth was as a strong a bond as the people of Pandora. The U.S. will have to carry that burden of embarrassment forever and in my opinion, deservedly. Too bad there were no avatars when the Spanish, English and French arrived on North America.
James Cameron's story even has the humans on Pandora building schools to teach the People english. Sounds familiar? The advantage of the People in this case is that they are like 10 feet tall and can crush a human very easily. The evil humans do have weapons of stupid destruction and are not afraid to use them.
Avatar goes between the expected typical movie stuff to the deep suffering of it's lead character, Jake Sully, played by Sam Worthington (Terminator Salvation). Worthington as well as Sigorney Weaver do well with the human element of Avatar (the only humans you root for) and make it well worth watching. It was hard to get used to the animated world of Avatar. I thought it would be distracting and sometimes it was. I still knew it was animation and not people I was watching. Not that I can't be drawn into animated story and characters it was just...weird. Hard to explain.
I did find myself cheering at the end, getting misty and fully enjoying this movie. I can see why it was nominated for movie of the year. But big spectacle, in my opinion, does not a winner make. (I didn't think Braveheart should have won for that reason. Good movie but a big movie was what made it a winner. )
You can watch Avatar with the entire family. Enjoy!
MMMM (out of 5 M's)
So far I have seen every Oscar nominated movie from last year except Precious. When I ask people if Precious was a good movie the reply is that it is a "hard" movie to watch. They can't really seem to put "good" in with that. When I do see it, eventually, I will post a review. But right now I am not into watching "hard" to watch movies.
And my winner for best movie is...next blog post will talk about that.