When I saw the preview for Avatar, I KNEW it was something I had to watch. (Not that I'm a Smurf fan or anything...O_o). Anyway, it was a pretty big in Jamaica, since they had a massive premiere on one side of the island(which a friend of mine got invited to, but not me...grrr...), and at the local cinema, they finally realized the joys of 3D. Yup.
To be honest, I sort of spoiled the movie for myself by reading reviews. That's not saying the movie was bad (it was really good actually), but I guess my expectations may have been a bit too high because of all the reviews I read. The 40 minute fight scene at the end was awesome, but in my opinion, it wasn't epic on the scale of Star Wars(like some reviewers said it was).
I'm not one for a love story, but I'll admit that it never got in the way of the film too much. It's not particularly like the story was NOVEL though, those who have played Assassin's Creed might have a rough idea of what one of the main plot devices was. Here's a hint, if it looks like an Animus, sounds like an Animus, but its not called an Animus.....
What annoyed me about the story was its environmental crusading, brought out through its one-dimensional human characters("But Gavin...it's in 3D!!" "Shut up."). You have your stereotypical evil corporate mogul that wants a mineral called, brace yourself for it..."unobtainium". You have his loyal army of futuristic soldiers with all forms of mechs and ships that burn forests and kill natives without remorse (apart from one of the better looking female pilots, how convenient is that?). You have the tree-hugger scientist who is so arrogant, she is convinced that you can just TELL people to kindly move because they're resting on the million dollar ore motherlode. And you have the Copenhagen summit, which...wait...where did THAT come from?
Yeah, I sort of find it a strange coincidence that the film came out during Copenhagen, but ugh...whatever.
Now, I'm going to talk about the computer graphics. The CG in the film is AMAZING. In the Marine base, I could honestly not differentiate between which parts were computer graphics and which parts were the physical set. The forest is even prettier. The forest is vibrant, alive, pretty and just REALISTIC(well, if you consider trees with glowing purple tendrils to be realistic, but please, just play along). I mean honestly...the night scenes in the forest were some of the best CG I have ever seen in a movie.
The Na'vi(read: "Giant Smurfs") run into the uncanny valley problem at a few points, but to be honest, I hardly noticed it in any of the main Na'vi characters. It really shows more in the flat Na'vi characters.
I would definitely tell you to go ahead and watch Avatar, its not like you'll be wasting your money. Watch it in 3D too. Seriously. Avatar, my dear readers, is CG history in the making. Let's hope that the game adaptation of it won't be rubbish.
In other news, since I can't remember if I said this before, but I stopped learning 漢字 by grade. I've just started reading Japanese news online and learning 漢字 as they come. Basically, this means that my vocabulary consists of mostly kanji pertaining to economics, at the moment. Hm.
Now here's the sad news. In a move that can best be described as some sort of perverse parting shot, school has left me with two projects to do. The first, is a Chemistry project on Industrial Processes. A MASSIVE Chemistry project at that too. Also, I have my Caribbean Studies Internal Assessment (a project) to do. Wish me luck.
Later,
Lord Robinson/Gavin/Haze
