"Avatar"

Avatar was the Dances with Wolves of the Web 2.0 generation. That's not a slight, because I enjoyed Dances with Wolves as much as the next guy. It's just that the story lines were bizarrely similar: man goes to far off land, tames wild beast, earns trust of tribe, joins said tribe, mates with tribal woman, vanquishes evil doers, earthly spirituality everywhere.

What makes Avatar much more generationally appropriate, of course, is the idea of real identity becoming false identity through the crises of character and emotion. Aside from the obvious otherworldly upgrades, the movie is not too far off from real life. Online portals and social networks dominate the landscapes of our living rooms nowadays, to the point that some people lose touch with the real world and the social existence around them. Why be human when you can be nine feet tall and blue?

When my mind wasn't being blown by Avatar's insane visuals, I was thinking about how well this movie inserts itself into our current social mindset. Becoming someone else no longer requires just stepping over the river to where the Tatanka roam; now, the physical is stripped away completely.