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dear project leader:

this alien fell in line and saw avatar this weekend. he also rewatched star trek at home while wrapping xmas prezzies, which vibrantly underscored what he found so lacking in avatar: characters he could care about.

first, avatar has gorgeous, superbly executed images. no doubt about it...this alien could look at this movie over and over again. but after the first 7 hours or so, the spectacle overwhelms, bombards the viewer.

in the end, avatar tells a story that this viewer didn't want to see: bad, bad capitalist humans pillage other worlds for mineral riches. the final showdown is so very, very lengthy, when everyone knows exactly frame-for-frame what will happen, that an hour could easily have been cut, and nobody would have noticed.


so then, star trek is all about people actually learning lessons, caring about each other, blah blah blah, in relatively sparse settings (relative to sci-fi blockbusters, that is) just so the characters become the focal point. and wraps up rather efficiently with enough humor that one doesn't feel he's been driven out of the theater, hit over the head with a big bad club of learnin.


this alien understands that at least one of his readers will disagree. and so it goes.