Here’s one of those things that’s a major head-scratcher for us: James Cameron’s movie Avatar, which he spent half a billion dollars on.

We think this looks like the biggest steaming pile of cinematic fill-in-the-excrement-slang of your choice since Battlefield Earth. But, for years, movie review sites we follow have been raving about this, anticipating it more than the Star Wars Prequels, before any of us knew how bad those were going to be.

We remember, clearly, back to 1997 or so when an Entertainment Weekly arrived (back when we still read that rag) and had a big feature about what a disaster Cameron’s disaster epic, Titanic, was going to be.  It complained about all the money Cameron sank into a giant water tank in Mexico, essentially building a new production center there for water-based films, and everything he was “wasting” on computer effects.  We read that article and thought, “Wow, the writers of this are so intensely stupid.  That Titanic movie is going to be big.  We’ll probably see if a few times in theaters ourselves.”  And, you know what, the day it opened we actually saw it, left the theater, and got right back in line to buy another ticket, we loved it so much.

It remains one of only a handful of movies we’ll watch again and again and again (in interest of full cinematic disclosure, the others are, in no particular order, Death Becomes Her, The Contender, Mannequin, Easy Money, Back to School, Beaches, Terms of Endearment, An Officer and a Gentleman, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off).

Now, in recent years we’ve backed away from most of our interest in movies, TV, and music.  It all just seems so silly and pointless these days, and we don’t make it down to the movie theaters very often.  But, we just can’t imagine people will be beating down theater doors to see Avatar.

This whole project reminds us of stupid things we sink too much money into, never realizing it’s time to pull the plug, never understanding it’s going to be a disaster.  It’s like when we try to bake a really fancy cake, from scratch, and all the layers just start coming apart, we’re screwing around with fondant having no idea what we’re doing, and the kitchen’s just a mess not even halfway into the process.  But, we’re so in the moment and operating with blinders on, we put the thing in the oven anyway hoping for the best, deluding ourselves into believing it will be the hit of the party.

Never a good idea.

Avatar also reminds us of Dubai: all that money spent indulging architectural fantasies, with the MSM cheerleading it all…and now, BAM!, Dubai goes bust.

Everything we’ve seen about Avatar makes it look ridiculous:  like watching Smurfs running around in the jungle, only without the catchy La-la-lalala-la theme song and possibility of Jokey Smurf blowing one of the more annoying Smurfs up but good with one of his “surprises”.

On top of that, it’s a movie about how evil business is, how the United States needs to be sorry for using its power abroad, and how native peoples are all sacred, much wiser than us, and always, always right.

We spent enough money in liberal arts colleges listening to junk like this for credit — and don’t need to plunk down another $10 to hear the same lectures during a Smurf adventure on the big screen.

So we wonder if anyone out there thinks Avatar will be a big success.

Do you want to see this movie?

Are you clamoring for it?

Will you go see it again and again and again like people saw Titanic?

Are we wrong to think this will be a giant dud upon release?

What think you?