Spectacular battle scenes and exotic creatures; plot wasn't bad

Rating: 7/10 (14 March 2010)

I play World of Warcraft and saw similarities with parts of the game such as the Navi race being much like elves, and there being exotic creatures like dragons, and the exotic environment. I liked it a lot because of that. I am big on action movies, too.
I saw this first in '2D', and then '3D'. I didn't like as much in '3D'. '3D' is a misnomer. They can bring forward certain items by tricking the eye, but what I do naturally is to look at items other than the forward items, and they are many times simply are out of focus, so my mind doesn't buy it. That's just me though. They really need to focus on the item being brought forward. There were lots of forward items out of focus. There were large segments of the movie with no items moved forward. Maybe that's by design because it might get pretty irritating to some people.
The best part of the movie is when the hero swoops down on the most powerful creature on the planet and lands it in front of the tribe. The sense of leadership, empowerment and inevitability were awesome. The sheer size of the mining equipment, the robot warriors and large military hovercraft, not to mention the sound with it all was awesome.
I have to say I disliked some terminology used in the movie. I am a liberal (but not big on environmentalism) and this is an extremely liberal movie but phrases were used like 'fight terror with terror'. We know the colonel is a evil jerk and don't need a ridiculous phrase like that to prove it to us. The precious metal being sought is called 'unubtanium'. Ha! Don't get me wrong, I agree that republicans and too many military leaders are too arrogant and stupid to realize colonialism and imperialism by invasion simply does not work, some of the references were ridiculous and caused a pure story to be partly impure and laughable. I was having a nice dream with this movie and then these phrases had to 'wake me up' to reality.
Another ideal presented by the movie is that all nature is one, and that it 'thinks' as one. Note I support much conservation that occurs, more than most people in the USA. However, a government or political party, person (such as those participating in this movie or funding it) claiming they care about nature so much, I don't buy it. There is much self-serving going on with that. We all know people buy a feel good message even if it's completely fictional. Humanity is currently a significant and totally 'natural' aspect of the environment, including all our pollution, machines and military. Environmentalism is simply getting way too overrated. It's on the bubble. Start caring about human beings more than cute little creatures. Certain not-so-pleasant to look at species 'invade' an area and crush the weak and become dominant. They are invasive species. It happens. Accept it.