Avatar's Cover

Does anyone else feel a certain grim compulsion to go and see this obvious turkey?

Advance reports suggest a leaden politically correct allegory, so tedious and unimaginative that it is unlikely to hold the interest even of Guardian readers.

Add to that that we've heard all this nonsense about 3D revolutions before. I remember from childhood various dreadful films watched wearing red and green glasses, which were just like ordinary films except that occasionally a gratuitous Red Indian would fire an arrow directly at the audience.

I always used to like to take my glasses off at that moment, in order to watch the red and green arrows speeding away from each other on the screen.

It was the same with the sharks.

There's also the horrible sense of hype. Bloody George Lucas. Bloody Star Wars episode I. Bloody CGI. Bloody Special Effects bloody Blockblusters. Grrr.


So why am I going to end up seeing it anyway?

Well, I quite liked Titanic. That was a Special Effects Movie where the special effects were worth seeing just for themselves. And it had a naked Kate Winslet in it.

Also, I'm the same age as my father was when Star Wars came out.

Having seen the original cinematic trailers I can quite understand why he was so reluctant to go. They almost completely fail to communicate what was good about it. I imagine that Dad felt much the same way about it as I do about Avatar.

And Star Wars is my favourite film of all time.

I eventually got taken to see it as part of a friend's 7th birthday celebrations (thanks Mr and Mrs Satterthwaite!), much to my father's relief, but then when I came home and raved about it he took me (and Mum and little Sis, then three years old) to see it again.

And I can't imagine he liked it as much as I did, but we went to see the two sequels too, so he must have liked it a bit.

So anyway, I'm going to go and see it. I love films and this could be an important film. If it is, I'm certainly not going to understand why by seeing it on TV.

But I don't think I've ever before gone to the cinema in the positive expectation of being bored.