So yeah, I saw Avatar today, at 11:30am. I'll say straight, that it is definitely a film worth seeing in the big screen. When it eventually hits DVD status, I would recommend getting it in blu-ray, to preserve the sound and visuals. But, for all it's glorious and mightily impressive show, I feel it falls a touch flat.

For starters, the movie is gorgeous. I will never that the movie was extraordinarily pretty. The visuals and effects were spot on, and perfect. The look of flora and fauna alike, as well as things such as shadows, reflections, and what-have-you were stunning to the point of ridiculousness. And that's just during the daytime portions. The nighttime sequences were nothing short of beautiful. As I summed it up to a friend: "It looks as though a color wheel dropped serious acid, and then jizzed all over the movie cells." He followed that up with: "And the directors said, "Yeah! Jizz on it more!" It's quite true, at night pretty much everything exists to give off bright neon glows that are a raver's wet dream. Truly, truly awesome effects.

But all those effects don't help the story. Don't get me wrong, the story is solid and serviceable, but it's nothing that hasn't been done before. Someone argued that it's impossible to do an original story anymore. Which is probably right, it's in how you tell it. Avatar tells it in a very moving fashion, but still felt incredibly predictable and cliqued at moments. Humans are Bastard, Evil Mega-Corporations, the military refusing to get rid of the Idiot Ball, the poor indigenous people. On top of that, the analogy to the Native Americans and their tribes feels quite heavy-handed at times. I mean, we're basically never supposed to sympathize with the authorities and always side with the underdogs. The hero is a Mary Sue (though in his defense if he wasn't, he'd have died well halfway into the movie), and the "plot-twists" are anything but. Finally, there was a part, about just after the halfway mark, which could have been the end of the movie. It would've been a Downer Ending, but would've been much more realistic.

However, in the interests of not depressing their audience, the movie goes on, and the heroes get their Happy Ending, even though they have to seriously earn it by the end. My issue lies with the glowing reviews the movie recieved, which seemed to be based largely on just how pretty the movie is. It's a great movie, worth spending good money on. But it's by no means Movie of The Year. It does a very good job, at wowing us with the total limits of visual presentations and shows, but to me, the story lacked a good deal of solid meat to it.

Not to mention, while the ending is certainly happy, there are several Unfortunate Implications, which were likely ignored or written out, which is understandable. But I feel that the absolute victory just doesn't have the personal impact. If you're going to see the movie, go see it for it's visuals and near perfect directing. Don't go in expecting the story to blow you off your feet. It's a good story, no arguing that. But as my brother put it: "The story is like a perfectly cut diamond. It's not the diamond that's bad. It's just not the shape you want."

I give Avatar a 8.75/10