Oe-ri ta peyä fahew a-kewong ontu teya l-äng-u

Point the first: I am ridiculously empathetic, and I am uncomfortable with heights and fast movement, and for reasons I do not quite understand, I seem to have used so many muscles while sitting in a bloody chair in the bloody cinema that I am now genuinely sore. (Also, washed with adrenalin.) Yes, ladies and gentlemen: I come out of the cinema feeling as though I'd just exercised. For three hours straight. WTF.

On the other hand, there's worse places than Pandora to exercise ;)

We didn't go to a 3D showing after all. Why? Because even though the movie is running in five theatres at once, two of them 3D, and it's been in cinemas for what, three weeks?, it's still selling out, and after queuing for 45 minutes and being offered front row far left seats for the 3D showing two hours later, I spontaneously decided that front row far left 3D can't be that enjoyable and surely the movie is more enjoyable from mid-back middle seats with no 3D.
In hindsight I'm actually glad, because, as barbardin so aptly put it, that was more sense of wonder than you can grasp in one go, and I am soundly overwhelmed as it is. In 3D, I'd probably have thrown up. Or missed half the story.

Not that the story was all that innovative, but still. I had been hesitant to see Avatar at first because the trailer didn't excite me much and I heard things like "just like Pocahontas" and "just like Dances with Wolves" and I wasn't certain whether pretty images would be enough to tide me over a potentially trite/boring story.
Well, for about half an hour I managed to think "well, huh, nothing exciting" and after that I got sucked into the story, and trite or not stopped being a point. There were some parts that I found somewhat annoying, mostly for what may best be described as the American Action Kitsch syndrome, and occasionally for all-too-obvious tropes (did an inward cheer for each subverted trope though, too). Sure, the story wasn't anything you'd never heard before, but it was well told, and in the end, that's what matters. Didn't feel as if the story only existed as an excuse for the technology. Although of course the technology certainly enhanced it, and turned a simple story into a rollercoaster ride.

And Oh. So. Prettily. The mix between "totally alien" and "just vaguely familiar" was perfectly played, I think, from the plants and beasts to the body language of the Na'vi. The world-building was pretty much flawless. Suspension of disbelief total. I bought those flying mountains without a blink. And if the Na'vi were just the tiniest bit too good and the humans, with few exceptions, rather too bad, there were nonetheless just enough characters to identify with. And the Na'vi faith/ explained by human science was a very nice move. :D And Jake was just adorable.

naurring, I had no time whatsoever to look out for exclusive wes or trial plurals or infixes, but the language certainly sounds prettier spoken than it looks written!

So there remain just two sore spots, really:
Unobtainium. They made it Unobtanium in the dubbed version - and German doesn't have "to obtain" - but still. Oh, we have words meaning "to obtain", of course, but we don't have "obtenieren" proper. So Unobtanium doesn't look too different from Ununbium or Ununtrium or any of those other elements that don't have a snaggy personal name yet. I suppose it must be more jarring in the original though, and I do wonder why they didn't come up with a more original name. I mean, they went to such efforts to give the Na'vi a reasonably original language and couldn't invent one stupid element name? Or just take one out of the Periodic Table, I mean, honestly, there's a lot of them?

And: So they spent 300 million dollars on the film but couldn't afford to have their own font developed? I mean, seriously, Papyrus? Not just for the poster title, but for every single subtitle? Papyrus?!

But still, worth the queueing, worth the money, worth the time and worth the sore muscles (wtf body?). There was applause in the theatre after the movie. Applause. For a three-weeks-old movie.
And deserved.

In conclusion: Beautiful. Totally bought it, would buy it again, thanks for flying Air Pandora.

Ausnahmsweise mal rechtzeitig/ In time for once...

... Alles Liebe zum Geburtstag, degu_aus_stahl!

... Happy birthday, tears_of_nienna!