Saw Avatar the other night, unfortunately not in 3d. Its a visually stunning tale of noble savages vs the standard US marines in space. One of my favorite authours Greg Egan has a good review of it here, I agree with his thesis that the story was uninspiring but technically its incredibly good and a glimpse of things to come.

It dismays me how SF movies/tv and video games can't seem to feature a plot that does not include a strait forward projection of the US military in a futuristic setting. I think the phenomenon is very much tied to the budget and the number of people involved in the production, as soon as there are more than a handful of people involved and there is someone other than the person making the film/game financing it, origionality takes a nosedive.

I think this is the reason that most screen SF leaves me cold whereas I still love reading good SF, writing a novel is a soiltary activity and you can do it without a budget.

to quote the guardian: