the new AVATAR or is it?

So I watched Avatar..Finally..A week late after it hit the theaters....Following months of anticipation of what James Cameron's new offering would unleash...After viewing countless promos on tv and youtube.....After reading previews of why the movie was likely to succeed and why the movie was always destined to never recover its costs....And finally after listening to Cameron himself declare that he was going to change movie making forever...

Avatar is my favorite genre of movie..Fantasy...And though we have seen Star Trek before, this one is different...The name itself and the way the movie works is something every video gamer would love....And something every gamer would know...Its about making the connection....And somehow, somewhere blurring the lines of reality and make believe...Its when we become the sniper and our controllers the gun....Cameron has bravely gone where no man has before....except maybe the 300, though with a very limited budget..

But what really fascinates me is whether this one heralds the new era of movie making...As i listened to the actress, who plays the scientist, explain how the movie was shot, in an interview with John Stewart, I was thinking it was quite remarkable ....While watching the film however, I lost it...Pandora is a beautiful world...As all reviews I have read admits almost unequivocally....The effects are truly spectacular...But my untrained eye could not fathom the definitive results of the experience that Dr Grace was talking about in the interview...In a technical sense, maybe Avatar is the next gen in movies...But from a movie goer's perspective, is this one really the next Avatar?

I think where this movie fails me is the complete absence of characters that I could come back home with.....The princess does a good job but thats about it....Apart from Neyteri, the only one I can think of is the chic who flew the futuristic heli-bomer plane..But where are the rest?

The snarling general would have been a side kick in most movies...the guy who appeared in the series Friend's is just another guy....Neyteri's would be husband is disappointing...Why was he selected to lead the tribe in the first place?...Her shaman mother makes her presence feel to some extent....And the hero himself is not Worthy(ington) of registering in my mind during the train ride home...

So i love fantasies..and the locales and the battles and the effects have got so much to do it..But at the end of the day, to me its the characters..Why do I love Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean....What have I walked away with after watching those movies.?? Yes, I have loved the New Zealand locales, the Kraken and the quidditch games....But I still remember the Elv general who honors the treaty between men and elves, Professor Snape who seems to just jump right out of the novel and the dead monkey who survives everything...

After 3 hours, Avatar does not disappoint....Its wholesome entertainment and great viewing...But since I come from a land where popular cinema is compared to the benchmark set by 3 characters - Jai, Veeru and Gabbar (and maybe even Thakur and Sambha) - I cannot agree that this is the new Avatar of cinema...

We will have to wait some time more before characters are dead and only technical wizadry prevails...Or maybe we wont...Maybe this is the new Avatar..I doubt it though...Heres looking forward to the "Clash of the Titans" in May next year...Till then, let the cut scenes in video games prevail....

Cheers!!!