Hawkeye and I saw Avatar last night. First off, let me say that James Cameron is full of himself. This does not appear to be the “future of how we watch movies”, however, this was the prettiest movie I have seen. WETA did an amazing job on the aliens in this film, skin that moved and had translucency as well as realistic looking teeth. They have completely topped themselves from their work on Lord of the Rings. Even clothing fell more realistically than it should have.

The story, as many of you know, is about the humans wanting to relocate the inhabitants of the planet Pandora in order to gain access to valuable ore. The scientists have created human/alien hybrid shells in order to breathe the atmosphere and try and gain the aliens trust. The people that are piloting these bodies are put into a sleep state and then transferred to the bodies. One of the scientists died before the movie starts and his brother, a crippled marine and a DNA for the body, is asked to be the new pilot. Only because making these bodies is expensive and the humans didn’t want to waste the money.

So Marine gets in the body and starts meeting locals… gets in their favor, falls out of favor, rinse and repeat a few times.

See this movie for the visuals, not for the story. The alien portion of Avatar is a very nice, warming experience that is probably not too far off from Native American tales. The human story is over the top, almost 80′s cop drama. I couldn’t help but think “Isn’t anyone in charge here?.”

As pretty as the movie is, I can’t help but see similarities that are already around. Pandora felt a bit too much like the forests from World of Warcraft and the aliens felt a bit like the Draenei. I’m not complaining though… I have been going through my quarterly “I miss WoW” moment.

Does this movie need to be in 3D? Not one bit. It was a nice touch, but not needed. It was done well and at time you wanted to swat bugs out of your face, but it didn’t support the movie as it was a polished accent to it. See this movie in the theater. The amount of detail is worth it.

Would I buy this when it comes out? Like the Planet Earth series, I wouldn’t buy this until I had a blueray player, large TV and great sound system.