I won't go out on a limb and assume some of the detractors changed their opinions after seeing it, but god damn, that was one brilliant movie.

Was it as engaging as 2001? Of course not. Did it show you something you hadn't seen before? That's the real question.

The critics have been correct to state that the film is populated by cliche's, some more apparent than others. That's a fair observation and I wholeheartedly agree with it. But which of the cliche's people have been picking out of Avatar, not been seen in hundreds of other films, spanning numerous genres?

Yes it was very obvious, I believe, I pick up on the message Cameron was attempting to communicate. When hasn't it been? Terminator didn't use fancy dialogue to warn us of our dependence on technology, and the possible consequences of such a dependence. It showed us an impressive figure of a man dressed all in black dealing out death for many and later protection for a few. Aliens attempted to inform us of our own inhumanity towards others and the simple, brute fact, that the universe and whatever life might reside there, may in fact, want to annihilate us.

Avatar tried to go deeper than both of these films, it wanted to touch everyone, somehow, and it might not succeed in this mission. I won't attempt here to note down everything that I saw in this film, nor will I mention all the films that it borrowed from. These are things we will all disagree on but nonetheless remain confident of.

Coming back to the second question I asked at the beginning, did Avatar show us something we hadn't seen before? It certainly showed us a lot of things we have seen before. I mean, the final battle from Aliens was quite obviously the genesis of what would become the final confrontation between the old marine and Jack, even if Cameron didn't know it at the time.

However, I hadn't ever seen anything the way I saw Avatar. Granted I saw it at an Imax screen, which definitely added to the level of immersion, but the moment I saw those two droplets of water in front of Jack's eyes, I was in.

Feel free to ramble all you need, and trust me, I don't need to be called a fanboy, I'm well aware that I am!

Do yourself the favour of seeing it in the Cinema. I'm all for pirating, but you wouldn't miss out on the chance to see your favorite band play live, so don't miss out on the chance to see something so perfectly befitting of the term cinematic.