If you loved Return of the Jedi, you will love Avatar!!

Rating: 9/10 (9 January 2011)

The movie was very definitely blockbuster; better than "Return of the Jedi", and better than most of the classic Vietnam War movies I had seen, including "Deerhunter" and even "Platoon". "Avatar" literally blows all of those movies away.
There are several particular parts that I adored in the flick.
First, I liked the downfall of Hometree. The way the Sky People destroyed Hometree was amazing enough. Just hearing the word "destroy" means one big thing--special effects.
Seeing the 3-prong approach to the Hometree destruction--first by the tear gas canisters that stunned the Na'vi, and then the incendiary bombs that looked like small Napalm bombs, which was a reminder of the Vietnam war, and then, the final destruction by missiles...means that this is going to be something out of a Las Vegas style implosion...plenty of explosives to penetrate and weaken the Hometree columns. So, I guess that means get ready for some big fireworks!! And there were!
I liked the sixth-sense attitude when the avatar good-guy soldier, Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington) warned the Na'vi that they will blow the columns of Hometree.
After the fireworks of the Sky People gunships destroying the Hometree columns were over, I can see the columns in flames. Then I see the flames increase in size and then, the crackles begin. I knew in that moment that Hometree had met its fate--it was coming down--big time! The tree does comes down and kills one of the Na'vi leaders, and the Sky People got what they deserved..a destruction of a big piece of the Na'vi culture. When the Sky People gunship personnel turned for home after their accomplished mission, they had a very slight sense at that point to target "The Tree of Souls", which was unscathed.
The stockade escape was another scene I like. Especially the way Trudy Chacon (played by Michelle Rodriguez) set the escape up. After Trudy frees Grace (played by Sigourney Weaver) and run outside to commandeer a helicopter, the Sky People ranger gets word of the escape and fires his automatic weapon at the escapees. At this point, the only problem was that their was a filmmaker's miss on the bullet hit to Grace's chest. There is no obvious squib explosion to tell you that Grace got hit by the Ranger until Grace says, as soon as she saw the bullet wound, "This is going to ruin my day!" And Trudy did not even know that Grace's wound would eventually worsen her condition to terminal.
The following scene where Sully takes Grace to the Tree of Souls for the so-called Na'vi's incarnation towards their deity, Eywa, was perhaps the most moving part of the movie--and the most pathetic. Very good scene. Here, the Na'vi priestess attempted to let the synapses of the tree go through Grace's body to try to resurrect her. The synapses light up as the Na'vi genuflect and chant, and then fade away. The chanting ends. Unfortunately, Sully was informed that the resurrection did not work and Grace passed away; the reason was that her injuries were terminal. The Eywa incarnation is like the Act 1 Incarnation Scene in Verdi's "Aida" where the Egyptian high priestess honors the Egyptian deity, "Phtah". Moreover, it is also a reminder of the same scene in "Star Trek III: The Search of Spock", where there was a successful incarnation that resurrected Spock to life.