Humodour

I love American conspiracy theorists.

Actually, most Americans do want universal healthcare - or what some of the more hard-core Libertarians like you like to call "socialist healthcare". You can look up various polls on it by companies like Rassmussen, Gallup, ABC, etc.

That's just rude: there's been a lot of thoughtful and interesting comments in this thread besides the whining and trolling from certain members. Indeed the general consensus from people who've seen it has been "it's awesome". Did you miss this?

That's not terribly difficult.

Are you colourblind?

Preachy is exactly the opposite of what it actually is. The story and its basic morals are there, and you can take them or leave them. And it's certainly not about advanced nations being evil incarnate, since there was quite an internal struggle within the human camp, and indeed it's that human faction who save the natives in the end. Points for trying, but either go see it or quit your fallacious whining. I'm waiting for something negative to be posted about this movie by somebody who has actually seen it.

Same.

I've always thought it slight insane that people in Scandinavian countries get welfare for free (i.e. don't have to prove they are job seeking). Unemployment compensation as Guard Dog calls it makes a hell of a lot more sense. But overall I agree with you strongly.

Ignorant falsehoods spread by someone who knows nothing about the movie, hasn't seen it, and doesn't plan to.

Kids working part-time as casuals here earn more per week than welfare provides, and to get welfare you need to prove you're actively jobseeking. Maybe something in your country needs to be changed. Welfare here really is the bare minimum necessary to survive: food, rent, and bills (AFAIK). Then again minimum wage here is also double that in America (which is partly due to things like purchasing parity and exchange rate, but it's still quite a gap). So I think that the problems you describe are symptomatic of problems in the structure of welfare in America, rather than problems with welfare outright. That's not to say that we don't have dole bludgers here: it's just hard to be one, and it's not something you'd ever aspire to or think "gee, that sounds easy, I'll cruise on that" unless you were the lowest of the low.

True, but rumors of her drug use and her death being cardiac arrest lead me to the assumption of coke, which can cause cardiac arrest on first use... unlike those other 'drugs'. I guess thats why theres that saying about assumptions... Fair enough. "Drugs are bad" is a just blanket statement which pisses me off (though slightly less so when you allude to South Park by adding 'mmmkay'). Some drugs are good, some drugs are just drugs, and some are bad (coke, heroin, ether). Edit: And RIP. It's sad, but we haven't quite perfected modern medicine yet. People still (very very rarely) die under anaesthesia during surgery (as simple as dental) for example.

Didn't they have similar complaints about FFXII? And they said the same thing about Final Fantasy 1.

That's one of the main problems I have with egotists like taks who whine about taxes being 'coercion'.

"Drugs are bad" such as caffeine, alcohol, propofol, etc.

I don't know why I'm even replying to you of all people, but you are posting this on the message board for a video game developer who makes highly specialized cult video games. Wake up and smell your breath. It stinks of nerd. Anyway, the backlash on this started three months before the first poster even came out. Every review of this movie that has come out contains either 'believe the hype' or 'don't believe the hype', whether it's an online review or a newspaper/television review. Maybe it's because I'm an animator and I subscribe to things like SFX and 3D World, but I don't remember it being mentioned in those, and even then, this movie had more hype than Lord of the Rings, The Dark Knight and Star Trek combined. If you don't follow movie news, sure. But anyone who did will have been beaten to death with it. I heard about The Dark Knight and LOTR all the time. I heard about Avatar only once when my nerdy friend started going on about a hot blue alien chick. Even then I thought he was referring to Mass Effect, but in hindsight... I can sure as **** guarantee this movie was less hyped than LOTR or Dark Knight and I don't even know what movie you're referring to when you mention Star Trek. Maybe your graphics design circle is just overexposed to this sort of stuff. Frankly that's a far more logical conclusion.

I promptly un-doom myself with a flask of Doom-B-Gone. Critical failure! Doom explodes all over the place, pouring out of the flask.

PS3 is actually doing extremely well atm (I acknowledge it was stagnant at some points in the past), and that was before this Final Fantasy release.

Such as police, roads, military and whatnot?

No, it's part of a social contract: you want society's protections and benefits, you contribute in the form of taxes. You don't, you go live by yourself in the hills or move to a lawless country or something.

This whole 3D push - could somebody who has actually seen it in 3D say if it actually makes a difference, looks better?

What game is that? Looks interesting.

The evil powers interpret the humming of Rammstein songs as a mating ritual and act accordingly.

I thought about this, and at the end of it I just don't agree (that it's political - I'm not actively disagreeing with you). You've got a set of people who are obviously sentient, civilised and intelligent, and they are being oppressed by a mixed group of ruthless humans who value profit over human rights. These humans then set about actively destroying the homes of the aforementioned sentients and murdering them without a second thought. How is this anything but evil? It hardly seems political to me and were we to compare it to any political entity these days, China springs to mind with it's ruthless authoritarian capitalism rather than the liberal capitalism of the West which is kept in check by human rights empowering democracies.

His accent? I don't get it? He's Australian, and his accent is roughly Australian... Whaddaya mean 'slipped'? I think at times he tried to sound neutral which made him sound Irish. Some of us are also "old" and jaded. I haven't felt that awed about any film since I was 25 or so. There came a point where that type of cinema wonder/awe/'epic, man!' just wasn't possible anymore, no matter how good I think a film was. It's like crush vs. love...I can't crush on movies these days. Thus, I *will* be thinking about how they did the CGI/motion capture, even tho I'm not a animation student. Sad for me, I guess. I personally am not trying to pan the movie sight unseen...but I know myself fairly well and what I like these days and I just have doubts whether *I'll* think Avatar is a "masterpiece." If it wasn't Cameron I wouldn't even think about going. After all, I seriously thought I wouldn't like Titanic, but turned out I thought it pretty watchable even w/all the mushy stuff. heh Cameron's never been good with dialogue, but he does know how to make a spectacle. Wish he didn't have to spend 400million to do it tho. At this point all I can suggest is that you stop posting about how you don't think you'll like it but you'll see it anyway and just bloodywell go see it. No offence. Me personally, I went and saw this film having not heard about any of the hype (I don't watch TV and don't visit McDonald's so that seems a good way to avoid advertising these days) and expecting a 1.5 hour cheesy action movie about aliens having sex. I was surprised. To clarify the cost: he spent $237 million on the movie, then somebody had a $150 million advertising spree. This movie is cheaper than the newest Harry Potter, Spiderman 3, and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (even after marketing/advertising is considered).