OK, I'll bite. I've just been to see the 2D version. (I would have had to hang around for two hours before the next 3D showing, and I'm leery of that anyway because *every* 3D film I've ever seen has given me blinding migraine within the first 20 minutes).
Good:
*Very* pretty.
The CGI is extremely good, in the sense that like last year's Star Trek, it's finally getting into my brain as 'real' rather than 'FX shot: Beauty Pass, +smoke, +particles' or whatever. Probably the fake lens flare and the fake dirt.
Indifferent:
Plot. There is one, but in the grand green ethic sense of the movie, it's recycled from old James Cameron movies and A Man Called Horse (but without the Suspension). Move along there, nothing to see.
Aliens. They're blue, with stripes. Get over it. They have big sad eyes (which cry). They kiss (excuse me? cross-galactic cultural paradigm? er, ok.) They have tribes and a big Good Spirit. They network (this is not an euphemism for sex, except when it is.
)
Bad:
Bumnumbing length. (2'40)
Telegraphed plot points using 'Neighbours-style' cuts: Is that roller skate *really* sitting on the top step? Ooh, dat's gonna hurt... Ok, there aren't any roller skates, but you get the drift.
There are quite a few jarring niggles, but since they're possible spoilers:
For those who really wish to know, there's a corporate-bad-guy à la Burke in Aliens, and there are huge nods to the Power Loaders, the Colonial Marines, major nods to "There's something moving out there and it ain't us..." etc.
The planet's atmosphere does not support human respiration - but you can light a tree-resin torch, so presumably there's oxygen enough to support combustion...you know the rest.
The whole breathing the wrong atmosphere joke from the Abyss is bubbling under the surface. In fact, of all the Cameron films I've seen, it reminds me most of the Abyss despite the 'Aliens' jokes.
I have no idea whether it resembles Titanic, as I've managed never to see that one.
Sigourney Weaver is no longer comfortable running.
The whole "This is what we did to the First Nation tribes in the Americas, and we haven't learned our lesson" thing.
I was always taught that in shooting and editing, if you foobar it, you get the 'I'll just nip out and make a cup of tea' response - nobody knows *why* they've left the room, they just do it. I had that sudden realisation that I'd stopped watching for a few seconds two or three times through the film. Something goes wrong with the flow, but I'd have to see it again to analyse the 'why' of it.
I have perhaps been harsh. It isn't a
bad film, as long as you go expecting little but eye-candy. As I said, it is very pretty, but that's about it.
