Afterthought: James Cameron's Avatar

I went to see Avatar for the special effects. I was impressed.

Had I gone to see Avatar for a movie with an interesting, less-than-completely-obvious plot and well developed characters, I would have been grossly dissapointed.

But like I said, I went for the special effects and they were great. The combination of human actors and computer generated graphics is seamless throughout the movie. The best example being the final battle scene.

The combination is never distracting, at most times it's hardly noticable it was done so well.

However, as a movie, Avatar is not worth the price of admission. Awful dialoge (really, just awful), an irritatingly heavy-handed anti-war/pro-environmentalism message throughout, and a boring, predictable plot that acts only as a V6 engine to drive the Mack-truck weight of visuals the movie was created for.

The worst thing about the movie would have to be the sadly unclever play on words that is the name of the natural resource of planet Pandora the militant corporation is after: Unobtainium. That's about the par for subtlety throughout Avatar. Give your audience more credit than that, James Cameron.

Avatar left me waiting for a Cameron-narrated powerpoint presentation after the credits to hammer home even harder the incredibly obvious and pitifully generic themes of the movie.