A full trailer for Avatar is out, and the effects are totally gorgeous (if not as convincing as James Cameron is marketing them as--although maybe it'll be different on the big screen). It'll be a lot of fun to watch, but I can't imagine that I'll want to watch it more than once, and this is why: the plot looks, rad sci-fi details aside, extremely pedestrian. Marine goes in to conquer the native! Marine falls in love with native hottie! Marine goes native! Marine musters inferior weaponry in righteous cause! All that's missing is whether: Marine leads the natives to victory! or Marine sacrifices his life in martyr-like fashion!
I'm really interested in the alienation from our bodies that's popping up in more and more movies, whether it's the robots in Surrogates, or the robot avatars that are showing up in a lot of music videos. I'm curious about how the body lives outside the mine. And I'm really curious about the questions involved in the ethics of colonizing and exploiting other planets (note the Red Mars obsession). Romance! and hotness! and drama! can happen alongside all of those things. I just hope the balance is closer to the issues in Avatar than to the cliches.