Avatar, the Crock

Avatar, the Crock

Avatar: In Hindu mythology, an appearance, manifestation; personification, embodiment

I discovered a sure-fire way to save at least twenty-five bucks. That’s the cost of two movie matinee tickets plus popcorn and soda in our ‘burb and it’s a bargain, except when it’s wasted on Avatar.

In case you haven’t seen it yet, don’t bother.

I’d give it 2 3/4 stars–mainly for the special effects. Add a star if you appreciate paying for propagandistic, anti-American swill disguised as an science fiction-adventure-romance and add another if you go see it thinking it compares with director James Cameron’s previous epic, Titanic. It doesn’t.

That would give it almost six stars which is what most critics would assign Avatar out of a possible four, if they could. In actuality, it’s too long (150 minutes), too derivative of Cameron’s Alien, and entirely too predictable down to the cataclysmic denouement. If I were to spend 4 years and $300 million on a film, I’d try harder.

The propaganda isn’t even subtle. Consider:

. Set in 2154 A.D., the movie begins with chatter about how super-valuable some exotic mineral is and how a firm, an American firm, of course, is going to extricate it from the equally or more exotic planet of Pandora, like the box. Refugees from “a dying planet,” with depleted resources, the humans are remarkably calm in their desperation and in their willingness to decimate Pandora’s denizens.

. In the process of stealing the resources from the innocent and assumed-defenseless Pandora, if they have to despoil this paradise then they have to despoil it. Business comes first, . . .

(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1460