Last night Viv and I took his niece out to the movies (we were charged with baby-sitting, and told that seeing the remastered Avatar in 3D was what she wanted to do – although as she told us once we got there, that was more of an executive decision of her dad’s, not that she objected 🤣).
Neither Viv nor I had seen Avatar before. I have no real idea why I didn’t see it at the time, except I suspect it was just me being contrarian – “Nah, this movie is too popular, it must be bad.” Well, I can now safely say it is not bad. I could nitpick at some elements of the plot, mainly in the second quarter – I felt like three months was waaaay too fast for the protagonist to gain the trust of the Na’vi tribe, and I also felt like the romance was sprung on us full-formed out of nowhere (unless “smiling sometimes” is build-up now 🤷🏻♀️) but I left those reservations behind as we moved into the second half of the movie. I loved Grace (the scientist character), I loved the raw depiction of the ruthlessness of imperialism, I loved that the Americans were the bad guys (no offence Americans). It was a long movie but like Viv’s niece said, there wasn’t a single part of it she would’ve cut out… it used every moment of that time to develop a rich, detailed story. Hopefully I’ve learned a lesson about prejudging popular movies as being “lowest common denominator” fodder, cos this totally was not.
