...and I want my couple hours back, not to mention my money.
I am stupider for being exposed to that turd of a film. I am at a loss as to how that thing could be nominated for an Oscar for best film, other than to speculate that the Academy is populated by four & five year old toddlers (my kids liked the blue aliens jumping around).
Oh, I gave it every chance. We saw it in a stinking IMAX theater, on a screen the size of Ohio with a sound system that rivals any I have experienced in several decades of existence. It was an end-of-day type thing and I figured, "What the Hell?"
It makes Dances with Wolves seem cerebral and fair-minded. I was reminded, turd-factor-wise, of Costner's turd d' resistance, Waterworld. Hey, I don't mind a re-telling of one of the stock story lines (jaded cosmopolitan goes native among Noble Savages). Just don't insult me, repeatedly, while doing a crappy job of execution.
Thing is, it could have been a good flick, but Cameron 86'd everything makes a film good/great (plot, believable character development, writing, etc.) and replaced it with Last of the Mohican Smurfs Do Special Effects and Convey a Really Important Message.
Towards the end, I was rooting for the Marines and I really wanted to see the protagonist and his blue bint stabbed repeatedly by COL Scarhead.
Let us take a look at the final "battle."
Obviously, COL Scarhead neglected to read every significant work written on dealing with hostile & numerous primitives written since the Roman Republic. When the natives get all frisky and gather in numbers, hole up in a tight defensible area with rations & ordnance and let them slaughter themselves against your superior discipline and technology. This dates back to Rome and has been punctuated many times since. Rourke's Drift(0) being an exemple and Isandlwana or Teutoberg the cautionary tales, to name just three.
For the love of Pete, they had mining equipment titans could use! Build a perimeter ditch and wall of, well, titanic proportions. Heck build several, and man them. Use the mechs as a reaction force/reserve, and use the air assets to develop real-time intel and CAS, as well as cover from the local flyers. Only thing I didn't see that would complete a combined arms force was mortars & arty, though they had enough explosives to craft field expedient bombs, perhaps tossed by mechs, field expedient catapults, or davidka-like mortars.
They could have paved a road to the Big ass Tree with the bodies of the estimated 20K steroid-enhanced smurfs they feared would accumulate. Likely few smurfs left to live in the BAT. After the locals have expended themselves, then go after the rogue scientists and the Spaghetti Tree in the floating rocks if you really care.
(0) Fewer than 120 healthy Brits behind biscuit boxes and bags full of grain vs ~4500 Zulus.
