Avatar!!

I took myself to see Avatar tonight. DH and The Eldest saw it when it first came out while I took the little ones to see Planet 51 so tonight was the first chance I had to see it. It was GREAT!! There's been talk about a lack of plot but I didn't find that to be the case. James Cameron took a classic theme and applied it to a whole new fantasy world. Like The Lord of the Rings, he created a world and drew the viewer in to fall in love with it, then he brought in the bad guys to destroy it. The story follows the hero as he fights to save the world from the military and corporate types who find the indigenous peoples to be a bit of a bother since their holy place happens to be on top of a huge deposit of an ore they want to mine. It's a classic story- DH found a site on-line that points out the similarity to Disney's Pocahontas movie and I can see similarities to The Lord of the Rings. Fine by me- the story line was familiar but it was told so beautifully and with such amazingly original characters that I didn't mind a bit. So it was a remake- a remake that's about a bazillion times better than the original! (If you're comparing it to Pocahontas; it's maybe a close second to TLTR trilogy, possibly a tie but I'd have to think about it.) West Side Story was a remake of Romeo and Juliet; doesn't take away from West Side Story. Ten Things I Hate About You was a remake of The Taming of the Shrew; doesn't take away from Ten Things. (I liked that movie, too.) Other remakes- The Shop Around the Corner remade into You've Got Mail, Emma remade into Clueless, Rear Window and Vertigo remade into Body Double, and so forth. Why the critics are squawking about it now is beyond me.

Then there were the visuals. WOW! I had to keep reminding myself it was animation! It was just incredible. There were a few spots, when I really looked for it, where I could say, oh, yeah, I can see that it's animated, but they were few and far between. James Cameron (who shares my birthday, only he's 9 years older than I am) has transported movies to a whole new level. I doubt fantasy movies will ever be made the old way again after this.

My recommendation? If you haven't seen this movie yet, go see it. It's worth the three hours and the price of a ticket.

PS: Planet 51 was pretty good, too. The kids loved that one.