Avatar.... I finally saw you and I am left wondering, why?

I want to talk about the top grossing film of all time. If you think it's Citizen Kane, The Godfather, or Casablanca, you're wrong. Today we're talking about Avatar. James Cameron can make a movie. Great, so could Ed Wood, but Wood never received an Oscar for his films, which are the cinematic equivalent of George Takei quoting the Bible with tourettes.

When I went and saw Avatar, I went to the 3D version of the show. Did it totally enhance everything and make me think I was there in the forest looking at blue nipples? No. It did not. Good thing too, because if I thought I was on a planet full of mutated Smurfs I'd go after 'home tree' too. (either mutated Smurfs or mutated baboons, where the blue asses have spread to the body, I have yet to decide.) The 3D for the most part got in the way. Rather than enhancing the experience it just annoyed it. As though it was possible to annoy the experience more with the two dimensional characters and the stale wooden dialogue.

James Cameron can't make a great movie, but the thing he's a genius at is making a movie that appeals to the mass audience. Which doesn't take much. In fact if you wrote a book on the Cameron's style of film making it would be called "The Lowest Common Denominator: Movie Making, The James Cameron Way!" If you don't believe me, here's some "dialogue" from Avatar.

JAKE: That's right -- to embed with the Omaticaya. To find out how to screw them out of their home. By deceit or by force, he didn't care. And if it turned out to be force, then how best to do it.

GRACE: And what about now, Jake?

JAKE: I'm not that guy any more.

GRACE: I know.

RIVETING! That's almost as brilliant as Twilight, where if you tell a girl you can read people's minds, she just stares at you.. for two solid hours until you ask for your money back.

Apparently it took Cameron 12 years to develop the technology to make Avatar, which is something I can appreciate, but in that time the only thing he realized plot-wise was: Plants are sacred, corporations want nothing more than to rape all nature, the military wants to kill all foreigners, and on other planets the local natives are basically the black jungle stereotypes Carl Denham hired to help him capture King Kong. I mean seriously, am I the only person who saw that? Just because they're blue doesn't make it any less racist.

All in all, Avatar was way way WAY too long, the story was basically Ferngully with a lot more blue private parts and 3D natives weren't at all convincing as 'real' entities. But whatever, shit blew up, right?

Right?