Avatar

Avatar is interesting because of all of hype surrounding it and the ten years it spent in development hell while James Cameron waited for technology to catch up with his vision. It's hard to talk about this movie without getting into crazy 3D technology or the motion capture technology that turned a Sigorney Weaver into a crazy blue alien, so I'm not going to.

In some ways the movie feels like a demonstration of Cameron's mo-cap and 3D technology. There are rumors that the movie's original script was more complicated with heavier Sci Fi concepts that were scaled back to turn it into a more accessible action flick. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it seems like they over-did it. The story is almost exactly the same as Pocahontas or Dances with Wolves with black and white morality that makes all blue people good and all white people outside of the hero group bad. Other than that, it's a slick action flick some some exciting moments and cool stuff to ooh and ahh at; exactly what one expects from the director of The Terminator.

The supposedly ground-breaking 3D didn't really do much for me other than put an ache in my bad eye, but I'll admit that I saw it on a standard-size screen and sat to the far left of the screen. From my experience there wasn't much that the 3D made better, but the computer animation and motion capture was impressive. There were times when I forgot that I was watching computer creatures all together, something that I never got over with Gollum.

Cost/Benefit analysis: I was lucky to have a coupon that brought my movie ticket down to 3 bucks from 13. The 3 dollar "3D handling fee" the theaters throw on is stupid. Now that I've seen a 3D movie, I never want to pay it again. That said, if I could go back in time and see the movie again for the first time, I would go all out and pay 15 at a true Imax theater. I wonder how much my experience would have been different, but I'll never know.