I saw Avatar today. Now, I went through a number of highs and lows *prior* to seeing this film, as I dodged, ducked, dipped, dived, and.. dodged.. my way through the melee of geek reactions throughout the interwebs and beyond. It went something like this:

Person A: "I hated it, it was utter trash, predictable, mind-numbing and too long. The script was ludicrous and the dialogue cringing."
Person B: "OMG animated gun-toting action and sexy blue aliens!"
Person C: "I'm normally like A, but *this* film is the exception, it is amazing and I didn't expect it to be so."
Person D: "I agree with C, except that I'm not as lame and will admit that A is right about the cringingness."
Person E: "I hated it, James Cameron is making humans look like the bad guys! What? Yes, actually I *am* a gun enthusiast."

Since C and D were totally owning the landscape everywhere I started to turn, I decided to call their bluff and go see it, hoping to leave murmuring more of the same 'well, now I've seen everything, *and* I was pleasantly surprised' hogwash.

Unfortunately it didn't happen, or if it did, I was something close to Person D. Yes, the graphics were amazing, yadda yadda, but I had a lot of trouble listening to the melodramatic 'What? You, primitive underdog, beat us? Har har har!', violin crescendos and 'stand with me and fight for your right to $whatever'.

That said, watching 3 hours of that was easier than watching its equivalent: Last Samurai and The Matrix back-to-back.

This is really starting to sound like I'm shit-canning it, and I probably am. It may not have been all the film's fault either; I bought yuppy tickets, and I had an awful experience with the cinema staff screwing up our order multiple times. But I wasn't disgusted at the film - moreso, I felt disappointed that I didn't experience the self-surprise of 'hey, this is actually pretty good' that everyone else seems to be. My partner left feeling depressed about the state of the human race and its sordid history and likely future of doing outrageously unfair things (spoiler alert, but surely you predicted this already: so much so that one would consider switching sides). I imagine this is the point being driven home by the film, and in this regard, it did well.

I must say, I did do a bit of research on the Na'vi language that was invented for the story by linguist Paul Frommer. That is cool, even at 1000 words and a grammar structure that no-one else understands yet. Constructed languages are a bit of a farce, but I respect anyone who goes to the effort, so long as the attitude isn't 'There are too many languages! Let's create one more to unify us all!' (hello Esperanto).

It's got nothing on Klingon, but Klingon is just plain *ugly*.

Those blue aliens are just so sexy, aren't they, Person B?