Avatar Review

It's been quite some time since there was something in the theater that I was looking forward to, so I had really high hopes for Avatar. It was billed as "filmmaking of the future" and we were told it would be "groundbreaking." I bought into the hype and paid nearly $30 for Betty Clair and I to see the movie in its 3-D version last week.

Bad idea!

The movie was less than advertised in nearly every single way.

First of all, the 3-D graphics, which were the primary selling point of the film, produced images that fell far short of what I had expected. Several times during the movie, I removed my glasses to see what the picture looked like without them. However, there really wasn't that much of a difference. I only noticed a couple of scenes in the entire film that actually had somewhat impressive visuals. Mostly, the 3-dimensional views you were supposed to be

experiencing were very limited and didn't produce very drastic contrasts in perceived depth at all.

Many other details molded into the movie also seemed to reek of liberal ideology. Were they not aware that I just wanted to watch a movie while eating greasy popcorn and not be exposed to propaganda?

One liberal theme expressed in the film was the purported bully traits of the military. The director, James Cameron, goes out of his way to portray the military as being greedy, materialistic, and only interested in conquering helpless peoples. In the film, there is an imaginary valuable substance called Unobtainium on the foreign planet that the military is utilized to find and procure... no matter what the costs. In other words, the Marines are the bad guys. They are shown over and over killing the innocent, helpless alien race and ravaging their beloved forest lands simply for the sake of gathering their planet's precious resources. Catching on to the oil analogy yet?

Mentioning the forest lands on the imaginary planet leads me to the next gross display of liberal ideas seen in the film. In Avatar, the alien race has become so "one with the environment" that it is believed to be sinful to cut down a tree or kill any animal... even those trying to kill you! The alien peoples, or Na'vi, seem to believe that their planet is all one organism functioning in parts and that no creature is more valuable than any other. This film takes the revered views of the environment to an extreme level as the natives are seen praying to a tree and seeking wisdom and guidance from plant-life. The film's overwhelming and radical environmental message is so disgusting and perverted that it even goes so far as to have an inter-species mating scene between one of the Na'vi and a human. I guess we might as well start breeding with monkeys, too!

In my opinion, if you haven't sat through this film already, just stay home and save your money. Even if you don't mind the liberal propaganda (since it's become so typical of anything from Hollywood), the imagery isn't nearly as remarkable as advertised and doesn't begin to justify the 50% increase in the cost of a ticket.