avaduh

and so i, like the rest of the human population who have done so before me, have watched james cameron's 10-year masterpiece in the making - avatar.

i do admit, yes, it was that good. in fact, i wouldn't mind shelling out another $13 just to watch it again in its full-3D glory.

i think the success of avatar is in its value for money. just think about it: where else can you watch a movie which has pocahontas meets man vs wild meets an inconvenient truth meets mechwarrior meets aliens vs predator meets dancing with wolves meets the matrix?

and i find that the storyline is strikingly close to the singaporean-expat experience: ang moh comes to a foreign country, initially sent here to exploit the locals, but ends up falling in love with the local culture, and of course, a local girl. meanwhile back home, his company gets frustrated with his dismal quarterly sales figures and threatens to post him elsewhere, which forces him to quit and start his own business. no matter what he does, just because of his skin colour and BBC-accented english, ang moh guy succeeds in his business and decides to live forever in fried rice paradise instead of freezing through yet another european winter. in the meantime, the lovelorn local boy gives all his savings to the local girl and either lives out the rest of his life in abject poverty and loneliness, or he just straight commits suicide after the girl rejects him. in the end, the ang moh becomes an elite MP and lives happily ever after with his singaporean girl in some Bukit Timah home with their 2.1 mixed children and 1 dog.

ta-dah! there you have it; james cameron may have conceptualised and filmed avatar, but sir stamford raffles was the original jake sully.