Salvation from Clash of the Avatars

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Just watched this again last night on DVD after having seen it once in theaters. Not a bad movie, but not great by any stretch of the imagination. Was a good effects laden, spectacle, summer blockbuster action movie. Had some interesting themes and ideas running through it. Like the whole moon (Since Pandora is in orbit of a larger body in the background) seems to be a large biological network.. Hopefully they will expand on this in the sequel(s)

I just didn't find this movie to be the best thing since sliced bread, like everyone and everything seemed to be trying to convince me it was. By all the hype I expected there to be a sequence at the beginning where James Cameron would demonstrate walking on water.

Clash of the Titans

Now, I'm just old enough to have seen the original when it came out. And by the same token, have a fuzzy enough memory to think that the original was pretty good (It's not.. I got a copy for $5 and had to shut it off.. I don't do that often.. )This re-imagining was.. well again I liked the cast, and the effects and stuff was good. But the movie is basically 3 set pieces.. The Scorpions, The Medusa and the Kraken. And they had to find a way to wrap a story / movie around them. If memory serves the same thing that happened with Mission Impossible 2. The Medusa was a great sequence, and so was the Kraken. And so much more could have been done.

Altogether another good FX movie, summer, popcorn flick. Just don't think about it too hard.

Terminator : Salvation

Well.. After all the crap that seems to get said for T3: Rise of the Machines. This should have been off the hook. But, it wasn't. Again.. great FX. Loved the Cycle bots. The movie comes off better when you think about it from Sams perspective, as a half human cyborg struggling with his new identity. I just wish we could finally get the movie we all want to see.

The war with the rise of the machines.. Tanks, A-10s, wheres the fight?? We never seem to see much. It's like humanity just rolled over and quit. I know, there was supposed to be nukes everywhere. But, really.. Wheres the fight?? They had A-10s in this movie, choppers.. There has to be stuff around still. They even had s sub..

The Resistance.. Wheres the old WW2 style resistance fight against the machines than?? Not so much an action movie. But an espionage style, infiltration and stealth movie. The sense that was invoked from the future scenes from T1 over 20 years ago.


In the end we got 3 movies with Sam Worthington who seems to have come out of nowhere. I like him, look forward to his next movie. Since the fade of Van Damme, Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Diesel (Who never seemed to take off) we don't have a big bankable action star. I'd love to see Jason Statham get more to do.. But hopefully Sam will keep coming. And not a Transporter 4. One was enough..

Anyway, 3 movies which could have used some more depth. Of the 3, Avatar would have the most. With the global biological network, they have a lot to work with. And hopefully the sequels will be better. And not just better FX and more shooting. How about more story and more character development. More Drama and a little less action.