DOWN (Dining Out With Nerds) report: Avatar 3D

It’s easiest to review movies that are either really good or really bad. So-so movies, or even pretty good movies, don’t create an excitement, an enthusiasm, to share with other people. So to write a review every month, I hope to see at least one really good or really bad movie. This month it was easy.

Avatar 3D reminded me of seeing Star Wars for the first time. Think back to your first view of the Millennium Falcon, chased by an Imperial Star Destroyer that fills the screen, then goes on... and on... and on.

This is a similar breakthrough movie. It’s the first film to make motion capture look completely real and believable. (At least for large numbers of characters; James Cameron said that Sméagol in Lord of the Rings convinced him that CGI technology was ready for what he wanted to do.) I had no trouble believing in the 10-foot-tall, blue, cat-fast aliens.

It’s also the first movie to really make 3D look good. All the previous 3D movies we’ve seen could just as well have been 2D (we joke that “3D” stands for “three dollars,” the extra price for these movies). Here, though, it was subtle yet made the scenes much more real, from long corridors to the floating mountains and especially the great flying scenes. (I did see some very minor glitches in the 3D, but the lights from idiots texting in the audience were more annoying.) The scenery was beautiful, like the New Zealand landscapes in Lord of the Rings, but without the restrictions imposed by reality. I kept thinking of the classic Yes album covers.

The action scenes were fluid and graceful. There’s only one real battle, though it lasts a while, and it’s dramatic and – within the limits of the movie – realistic. Like several movies that I appreciate, this makes excellent use of the capabilities of video. It’s visually spellbinding.

The plot is probably the weakest point; it’s been described as a space cowboys-and-Indians movie (it has some similarity to Dances with Wolves). It’s as much science fantasy as science fiction, but if you accept the logic of the world Pandora, the movie is faithful to that logic. Humans are mostly bad guys, but not all. The acting is decent, not great. Sam Worthington is a ruggedly handsome hero, Michelle Rodriguez is hot with a helicopter and a Gatling gun, Zoë Saldana makes a disturbingly attractive 10-foot-tall blue alien.

My advice: See Avatar. Now. In 3D.