I saw it a few days ago in 3D in a theatre with digital projection and a reasonably big screen.

I enjoyed it quite a lot, I would like to see it again.

I thought I noticed occasional flickering speckles of light around some fast action which didn't seem to be part of the action, but otherwise the 3D worked well.

I found the story reasonably engaging.

It was visually spectacular, even discounting the 3D.

I would too, if for no other reason but that I've heard that the 3D effects when seen on DVD are a bit disappointing at best.

You noticed that, too? What was that? It looked sort of like a lens flare to me but I couldn't figure it out.

Really, the special effects were downright mind-boggling, IMHO.

I'm about to watch it myself. Just needs to buffer. I'll comment after. No 3d, obviously, but I don't have the money for theatres right now.

 I'm no radical raging environmentalist, but I thought the story was very nice anyway. Besides, even if you don't buy global warming, against all credible evidence, I fail to see how taking care of the planet we inhabit could ever be a BAD idea.

Yeah, it all sounds very reasonable until you find out what "taking care of the planet" means.

Well, thats your opinion. You have a right to think that, and beyond that you have a right to reject industrial society and go live nude in the forest if you want and die when you're 30. I have nothing to say to that except adios muchacho.

If they wanted to make the movie realistic the evil humans would have propagandized the navi and told them they were destroying their own planet by breathing and they all needed to be sterilized. The navi would have believed it too because they weren't scientists, they were just ignorant blue giants. The humans could have wiped them all out and got the kryptonium in a lot less than 160 minutes I'll bet.

No matter what bizarre environmentalist cult beliefs you subscribe to you have to admit it was base propaganda. I mean it wasn't even slick and sophisticated it was 'in your face' as they say. Can you at least admit that or does gaia forbid this?

I think it's unfair to have actors in films pretending to be scientists while proselytizing and making people feel guilty about the environment. You're supposed to be atheists. If there was a movie where scientists where saying "there really is something to this christianity thing we can't explain blah, blah, blah..." you'd come in here and shit a burrito, but when it's gaia worship, neo-paganism you're strangely silent on the issue. 

Well, yes, I didn't mention anything about that because it's kind of a spoiler, but that was what really pushed it over the edge for me.

I changed it to "Avatar the movie"

Your original title wasn't very specific.  

I know what "Gaia" is. I know how it is used in the movie. I know that in the movie, "Pandora"'s Gaia is 'real'. 'cuz it's a story. A fun work of fiction. A soldier "goes native" and learns something about the planet that makes it more important to him than the 'unobtanium'. (Didn't they use that term in "the Core"? Hilarious name.) Lesson: In haste to get to what you do understand, you might be wrecking what you don't understand. Perhaps this is more in parallel with the deforestation of "rain forest" land... dunno.

You're just doing your usual "black-n-white" thing. You think the movie's message is one thing, and anyone who disagrees is wrong. No one can say anything to change your mind, on this or any other subject. You have appointed yourself arbiter of truthiness.

Are you wrong or ill-informed? It seems to be six of one and half a dozen of the other. Had you actually addressed the point of my post about presenting neo-pagan beliefs in the film as if they re science instead of talking about dances with wolves then I would have taken you seriously. 

Are you stupid, or just... no, forget it, you're just stupid.

If folks want to walk away from this film thinking it's neo-pagan and anti-technology, what the fuck ever. I'm not falling for it. The "Gaia" bullshit a fantasy element in a fiction story separated from reality by many layers of abstraction. I saw no anti-technology in the film. Technology was never the enemy, the only enemy was blind greed, and represented by two wholly overblown caricatures. No intelligent person would walk away from that thinking it validates anything, never mind something supernatural.

Shit, the scientist, on the cusp of "meeting" this "Gaia" only wants to take samples. Yeah, that convinced me it was "real".

All the gauche little morons believe whatever they want anyway.

Your complaint is academic at best. Utterly irrelevant. If you choose to get all worked up about it, feel free to. I feel as worked up about "Avatar" as I do a bout "Angels and Demons", and for the same reasons. Nothing of interest to reality there. Just fiction based on fantasy.

Big. Fucking. Deal.

I saw it last night in 3-D and it was pretty cool. I'm surprised the 3-D glasses fit over my regular ones.

The fact that it's a rip off of the Pocahontas story is pretty obvious. I'd say it's so obvious it doesn't require mentioning. It's nice that your perceptive abilities are such that you notice things that are apparent, but at the same time I'm not going to congratulate you. Not to minimize your achievement of course.

People are entitled to their own interpretation clearly. If you want to deny the rather transparent thematic elements despite the opinions of reviewers, neo-pagans and the film maker it makes no difference to me. Why don't you go on a letter writing campaign and tell the film makers, reviewers et al. that they are stupid because their interpretation of a film doesn't match up with that of a caustic, brain-damaged clown on an atheist chat board?
 

Just out of curiousity Gauche, what would your opinion be... if all the alien organisms were replaced by some mechanical counter part?

Um...it's called "Storytelling?"

=\

I know what it's called. If you only want to look at it on that superficial level then you're free to do that. I'm sure you think I'm making way too much of it even though all I said from the beginning was that it's an environmental guilt movie with neo-pagan religious overtones and I didn't like it.

I am caustic, that much is obvious. I am a survivor of a minor brain injury. I am a clown by nature and twice by profession. This is an atheist chat board.

Gauche hit the clown on the head. Boing!

Anti-tech my left testicle. The Na'vi tech was simply biological. Protecting THEIR environment was the PRESERVATION OF THEIR CULTURE AND COLLECTIVE KNOWLEDGE. Drawing a comparison between their environment and ours is too stupid to classify as stupid, for fear of insulting stupid people. The next time you can plug yourself into a tree and hear your ancestors speak is the time you can compare our environment to theirs. They even said as much in the film!

"It's just a bunch of trees!"

Ugh, no, it isn't.

I'm freaking out so much I said you can believe whatever the hell you want. You seem to be doing plenty of denying, and disagreeing with lots of people. Perhaps if you do it loud enough the provincial hicks at the L.A. Times will retract the story. Maybe those rubes at the New Yorker will catch on as well. The New York Times may follow suit, probably not though. 

As for what Cameron himself intended, I don't know. But as for reviewers, have you ever heard the art world literati trying to interview Andy Warhol?

Interviewer: So you're making a very poignant statement about our corporate capitalist society and the way it affects art and culture...

Warhol: Okay, yeah, sure.

I'm not saying the reviewers don't know what they're talking about, if they didn't, they likely wouldn't be working for such major publications. Nonetheless, interpretation is often in the eyes of the viewer. Furthermore, the creator of a work is seldom able to grasp the full depth of meaning it can have in a larger context.

Argument from authority. You're boring now.