What Avatar is in 2010, Citizen Kane was in 1941: both movies represent quantum leaps in film technique, and both films are about the quest to understand other people, which turns out to be pretty boring; the surprise ending of Citizen Kane is that the big plot twist is as mundane and disappointing as the preceding 119 minutes. The lack of luster isn't entirely the fault of Orson Welles; no matter how advanced film techniques become, they keep falling short of the unobtanium ideal, and what's dazzling one day looks pitifully shabby soon after.
Luke Skywalker vs The Rancor Monster; this, in addition to greed, is why George Lucas feels the need to continually update his movies.
There's one medium in which technology is advanced as it ever needs to be, that is the podcast, which is an almost perfect simulacrum of being a geeky kid who gets to listen in on the lunch-table conversation of people much cooler than himself. Other than fucking, conversation has to be one of the oldest forms of entertainment, and one of the best ways to get to know someone else. There are some things you can't really improve on, you can only attempt to replicate, and those replications always seem to fall short; podcasts aren't an attempt to replicate conversations - they are conversations, and unlike radio, they're unmediated by corporate interests, delivered on demand and at your choosing.
I haven't seen Avatar, but from what I've heard, its about a disabled marine who transports himself out of the prison of his crippled body, and into that of a lithe and athletic Navi. I don't have to see this marine's story to understand it, in many ways I've lived it; each day I transport myself out of the spiritually crippling prison of hearing my coworkers voices, and into a podcast such as the episode of Jordan, Jesse, Go!, in which they discuss which workplace conversations are the worst to overhear.
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