Hey, apparently there’s this little indie movie about these blue people. Have you heard of it? Because we just watched it.

Things I think aboot it:

  1. Whatever else you might say, visually it is awesomepants. It’s not just that the effects are great (though they are), it’s that the visual imagination of the world-building is swizz. It’s like what a Miyazaki picture would look like if they weren’t filtered through hand-drawn animation.

  2. From a political perspective, I think I pretty much agree with Jim Henley at comment 11 here. What I’ll add to that is that the part of the film that rang completely false was the part wherein Avatar conquered the pterodactyl and gave an inspirational speech to the Garmin people. It seemed too easy and way too unearned. It may be a coincidence that that’s the most WTPNIAH part of the movie, but I suspect it’s not, and that its non-workingness rises from the part where it isn’t really sensible.

  3. Also, narratively, it is kind of interesting how straightforward it was. It seems like a lot of blockbuster movies are edited down to remove all connective tissue so that you have to fill in the blanks yourself, which leads to a) a lot of critics saying it doesn’t make sense, and b) it making sense, but when you think back on it, you have to work to remember why they moved from Scene A to Scene B. Avatar really didn’t shorthand anything (except the pterodactyl taming) and the result is a movie that I think makes sense to a broad swath of people, even while it’s telling a more-sfnal-than-average story.

Upshot: I recommend it to people who watch big action movies, because it’s a very well done exemplar of the genre.