Avatar

Spanks - 5

Director - James Cameron

Writer - James Cameron

Starring - Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Joel Moore, Giovanni Ribisi & Michelle Rodriguez

Release Date - 18 December 2009

MPAA Rating - PG-13

Avatar starts off on a spaceship that has just arrived in orbit of the moon Pandora. Pandora has become a great interest to a Corporation from Earth who built an outpost there. The company is there to mine a mineral called unobtainium which sells for millions of dollars per kilogram. Pandora has a humanoid species called the Na'vi that are in their way, and an atmosphere that is poisonous to humans. Because of this, they create the avatar program that genetically creates a Na'vi out of a humans DNA that can be remotely controlled by the human safely on the outpost. On the ship is the movies' narrator, a disabled veteran named Jake Sully who is permanently in a wheelchair. He signs up for the avatar program to make money to get his legs fixed to walk again. What starts off as following orders, turns into much much more.

Tise film, like Titanic, has all of the action in the last third of the movie. Cameron keeps your attention and never gets boring in the "slow" parts because he is teaching the viewer all about the culture of the Na'vi and the ecosystem of Pandora and showing the greed of the humans who run the human outpost, lead by Colonel Miles Quaritch and lead miner Parker Selfridge.

The film is visually awesome. You can tell that it took a long time to make by the great attention to detail. It did have two years of post production. You could say that it looks like a cartoon with the blue people and pastel colors of the native wildlife, which is true if it were set on Earth. Do you really think every possible planet or moon would look exactly like Earth? Everything that has been transported to Pandora from Earth looks just like it would here on Earth from the humans, from the habitats, to the methods of transportation.

I have been hearing stories that the film is racist. If humans conquering, destroying, and relocating other beings to get what they want without any care to the beings or the environment is racist then so is Avatar. How District 9 is the science fiction version of the South African Apartheid, Avatar is the science fiction version of the way European settlers/early Americans treated the Indians to get what they wanted. Those people complaining about Sigourney Weaver's smoking are out of their mind, because she has a cigarette like three times in the two hour and a half hour film.

Avatar is truly a film that has to be seen in 3D. It was filmed with 3D cameras to be in 3D and not digitally converted into 3D like most 3D films are. Seeing it in a standard 2D theater would be a waist of money. If you can make it to a true IMAX theater, it would be even better being that the screen is bigger then standard 35 mm or digital 3D theater.

Terminator Salvation

Spanks - 3

Director - MCG

Writers - John D. Brancato & Michael Ferris

Starring - Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Moon Bloodgood, Anton Yelchin & Bryce Dallas Howard

Release Date - 21 May 09

MPAA Rating - PG-13

As a post apocalyptic machines take over the world and kill most of humanity movie, Terminator Salvation is a good movie. As a Terminator movie it is not. The film doesn't feel like the last three. It just used the characters that James Cameron created over 20 years ago and forgets everything and they just do whatever they want with them. The story doesn't fit the time line already created. It has no suspense. The story isn't original. All it is is special effects and explosions, which are great, but you need the story to make it good.

The one thing the filmmakers did right was to use "real" terminators and not CGI ones. The large machines were CGI, which I expected from the beginning, but not the small ones. The CGI ones looked great, but the one that captured and held the humans looked just like a Transformer. The visuals of the film were the best part of it, but what has Stan Winston done that hasn't been amazing.

The film is about Marcus Wright, a man who wakes up not knowing were he is or what happened to the world. He runs into a young Kyle Reese who is looking for John Connor to join the resistance. The two become buddies and look for Connor together. Along the way Kyle gets captured by the machines which leads Marcus on a journey to save him. He meets Connor who is not yet the leader of the resistance and clash with each other about how to go about reaching both of their goals.

Since seeing the future in the earlier Terminator movies I wanted to see a movie set in this time. I wanted this film to be great, but I was disappointed because so much could have been done and the filmmakers did so little. At this point they should have left T:2 to be the end of the story. With two equals planned, I am scared at what they could do next to ruin the Terminator franchise. The only hope is hire new people to write and direct.