Lightning Review: Avatar On DVD

Is there a more depressing product on our nation’s shelves than the the non-3D Blu-ray of James Cameron’s dragon sex fantasy cartoon? Just one: Avatar on DVD.

Avatar: Three Disc Extended Collector’s Edition

Price: About $US25

When: Now

In the box: Three DVDs, with a load of extras, behind-the-scenes documentaries and a three-hour extended version

Did you like Avatar? No, not the new, bespectacled theatre experience, or your first 3D movie, or whatever the word “Avatar” is shorthand for in your brain. I’m talking about the movie – its plot, its aesthetic, its dialogue. Basically, what I’m asking is, did you see Avatar in 2D, and still think it was pretty cool?

Well, guy, you’re in for a treat! This version of Avatar includes, like, 75 per cent more Avatar. You also get to hear and see James Cameron talking about how he conceived of and made the most important film ever made! There’s lots of fan service here.

This is one of the few situations where it’s fair to judge a movie numerically, I think. Among the casualties of the DVD transfer process I’ve counted so far:

• One less dimension

• 1,866,240 fewer pixels per frame (assuming 2k in theatres)

That’s, like, over 90 per cent of the movie missing right there. Not fair? I think it is. This movie was a film, sure, but a tech demo first. Without help from Panasonic and a pair of oversized glasses… well, maybe you should watch this thing, just to understand how profoundly you’ve been tricked.

Things you might not have noticed through all the awesome floating 3D plants, and 3D dragons, and 3D battle scenes, and 3D Na’vi breasts:

This is a movie about a cartoonish villain killing blue cat furries to harvest something called “Unobtanium”

This is a movie about a man who rapes a dragon until it loves him, then immediately abandons that dragon for a better dragon

This is a movie about JuJuBes

This is a movie is Pocahontas

This movie has the line, “You are Omaticaya now. You may make your bow from the wood of Hometree. And you may choose a woman. We have many fine women. Ninat is the best singer.”

This is a movie about hairfucking

This movie has Giovanni Ribisi

This is a movie with the aesthetic vision of a Winamp skin

This is a movie inspired wholly by that desktop background with the blue mushroom.

This is a movie about James Cameron being proud of never having read or seen a proper piece of sci-fi, ever

This is a movie about… Pandora!

Save your cash, turn your TV’s colour balance to MAXIMUM BLUE and just watch an old VHS of Fern Gully.