A couple of days after seeing Avatar I was in an exercise room with different vids playing on the wall and one of them was Wizard of Oz. I couldn't help but make the comparison between the technology change in 70 years versus the need of a good story, good acting, good emoters. I thought Wizard had it all over Avatar. Even in the world of effects the imagination was greater. The term 'winged monkeys' has made it into common parlance and I doubt me that flying lizards will have the same cachet in even one year. As for the storyline, Wizard has one. Avatar's bad guys good guys was a setup akin to Mighty Ducks. The movie bludgeons one into rooting for the gentle blue people and sets us up to expect them to be decimated by a technological juggernaut except somehow we know there will be a last second comepuppance where the Indians are able to defeat the cavalry.

As my right wing co-workers came in this morning from seeing the film, I was intrigued that many of them liked it as a movie. I teased them a bit, with "You know that was an extreme left wing tree-hugger plot and you were paying Hollywood elitists who underwrite Obama and the whole left wing conspriacy, including gun control, don't you?"

Blinking response. "It was a movie!"

Two nights ago I got to see Dark Knight on an HD system, and I thought it had more visual impact than Avatar. Its plot was less understandable because of the frequent cuts, but the character of the Joker dominated and had way more impact than any character of Avatar.