So, I finally got around to watching Avatar.

I haven’t been disappointed by anything this badly since The Phantom Menace. This movie has proven one thing to me: that it knows how to use Google Maps to plan a trip to Mediocre, Alabama.

Obligatory “It’s pretty” comment: It’s very pretty. But if you put lipstick on a pig, you’re still going to end up with one very confused pig. And really, who puts lipstick on pigs? (Aside from pigfuckers, that is). Special effects don’t make a film great or even good. 3D certainly doesn’t, which is why I’m glad i saw it in 2D so that I wasn’t distracted.

I want to find the fuckers who gave it the Oscar for Best Cinematography and choke them. There’s no cinematography when every frame is a digital painting. Of course your shots look great; you don’t have to wrestle with the whole “reality” part of film making.

I could probably spend several hundred words talking about how the plot is a contrived structure built from off-brand Cliche’ bricks but seriously I don’t think we need to go there. “Dances with Smurfs” sums it up pretty well.

We have our obvious mustache-twirling bad guys with personalities ripped right out of Aliens and Apocalypse Now. In the future, we will approach every problem like General Custer, somehow having lost the past couple centuries of intellectual and ethical growth.

But hey, maybe the Republicans win the next thirty elections.

Drill, baby, drill.

I actually died a little inside when I realized that the man who created Aliens made this. What the fuck happened, dog? You put together a masterpiece story that had a very strong series of comments about motherhood and feminism and did so subtly and strongly; this thing is a constant hammer to the groin. I am made to feel guilty for fucking over my people back in the 17th century. I’ll have to apologize to my father for my sins, I guess.

We’re not even going to try to be sneaky, either: when I heard the word “Unobtainium” used in a serious mien within the first 20 minutes, I wanted to turn it off. We never actually find out what this magic material is used for or why it’s valuable enough for us to commit genocide over. Just tell me that it’s required for faster-than-light travel engines or something. Give me a reason to care.

Once again, we have walking “mechs”. I fucking hate them. These ones, at least, have glass canopies to protect the pilots (where the ones in the Matrix had, you know, air).

The mechs have knives. What the fuck is up with that? The climax has a fucking knife fight between the protagonist and a mech. I’m not fucking lying to you. That’s just liquid stupidity, poured into a shot glass for you.

How come human machine guns magically change scale so that they are the right size for twelve-foot tall aliens?

The Na’vi aren’t mammals. Why do they have boobs? Large enough to be sexy, small enough to not require a bra. Anything more than a mouthful’s wasted, I guess. We’re supposed to be sympathetic to them so we have to be attracted to them.

Why do they mate for life? That’s a hell of a first date, my friend. You’d better be sure that you two are sexually compatible before you break out the lube and put the condom on. Maybe they depend on Cosmo quizzes and elaborate questionnaires. “Do you like receiving oral sex? If so, do you like teeth? If so, how hard?”

For that matter, what weird biological advantage is there to being colored blue? Or, how come every biological organism on this planet can be bonded to using magical nerve endings that GROW OUT OF THEIR HAIR?

None of the biology makes sense at all.

Plus it uses that goddamned Papyrus font.

If you want to see a good movie that uses aliens in a good way to have a good conversation about racism, go see District 9.

01:14PM <valerie_> Brandon… I see you.
01:14PM <jorm> ohgod.
01:14PM <valerie_> i make myself cringe!