Well, it’s just interesting to watch a film like Days of Heaven and a film like Avatar consecutively. One achieves the height of visual imagery on film, with a hauntingly simple narrative and moving performances by actual people. The other ushers in a new age of visual possibilities, so they say, with a narrative recycled from two dozen other stories, some already copies of copies, and showing the way to a cinema with no need for live actors at all. I watched the film in 2D, for the record, in part because it was the most convenient showtime, in part because I frankly don’t care about this sort of spectacle in general nor about this film in particular, but I’m going to put it down as an act of protest and assert that if you cannot impress me this way, forget your technical virtuosity. Can special effects make me surge with nervous excitement when Jake turns on his own people, make my heart leap triumphantly when he proves himself to his adopted clan? No, no. Without something deeper underlying it, it is an empty experience. Beautiful in its own way, but a completely empty experience emotionally. Clearly it’s enough to evoke a response in most of its audience, so please enjoy Avatar and whatever comes along to copy it (terrifying). I’ll be that curmudgeon, you know the kind, like those few cranks still bemoaning the advent of sound in 1930.