Finally got around to seeing Avatar...!

About the Only Review that i read concerning Avatar
Was This One by Wm Jaz;
And i thought after seeing Avatar on DVD that we'd watched two completely different films...???

Immediately after getting to The Smurf Sequences,
i thought that the animation was much cruder than i had been led to believe.
It really wasn't Really Hand Springs & A Unicycle Act over previous CGI Films.

The Most Obvious flaw that i quickly noticed was that the shadows seemed wrong,
And after flipping back & forth between The Smurf Sequences and what were Presumably Live Action, i decided that The CGI was just -Timid-.
The Same problem, But too a much lesser degree—
Than the washed out Gleep Monkey in Lost In Space [ 1998 ].
If they had just brought up the highlights a little and darkened the shadows,
It would have been much harder to see that there weren't the tiers of shadows and highlights from real life.
( that is; Shadows caused by reflections & Highlights.
Granted; This is very subtle stuff, but after our eyes become more & more accustomed to what reality -should- look like, i for one, become a harsher critic.
Also: As a life long Television Watcher, i am fascinated by the stylization of various programs that we, as television watchers, come to accept as -What is Real-.
Most people are aware that what we've come to expect an Explosion to look like, looks nothing like a real Explosion. We've been acclimated to all sorts of things like this, and as styles & Television Production Values change; What we accept as Real changes dramatically, So that a TV program that we grew up thinking was so very realistic—
Now is Intolerably Slipshod & Cheap looking.
This Effect is Greatly Magnified when it comes to CGI.
CGI films that blew us away just a few years ago,
Are now Unbearably Pong Looking.

Another thing; Was the 6 Legged Mammals ( ? ).
If The Smurfs followed the same evolutionary path as the other large mammals on this world,
Why don't they have 6 Appendages...?

Given that there may have been two major evolutionary branches on this tiny world,
With a Gravity less than Earth; What would have been the advantage of 6 Legs?
And What was even far more annoying ( derived from one stepping through the DVD )
Was that The Front Pairs of Legs were either simply mirroring the other pair,
Or moving in a gait that used the second pair as their hind legs...
As Opposed to Walking with a Genuine 6 Legged Gait,
Such as that of Ants or Beetles.
Cameron Added more -Kewl Looking Legs- but didn't take the time to figure out how a large animal like that would use them...??? !

Evolutionarily; Extra Legs have to demonstrate a specific Advantage,
While Reducing Disadvantages.
An Extra Pair of Legs on a Planet with little gravity is just dumb.
Jebus would not have made animals like this!

Another point that Wm Jaz and other reviewers made when the film first came out in theaters,
And makes me believe that i was watching a completely ReEdited Version...
Was that When Jake decided to Switch Sides,
The lead up to this: Made it Completely Obvious & Inevitable.
How could he Not have...?

Only A Complete Monster would have Followed General Ratchethead.

What annoyed me a little was that When Jake ( The ( Chosen One ) Hero ) lead all The Smurfs into battle without A Clever Plan to defeat The Sky Ghouls.
He was just taking The Blue Cat People to the slaughterhouse!

Small Points;
i would have liked to know what the Impossibilium metal that they were extracting was actually good for.
This name is rather derivative of the name Improbabilium,
used for the metal in The Film The Core.
Speaking of Recycling Ideas; i thought it was kind of odd that Signourney Weaver was in this film, given that 90% of The Heavy Machinery was taken from Aliens.
And While The Machines were Rendered more convincingly than The Smurfs,
They were still less than perfect.
Missing Surface dents, scratches, & peripheral shadows & second tier highlights being the most readily observed flaws.
They were at par with The Machines in The Last StarFighter [ 1984! ]

Then:
It seemed to me that many of the animals used were lifted straight out of
Barlow's Guide to Extraterrestrials.

Another Point:
While it makes the Humanimals The Bad Guys;
It's not really an AntiWar Film.
It's not even An Environmentalist Film.

It would have been perfectly reasonable for The Earthlings to come to this far off world and ignore all the asteroids & Ort Cloud of this Solar System and pick the one world with Intelligent life on it; Which is not really revealed as being extremely rare or not...
That is; In this Universe; Is it filled with planets with life, and intelligent life...???

Anyways... It would have been perfectly reasonable;
If they'd just kept to their little compounds, mined this rare metal, and left.
But no.
The Entire Point of The Film seems to be that Military Generals just want to Destroy Everything, And most Soldiers are of The Same MindSet.

This may in fact be entirely reasonable, And True.
But it makes for a kind of dumb movie.

Kind of like the Billy Jack films in which The Police were all Insane Killers.
Which also may be entirely reasonable, And True.
But i don't like watching films like that, because they're very depressing.

One final small point:
The Major Twist ( ? ) of the film seems to have been that the entire planet was one big brain.
Curiously; This idea is only briefly mentioned, and when it becomes a principle mechanism to beating The Earth Soldiers; The Viewer to left to piece all that together on their own.
While the film bashes you over the head with everything else; This one genuinely interesting idea is horribly undermined.
It would have been much more interesting if the film examined a little what it was like for a planet to think, or how the Signourney Character experienced this...?

Kind of like; In Equilibrium or Spider Man or in Futurama when Fry drinks 100 cups of coffee, and we get to see what Enlightenment is like.
i Always wanted The Star Wars films to show what it was like to experience the holistic universe of a Jedi Knight... But George never did share that with us.

That's pretty much it.
i don't expect this film to be favorably considered 2 years from now.
It will be forgotten, lacking the qualities that make even Godzilla memorable.