1. Although she is 20 now, and (I think) less prone to embarrassment at being seen with me in public, I am still sensitive to the fact that my older daughter doesn’t particularly want to be associated with some cranky old guy making a scene. It is for that reason, and that reason alone, that I did not say the following: “Twenty-six dollars? TWENTY-SIX DOLLARS??!!?? Hello? Excuse me? I said I wanted to pay for movie admission for two, not buy dinner for a family of five!” I think they jacked the price up on account of the 3D. At least I hope they did.

2. What’s with the 3-hour movies? Didn’t James Cameron himself kick off the current “movies should run three hours” trend with Titanic? (Then Peter Jackson sealed the deal with the Lord of the Rings trilogy.) Memo to Hollywood: very few movies should ever run more than two hours. Most can probably be done effectively in about 90 minutes. Citizen Kane runs one hour and 59 minutes — you’re telling me that Michael Bay needed an additional 25 minutes in order to tell the story of Transformers properly?

This is an important consideration, and not just from an “I have to pee” perspective. If you have not already done so, take 70 minutes and treat yourself to Redletter Media’s outstanding seven-part take-down of Star Wars Episode One. Part 1 is here.

Note: these videos are laced with profanity, sex, and (oddly) violence. They also add up to being one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen…on Youtube or elsewhere.

Anyhow, somewhere along the line the critic points out that one of the errors Lucas made, both in Phantom Menace and the loathsome “special editions” of the original trilogy, is trying to cram as many visual details into every single fame as possible. This practice clutters up each scene with a lot of useless junk. Sometimes you need less detail; sometimes you need more. When in doubt, go with less. And the same principle applies to scenes, storylines, characters. The longer a movie runs, the more likely it is that it will include extraneous content that detracts from the real story and / or message. This is the major problem with Avatar, as we will see.

3. What is it with 3D glasses? Avatar is by far the most effective use of 3D technology in the history of movies, but I still spent the first 30 minutes of the movie trying to rub a phantom smudge off my glasses. There was no smudge. Those glasses do something to your field of vision that nature never intended. The smudge was in my brain. 3D glasses mess with your brain — should we be worried about that?

4. As Stephen has already pointed out, Avatar spews a heavy dose of PC Hollywood ideological crapola. Interestingly, I very much doubt that Cameron set out to make a political statement with this film, or even realized , after the fact, that he had made such a statement.The PC philosophizing is half of the extraneous material that got added to this movie. The brain-dead battle sequence is the other half. In fact, I think the former got added as a pretext for providing the latter.

So what’s the movie really about, then? It’s about a disabled man who is given the opportunity to explore an amazing planet and interact with the natives as one of them. The real effort here went in to creating the aforementioned planet — that’s the true heart of the movie and (I suspect) the source of Cameron’s passion for this project. He wanted to make a movie about this planet, and an interesting way to get us into it was to have us follow a human being who becomes a part of the place in a way he never expected.

But that’s not enough, of course. We need conflict. We need drama. We need a huge overblown action-movie climax. (Bonus points to anyone who can identify which of the preceding statements is offered ironically.) Wait, you know what would be cool? Gunships — 22nd century helicopters, heavily armed, and some kind of big-ass mothership. And explosions, lots of explosions. And, like, wait — dinosaurs fighting armored military craft!

So for that, all we need are some James Cameron stock characters — the Paul Reiser ruthless corporate weasel from Aliens and the psycho Navy SEAL from The Abyss (only now with a whole squad of brainwashed psychos under his command.) You take those characters and then you add a half-thought-out backstory about how Earth is an ecological disaster area. Then all you need are some basic assumptions about how humanity, having despoiled its own planet through greed, exploitation, and brutality, is now ready to move on to do the same things elsewhere.

Again, I don’t know whether Cameron believes any of this — maybe he sort of vaguely assumes it’s all correct — but I don’t think any of it was his point. I think he just wanted to pad out his Cool Planet movie with an extra hour or so of junk and a big stonking battle sequence in the end. This does not in any way excuse Cameron, of course. Actually, it makes what he did worse. After going to all the trouble to create something new, he throws in a pile of stereotypes and cliches apparently without realizing what he’s done to his movie. Say what you will about the people who made Pocahontas — at least they were trying to make Pocahontas. In his effort to make his awesome movie even awesomer, James Cameron took something truly unique and potentially wonderful and let it slide off into an inadvertent Pocahontas remake.

Nice going.

5. Let’s talk a little about this whole “unique and potentially wonderful” business. Avatar is a beautiful movie. We get to experience that first night in the Pandora jungle in a way that is something beyond movie-watching. It’s as though Cameron has given the audience a vivid, waking dream. I can’t remember a sequence in any other movie that spoke so directly to my imagination.

Sadly, few filmmakers even try to address the imagination any more. They seem to believe that overwhelming the senses with spectacle is what telling a story is all about. (I refer the reader once again to Michael Bay’s Transformers. I can only reference the original; haven’t seen the sequel.) The Pandoran jungle is evocative; it makes children of us, reminding us of a time when we could easily believe that the world is full of wonders. It reminds us of why we like movies — why we originally liked movies.

But there’s more. Pandora is a mysterious place. And, in spite of the pantheistic overtones of some of the dialog (and in spite of J. Storrs Hall’s argument to the contrary) the mystery is not one derived from magic and fantasy. The Pandorans are the beneficiaries of some highly advanced biotechnology. Unlike our Gaia (whom we killed, because humans are so mean and nasty) the Pandoran Earth-Mother is a sentient being, apparently a self-created / highly evolved “artificial” intelligence residing on the vast compouter that is the planet’s biosphere. This same computer system is used to store the memories (if not the personalities) of all of the inhabitants who have gone before. Sigourney Weaver’s character is uploaded into this system when an effort to “cross-load” her personality to her avatar body fails.

And it gets better. The Pandoran Mother has done something for her children that Gaia never did for us — built in cables and interfaces. The Pandorans can jack into other species or directly into the network itself. It’s also likely that they can connect with each other, although this is never explored. (I found it a bit disappointing that when the two lovers got together they kissed rather than plugging straight into each other.)

This is the stuff of serious science fiction. These are interesting and challenging ideas, accompanied by visuals that stir the imagination.

Cameron had the opportunity to make a truly great movie here. If he had left out the hackneyed material mentioned above and introduced a conflict worthy of the astounding world he created, he would have pulled it off.

6. Our hero is a jerk. First he’s more than ready to sell out the indigenous people so he can get his legs back. Then he decides he’s “in love” with his alien squeeze, but doesn’t feel compelled, before entering an LTR with her, to let her know that:

– He’s not really the guy she sees. This is a fake body. He’s really a different species and about half her height. (Hey, this kind of stuff is important to women.)

– He’s been working for the other side and knows that they plan to dig up all the Stupidnamium under the tree. (Seems like getting the word out on this little tidbit ought to take precedence over everything else.)

She has every reason to dump him when she does, and I see no reason why she would subsequently trust him or ever take him back.

Once he decides that he’s really for the Pandorans, he starts killing human beings in order to defend them. Maybe this is the morally correct thing to do under the circumstances, but it seems like he was just working for the humans. I don’t see why anyone would ever trust this guy.

And one more thing. At one point our boy makes the statement that humanity doesn’t have anything they (the Pandorans) need. That’s an interesting thought coming from a guy in his condition. Has he met up with any Pandorans who took an unfortunate tumble off one of those tree limbs? How do the Pandorans deal with paraplegics or quadriplegics? He comes from a civilization that offers a pretty nice wheelchair, corrective surgery (which circumstances conveniently deny him for plot purposes) and ultimately a fully functioning substitute body.

That’s significantly better than “light beer,” and I don’t think the Pandorans could even match the wheelchair.

Serenity also boasts an excellent cast, nifty effects, fine acting, a generous helping of character-driven drama, an even bigger helping of Hideous-Mutant-Cannibal-driven suspense, a lot of big laughs, and — most importantly — two hours in an intriguing and engaging world.

I wasn’t sure that Whedon would be able to pull that last bit off.

I caught maybe as many as three episodes of Firefly on FOX when the series first ran three years ago. I liked the show, but frankly I never thought it made a heck of a lot of sense. Generally speaking, if I can’t follow what’s going on, the problem is with the subject matter. Not me.

However, in this case, it turns out the problem was neither with me (which wouldn’t have been posible, anyway — see above) nor with the subject matter. The problem was that the Supergenius Programming Wizards at FOX didn’t air the Firefly pilot until late into the show’s run. I’ve never seen the pilot, but I can’t help but imagine that it clears quite a few things up.

So going into the screening on Tuesday, I still saw the Firefly universe as a confusing and disjointed place. But not for long. I think what impressed me most about Serenity was the seamless manner in which just enough background was provided to make the story coherent. A few minutes in, we know who the good guys are, who the bad guys are, and broadly what motivates each. There are no plodding introductions or explanations — just plenty of action and unusually memorable dialog.

El Jefe Grande and I were able to score a pair of tickets to the free screening at the Denver Pavilions where we joined the ranks of Matt Moore, zombyboy, Dorkafork, Stephen Green, and other area bloggers. Mine was the only blogger name that somehow didn’t make it on the reservations list, but I was able to smooth-talk Mike and myself in, anyhow. (Okay, full disclosure. They took one look at me and concluded that I belonged among that bunch. Flattering for everybody!)

It was a fun evening.

If I have any complaint with the movie it would be that it goes a little too “Buffy” for my tastes in the end. Also, in the light of day a couple of days later, I question the plausibility of the setting. (Though it gave me no trouble while viewing.) What are they in, like one really huge solar system? How many habitable planets could you have orbiting one star? Actually, setting a space opera in a single solar system is not a bad idea — it certainly conquers the much greater implausibility of FTL travel which we have winked at in genre movies and TV for decades.

A Digression

Another observation about the setting (not in any wise a criticism of the movie): I think we have reached the point where all space operas have become what Stephen calls past-futures. This is an interesting development. We are nowehere near the time or level of technological development portrayed in Serenity, but we can already say with some confidence that that kind of world, or any facsimile other than a virtual digital world constructed largely for entertainment purposes, will never exist.

Space operas put modern humans (or even archetypes from the past, as in Serenity or the Star Wars movies) into spaceships where they can have all kinds of adventures, most of which are “spaced up” versions of adventures that explorers or frontierfolk or soldiers have had — mythically, anyhow — from time immemorial.

That’s all well and good, but for three little letters: GNR. Space opera images of the future rely on huge advances in propulsion and virtually nothing else. How many centuries ahead is Serenity set? Certainly far enough that we might expect that human lifespan would be a little longer; I’ve taken issue with TV shows set in the present for not thinking about that. The Alliance, the Reavers, Mr. Universe’s robot girlfriend — just about everything “futuristic” in Serenity — will, in a few years, be obsolete.

Again, this is not a criticism of the movie. Just a reflection on how quickly our visions of the future are being replaced.

At its best, Whedon’s prose rises to the nearly-Shakespearean, though it sometimes trips over itself becoming merely better than average for a science fiction movie. His heritage as a third-generation television writer shows a bit in the overall structure of the piece, but the triphammer pacing of the first two thirds of the movie compare favorably to the work of James Cameron, and, although the overall graphic style and composition of the cinematography owe more to Stan Lee and Jim Sternanko, there are elements of John Ford particularly in Whedon’s space shots.

This film is, obviously, a must-see for hardcore fans of the cancelled television series. For those who have seen a few episodes, either during the original run on FOX in 2002 or recently on the Sci-Fi channel, and liked what they saw or for fans of other Whedon franchises, this is also money well spent and probably an easy decision. For fans of the SF genre, action film buffs, and even open-minded horse-opera devotees, sufficient background is provided in the opening scenes of the movie and in the somewhat stereotypical roles of Serenity’s crew and the characters they interact with, that confusion should be minimized. A late arriving summer popcorn muncher for those who like action fantasy disguising a refreshingly thoughtful and thought-provoking set of characters and situations, “Serenity” is one of the rare films (even rarer in the era of big-budget, franchise driven SF) that works on many levels.

For those who feel that no movie review is complete without a slug-worthy grade or rating, I’ll give this film a solid B+ for “Firefly” fans. Surprisingly, for those new to the franchise, I’d rate it an A- as a standalone SF movie unencumbered by relation to prior events and character expectations.

(Note for fanboys: Be on the lookout for a scene reminiscent of Han Solo in the Bespin carbonite chamber. “Vest, No Vest, Vest”)

“Serenity”: B+ / A-

At its best, Whedon’s prose rises to the nearly-Shakespearean, though it sometimes trips over itself becoming merely better than average for a science fiction movie. His heritage as a third-generation television writer shows a bit in the overall structure of the piece, but the triphammer pacing of the first two thirds of the movie compare favorably to the work of James Cameron, and, although the overall graphic style and composition of the cinematography owe more to Stan Lee and Jim Sternanko, there are elements of John Ford particularly in Whedon’s space shots.

This film is, obviously, a must-see for hardcore fans of the cancelled television series. For those who have seen a few episodes, either during the original run on FOX in 2002 or recently on the Sci-Fi channel, and liked what they saw or for fans of other Whedon franchises, this is also money well spent and probably an easy decision. For fans of the SF genre, action film buffs, and even open-minded horse-opera devotees, sufficient background is provided in the opening scenes of the movie and in the somewhat stereotypical roles of Serenity’s crew and the characters they interact with, that confusion should be minimized. A late arriving summer popcorn muncher for those who like action fantasy disguising a refreshingly thoughtful and thought-provoking set of characters and situations, “Serenity” is one of the rare films (even rarer in the era of big-budget, franchise driven SF) that works on many levels.

For those who feel that no movie review is complete without a slug-worthy grade or rating, I’ll give this film a solid B+ for “Firefly” fans. Surprisingly, for those new to the franchise, I’d rate it an A- as a standalone SF movie unencumbered by relation to prior events and character expectations.

(Note for fanboys: Be on the lookout for a scene reminiscent of Han Solo in the Bespin carbonite chamber. “Vest, No Vest, Vest”)

“Serenity”: B+ / A-