You know what, I had an enjoyable time watching Avatar. Well, enjoyable until the 2 hour mark - at that point my eyeballs felt like they were going to ooze out of my head from exhaustion. But until then, it was fun.
Let’s be honest, though. Normally, I hate big stupid blockbusters and if I hadn’t gone to the theater with such nice people and been in such an exceptionally good mood, I would have written a review similar to the one posted here.
Avatar is a nineteen-hour long film about a stupid ex-Marine who is employed by one of those The Companys one often hears about in science fiction movies to infiltrate the native American Indian/blue panther population of a planet because all the good stuff—a propertyless mineral called unobtanium (haw haw, I write scripts and look at the Internet!)—is under their giant tree. The Marine, who was injured and without the use of his legs in his human body, is named Sully (because he is SULLYING a natural world) and there is a careful scientist named Grace (because she is not exploitive and horrible and can be said to live in a state of GRACE) and an old soldier in charge of blowing things up whose name I didn’t catch, but it was probably something like Colonel McEarthrape. (Because he likes to RAPE the EARTH, even when he isn’t on it!)
Really, go and read the whole thing, because it’s some of the funniest writing I have encountered on the internet in years.
And if you don’t bother to click through, I’ll just post the end here because it really is too good to miss:
Avatar is as stupid as Transformers 2 and for those with a brain in their heads is twice as offensive. I’m not easily offended; I even think the White Guy Becomes An Indian thing can be done well on rare occasions—Howard Waldrop’s Them Bones comes to mind—but this movie was just awful. How awful? I left as soon as the credits started to roll, but even as I ran for the lobby I heard a snippet of lyrics from the end credits theme. Here’s the first verse:
Walking through a dream, I see you
My light and darkness breathing hope of new life
Now I live through you and you through me, enchanted
I pray in my heart that this dream never endsNow imagine your school days, and someone handing you these lyrics in the form of a note. And when you open up the note to read it, they start crying because they just love you so much and wanted to share their feelings for you through poetry. Wouldn’t it be better if aliens just came down and killed us all? See, I knew you’d see what I mean.
One of the great things about the internet is that it confirms that there are people out there just like me. Keep signaling the aliens people, keep signaling.
