Avatar cowboys and Indians

I finally caught up with Avatar today - at the London IMAX and the biggest screen in Britain, so it was worth the wait. After all the hype I was ready to be disappointed but instead I was awestruck. My dad tells the story of seeing colour for the first time at the cinema at a wartime screening of the Wizard of Oz, which switches from monochrome Kansas to Technicolor Oz when a tornado blows Dorothy over the rainbow. We're too familiar with CGI and special effects, high definition television and psychedelic colour schemes for anything to have quite the same impact today. But it was still pretty damn impressive - and the baddies, who had all the characteristics of the brain-dead, money-grubbing, gun-toting, planet-wasting stereotypes that we lefties love to hate, got their come-uppance in the end. Cowboys and Indians for the 21st century - except that this time the Indians win.