In defense of Avatar

Normally I would be doing a character of the week right now, but as I saw Avatar last night and then read or watched all kinds of negative reviews on it today, I thought I would give my opinion of the film.

Many of the reviews basically saw that although the film has some stunning visuals, it's story is derivative of films ranging from Dances with Wolves to Ferngully (which is entirely true by the way). In my opinion however, this misses the point.

The point of a story is to bring the audience in and keep them engaged, something that for me and my twelve-year-old daughter, Avatar definitely succeeded in.

Deciding whether or not a film has value in the big picture is tricky. Watching the film I definitely saw many aspects of earlier SF films that I had seen as a kid, but the thing I try to keep in mind is that films like Avatar are the ones that SF writers 20 years from now will have seen in their youth. People say this film doesn't say anything new, but they forget that to take into account that it is speaking to a new generation of fans.

In the end, I found the film a good way to pass an afternoon, but for my daughter, it said some new things, and it will be these kids, who in 10 years will really be able to tell us if the film was a classic or not.