After a brisk walk around the park just before dusk in the 15°F brisk weather, Mom rousted us all to go out in the 5°F post-sunset crispness to see some movies. Mom, Charles, and Alice went to The Princess and the Frog while Corwin and I went to see Avatar. The latter started a bit later and is a very long movie so Mom spent a half hour waiting for us before walking over to the nearby Dairy Queen, having some food, and coming back and still waiting a bit for us to get out. It was bed time by the time we got back to the house so we called it a night.
Mom says that Alice liked the movie very much and even Charles gave it a “good” rating. Avatar was OK but I was distracted by some rather large plot holes that nagged at me the whole time. I think Corwin rated it “good” although I don’t think he will be accumulating the complete merchandise set. He did ask a good question which was, “if Avatar is too mature for young children (such as Charles), why are there Avatar toys in kids’ meals at McDonalds?”. I couldn’t answer that one.
Keith and I saw Avatar yesterday. For pure Hollywood entertainment, it was a blast and worth the price of the 3D ticket. But yes, the plot had some holes but possibly those were intentional to set up for a future prequel movie.
Those are loose ends. Plot holes are things that don’t make sense and won’t ever make sense. For instance, when did the avatar operators sleep? They only leave the avatar while the avatar is putatively sleeping. During that time the human operator has to do everything human related. There’s simply no time for actual sleep.
The final ground assault makes no sense at all. Moreover, given the success of that against the natives, why would anyone have been worried about the human camp being overrun?
It also showed the failure of going cheap. Had the colonel been willing to sacrifice the shuttle (which they ended up doing anyway) they could have just dropped it on a hypersonic approach from orbit.
And don’t get me started on the artificial deadlines on a planet six years travel time from Earth. Or why they didn’t build a Turok avatar and have it tell the tribe to move out. Or why they needed the tree spot anyway — it wasn’t the only deposit, just the richest in a “200 click radius”. Was the higher yield worth all the bad PR and hassle with the natives? Especially for an effort that’s already gone multiple light years? Which has also, apparently, lost the current era concept of horizontal drilling.
Gotta stop, it’s just a movie …