I ain’t tryin’ to backlash on a movie I haven’t seen. Especially one that I want to see. But people are getting a little too excited about this a-here movie. So if you feel like you might be one of them, herewith – a de-hype-ing:

People – Avatar can only be so good, y’all.

I wouldn’t even be all that concerned about it, except that since 1998 people have been talking about what a big deal James Cameron’s next movie was gonna be, that it was gonna be groundbreaking, it was gonna be a game changer. So if you’re like me and you tend to follow movies and what’s being worked on, etc., then you’ve heard about this movie for the last thirty-seven years and you’ve said to yourself more than once “What could possibly be the big deal?” But you asked that in an excited way, because you know that if anyone could come up with something mind-blowingly interesting in the technical realm, Cameron is that anyone. AND considering that he took such a beating before Titanic came out, when everybody and their studio exec was saying the movie was in trouble, way over budget, it would be a disaster and he still managed not only come out on top but have the highest worldwide grossing movie ever – you have to give a guy like that the benefit of the doubt.

This isn’t a guy who makes personal films. He uses his big brain to entertain people. Period.

And then, finally, after 60 years in the making, the trailers come out. And uh… yeah, okay. Looks cool. Kind of like a mix of Aliens and (gulp) The Phantom Menace. Still not sure what the big deal is, but it looks exciting.

Next, copious amounts of articles and videos about the magic of Avatar come out. Apparently, to explain the magic of motion capture, which Zemeckis has been using to creepy effect for the last decade. Or to talk about the 3D that’s been on the scene for the last few years. So… okay, still wondering what the big deal is going to be? What is it?

And the reviews come out, the early stuff, the embargo-busting stuff, and they all say the same thing – James Cameron has delivered! Genius! Game changer!

And if you’re like me, you look at all of this and think “So?”

I hate to feel that way, I really do. I want to be excited. But I look at the trailers and none of it makes me think “How did they do that?” I know how they did that. With computers. Is there something else to all of this? And I get that it’s 3D and that’s cool, too.

But when I think of “game-changers”, I think of two movies – Star Wars and Jurassic Park. With Star Wars, I was too young to know what you could or couldn’t do in the movies. But I watched everything I could about those FX back then, specials where you’d see cameras flying around super detailed models. And I thought that was the coolest thing ever. And it was!

Then, over the years, folks kept upping the ante. Poltergeist, the other two Star Wars flicks, the Star Trek movies, Tron. Aliens. Back to the Future. Terminator, Terminator 2.

And for me, it all really comes to a head at Jurassic Park. It is the one and only time I was ever truly amazed at CG. I’d never seen anything like it and it may also help that since I was a kid I loved dinosaurs. So to be in a world where they were real was kind of awesome, even though the movie itself kinda stunk.

Sixteen years later, CG is fun and all, but there’s no magic in it now. Maybe this has more to do with the availability of ‘how did they do that’ reports on anything that is even remotely special effect-y. I don’t wonder at the huge robots in Transformers. And I don’t marvel when Will Smith goes hunting in an abandoned New York City. That stuff works for those movies and are totally necessary and tremendously well done and believable, but it doesn’t blow me away, ya know?

Nor does anything I’m seeing in these trailers for Avatar. For all the incredible hype and hyperbole around this movie, I don’t at all see what I should be so excited about. It almost feels like when Cameron started making the movie, this technology was amazing, but now that it’s done, the technology is all around anyway.

And it just makes me think – this can only be so good. I mean, these reviewers, it’s like they’ve never seen a movie before. It is doubtful that Avatar will be as good on a story and/or character level as, say, The Incredibles. And while we’re at that comparison, it is doubtful that Avatar will have a remarkably more immersive world than The Incredibles. Or Lord of the Rings. Or The Matrix. Even if Cameron’s movie is really firing on all cylinders, is it even conceivable that it will take us somewhere we’ve never been? Even if the eyeballs of the Na’vi are super duper expressive – a complaint about so many other motion capture characters – will that make the the experience transcendent?

Nay, sayeth I.

What sayeth you?