Has anyone seen Avatar? I saw a trailer for it this past Sunday, before watching 2012. Here is a clip from 2012, which has many tense scenes (as well as some funny ones). Maybe I wasn't paying attention, but some of the plot escaped me. By the way, this was my first trip to a theater since 1996. I can't say that much has changed. If anything, the ticket price seemed ridiculously low.
Addendum: The following paragraph from the New York Times review jumped out at me:
Plugging into the avatar gives Jake an instant high, allowing him to run, leap and sift dirt through his toes, and freeing him from the constraints of his body. Although physically emancipated, he remains bound, contractually and existentially, to the base camp, where he works for the corporation’s top scientist, Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver, amused and amusing), even while taking orders from its head of security, Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), a military man turned warrior for hire. A cartoon of masculinity, Quaritch strides around barking orders like some intransigent representation of American military might (or a bossy movie director). It’s a favorite Cameron type, and Mr. Lang, who until this year had long been grievously underemployed, tears into the role like a starved man gorging on steak. [Boldface added by KBJ.]
Note the gratuitous swipe at the American military, to whom the writer is indebted for the comfortable, secure life she has. Can't you just see her running to a soldier for protection if she were threatened by an invader? (The soldier, I might add, would protect her, even knowing of her disrespectfulness to the military. That's because soldiers, unlike this "journalist," are professionals.) Why must everything at the New York Times be politicized? For the love of God, Dargis, can't you write a movie review without making a political or an ideological point? Are the readers of the Times so desperate for affirmation of their worldview that they want to see it everywhere, from straight news stories to op-ed columns to editorial opinions to sports writing to movie reviews?
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 