What shall I say? I fell asleep. The cinema chair was real comfy. The aircon was sending a nice breeze my way, which was exactly what I needed after a hot Brisbane day. I was still a bit sore and exhausted from kitesurfing in the morning. Avatar was whispering Celine Dion style music into my ears. And I had eaten just before the movie. My parasympathetic nervous system was sending its “rest and digest” message to my brain, which then decided to go into standby and as a result I had a nice long relaxing nap. Awesome!

BULLSHIT! I was awake as fuck. I mean… the colours! Holy crap, the colours! I always knew I was an extremely visual guy. But THIS was something different. Normally I would mention the blockbuster-obligatory first class T&A here, but not in Avatar. For sure, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) is just as naked as thousands of her brothers and sisters, which means blue arses everywhere. But instead of turning me into a horny teenager the movie turned me into a playful kid. Plants that light up when you touch them, trees that glow under your feet, leaves bigger than houses! The last time I wanted to just jump around and touch everything around me I was like 3 and snow and mud gave me ecstasy. And I don’t even remember that. And yeah… ecstasy… but I don’t remember that either.

OK the beginning dragged on a bit with a lot of dialogue that was just there to give background. “I can’t believe it’s been 3 months.” Yes, Jake (Sam Worthington), it has. Innumerable predictable lines and stereotypes are thrown at us, except for an essential one: the black dude who dies. Perhaps that’s because there were no black dudes there. Or because all black dudes were actually blue dudes… Where was I? Stereotypes, yeah. So we have the hot tough chick that handles big mean machines. We have geeky scientists. Of course we have very manly Men (the proper way of spelling Man if he is that manly). We have all the prejudices towards soldiers, monkeys, and tree huggers. And I could go on for quite a while, but you know what? It doesn’t matter, because a good story is universal. And if a talented storyteller tells it, not much can go wrong. And my buddy Jim is a fairly capable one.

The movie might benefit (or not) from tapping into a climate change worried world. But that doesn’t matter either, because once you see a beautiful blue three meter tall alien lady transcending our banal understanding of concepts like walking or jumping; once you see her smoothing (for lack of a better word) in one long elegant movement from a rock onto an unbelievably colourful flying beast and quite literally connecting with it; once you see the two graciously continuing that movement as one and around and into the air and down from bedazzling heights at unfathomable speed with the air and rocks and trees rushing past you, not just them, you might, if you just open up yourself enough, actually connect with Pandora, their planet, and Eywa, their deity, and hopefully with life itself as it is all around them and you and feel your heart beat a little bit harder for the very briefest of moments. And then you will hopefully be with me when I decide to ignore all the stereotypes and predictability and say: GOD, I love movies! Even though this one didn’t present Megan Fox in full nudity.

And if you’re not into love in the purest of senses or psychedelic colours all around you, then consider this: Avatar has something new and unprecedented. Something, or actually more of a somebody, none of us expected: colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang). He is what I would call an amalgamation of the USA (to generalise just a little bit) with Joseph Goebbels in one of his finest moments. Colonel Miles Goebbels: “DO YOU WANT TOTAL WAR?” Several hundred ex-marines with profoundly deep and cool and darn relaxed voices “Yeah… yeah.”

Avatar
(2009)

Director: James Cameron
Screenplay: James Cameron
Cinematography: Mauro Fiore, Vince Pace
Editing: John Refoua, Stephen E. Rivkin
Score: James Horner
Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi.