I just watched Avatar in 3d, and I fucking love it.
But I agree that it is not, by any means, perfect. The characters, dialogue and the plot are cliché, I agree. Nevertheless, to these comments I say a huge, “So what?” These “shortcomings” simply didn’t matter in the face of Avatar’s other merits, and I feel that focusing on them and making it the basis for Avatar bashing is completely missing the point.
The key to Avatar is experience. If your main goal in watching the movie is to make a critical evaluation of its implied message regarding colonialism, its character depth and plot consistency, scientific validity or originality, then you are missing the point. Throw these silly overthinking away and just allow yourself to be immersed, be lost, in the film. Then perhaps you’ll appreciate it for what it tries to do. In a way then , you could say that one must watch Avatar like it’s a fairy tale. Don’t take each and every aspect seriously but allow yourself to be lost in the story’s own flow. With this in mind, the complaints over its unoriginal storyline now sounds as silly as asking, “Why does Disney’s Aladdin have a happy ending?”
For my part, I personally thought that the whole ecology is obviously too-earthlike for comfort, and that the N’avi are so similar to humans it is very scientifically improbable. For example, it’s just unrealistic that the N’avi would have nearly the same sense perception as us, most notably trichromatic vision, and nearly identical vocal system (when even our Neanderthal cousins, which are really close to us genetically, sound different). I also found the military’s degree of evil unconvincing and the romantic bits kind of sappy. But I brushed these aside and just focused on the film itself, and in the end, I knew it really really really delivered well.
