I don't believe I've ever told you this, but I watched James Cameron's Avatar a couple of months back and unlike most of my friends who've seen it, I didn't like it all that much. There are a couple of reasons why that verdict was the way it was and of course, there are some people who have made their decisions based on other aspects than what I was going for. Watching a video review of the film yesterday on YouTube whose verdict was to see it in theaters because not watching it in that environment will make you see the film for what it really is and that's a bad thing really made me think about it. As the reviewer said, "it's a pretty-looking movie, but not a beautiful movie".

Last night, I watched Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan for the first time in years. I remember watching it when I was younger and enjoying it a fair bit but being so young, I really had no idea what was going on except for when the ships were shooting at each other. And not being so young this time around, I really enjoyed it because I could get invested into the plot and characters. And this leads me to my first point:

I. The Plots and Characters

What is basically the universal grievance against Avatar is just how cliched its story is. To many reviewers, they have referred to it as simply being "Dances with Wolves/Pocahontas/FernGully in Space with Blue Aliens". I think you can figure out the meaning of that, and of course it didn't help that the trailers and TV spots basically showed us how the movie would turn out, which is more or less what happened in the previously mentioned films. Now, there is a diverse cast of characters who seem to become the dichotomy that forms between the humans and the Na'vi but none of them seem relatively deep or interesting to me. They are mostly a combination of stereotypes and archetypes that we've come to see in such tales of clashing cultures and worlds and never really take time to develop because they're one-dimensional.

Now for Star Trek II we have the cast of a TV show from decades ago facing a vengeful villain from the same time. It's a basic revenge plot but done extremely well. We see the characters face dire situations and both sides take heavy losses over the course of the film. You really get attached to the characters because again, they take the time to develop and you can take sides with this. Going back to Avatar, another reason I couldn't get invested into the story is because I had no idea who to root for. There are the Na'vi, a seemingly perfect race in total harmony with nature and the humans who want to sustain life for themselves but are portrayed as complete jerks. The Na'vi are a nice group, but I'm still human so a tinge of me still wants to root for them. Quite a conundrum if you ask me. Back to the losses, it's like three-quarters of the characters in Avatar die within two minutes while deaths of key characters in Star Trek II are mostly spaced out, each one seems significant to the plot.

II. The Presentation

Of course, one of the biggest selling points to Avatar is the 3-D effects that it pushed upon audiences. People went in with their 3-D add-ons that they shelled out another 3 dollars for and wait for the good stuff to happen. It came in spades and from what I've heard, people walked out of the theater in total awe at what they just saw. In fact, the 3-D was a little too realistic because reports soon rose of people not being interesting in this world of ours and instead wanting to permanently be on the world of Pandora. It got so bad that many people said they wanted to commit suicide in hopes of being reincarnated as a Na'vi. I am a rather spiritual person, but wanting to kill yourself for reincarnation because of a film is taking it too far!

With Star Trek II, everything is shot with models as before the CGI hoopla that arose in the late twentieth century and it still looks very good. Ship damage looks authentic and the various creatures have a excellent amount of detail and the environments are just very well crafted. It's in 2-D and even then, I still found myself getting pulled into the tale. I smiled a bit when it looked like the good guys were winning and went "Aw..." every time the antagonists had it going their way.

So those are my two big concerns with the film and why I think Star Trek II is better in just about every respect. Now of course if you disagree, there's no reason to post any hateful comments on this journal. I totally respect your opinion. Of course, it was announced some time ago that Avatar would be getting sequels sometime down the road and as you may have already guessed by now: I will ignore them. Also, Star Trek '09 is also getting a sequel in a few years so naturally, I will line up for that.

And of course, I'm still working on my own version of the "Random Game" and I shall post up a start-up situation in a few weeks. So keep an eye on that.

With that, good day.
FZeroBoyo