Borys – sorry for the delay on the response, as you can see, I was busy setting up a new website! Can’t say I think Avatar was a sci-fi film at all but again, we’ll agree to disagree!

Haven’t seen The English Patient myself… maybe I will get around to it some day but I can’t say I’m that interested in it…

And I actually loved "Titanic"! In fact, it remains to me a mystery why most (all?) of the girls I know in RL think that "Titanic" sucked, but that "The English Patient" was great. It seems that for guys it is the other way around (as long as a guy enjoyed at least one of these movies…).

I never claimed Avatar fell into your second definition – love story understood as a genre – I talked specifically about having a problem defining what genre Avatar fell in and concluded that it was irrelevent. Which I do think it is – it's very wide film and I don't think it would be in any way fair to slot it in a genre.

I don't know that that many films have a love story at the core (in your first definition, certainly only two out of the four I saw last week did) but either way as far as I'm concerned, if the writer/director and the female lead say it's a love story then it's defintely a love story; discussion of how much of a love story is semantics!

Anyway I guess you didn't like Titanic? Personally I don't know why I hear so much about people not liking it… it took $1.8 billion, there must other people out there besides me who liked it…

In other news apparently Avatar has taken an estimated $232 million worldwide on its opening weekend – well on its way to covering the production cost anyway

1) love story being an element of the overall plot (very often the core element), and

2) love story understood as a genre.

In the first sense "Avatar" is a love story, no doubt about that, but 95% of all the movies also are… It all depends on how to you define "core", of course. However, I disagree that "Avatar" is a love story in the second sense. There is simply too little love in the story.

I don't want to argue about your use of words, maybe I've misinterpreted them and maybe we are simply discussing definitions right now; but then again you've written "more than a half way there" when comparing "Avatar" with "Titanic", and that's enough for my disagreement bell to go ringing.

BTW, I enjoy love stories too, but I am much more traditional when it comes to "pure love stories". "Casablanca", "Gone with the Wind" — anytime, anywhere, but "Love Actually" and "The English Patient", well, suffice it to say that I disliked them. Strongly.

Ah Borys, if you really don't think it's a love story at the core of the plot then I think we're going to have to agree to disagree

I'll defend myself a little more though – I never said it was just a love story. Quoting myself from a bit further down the review:

"It's not really entirely a straight up love story like Titanic but it's more than half way there"

So to be clear there Borys – I did not say it was just a corny love story, nor did I say it was a typical love story (as you've referenced at the end of your last comment) – so i don't know why you're reading it like I did!

And to be clear again on the "corny love story" phrase that you quoted. The full thought was…

"Cameron has created a whole world for us, so I can't say it wasn't great because it was a bit of a corny love story. It's like saying The Lord of the Rings films are just three films about a very long walk. That's just bollocks."

So… specifically what I said was that you couldn't say that it was just a bit of a corny love story and if you did that would just be bollocks, nonsense if you will. That's because it's also an action film and a sci-fi film and a drama and a socio-political commentary and showcase for visual effect and technology and even cinema in general… but at the core…

…I do still think it's a love story and you might find these videos interesting

James Cameron / Sam Worthington interview – particular from around 55 seconds in.

Zoe Saldana interview

I have to admit, I don't know what you are saying about Lethal Weapon. I haven't seen it or any of the sequels so any parallels there are lost for me…

And btw, corny isn't a bad thing anyway, Love Actually is filled with incredibly corny love stories but I still love it and I'm watching right now!

Cameron in "Avatar" had plenty of possibilities to add weight to the Jake-Neytiri relation, but as I see it, he's really cut it down as much as he could. "True Lies", now that was a love story… with a twist.

To me, the core of the "Avatar" story was Jake-Pandora relation in general. Neytiri was only a part of it. We do not get any tearful love declarations, farewells, suicide rescue missions to save the beloved one, etc. In the final battle they fight for each other, true, but they do it as "brother in arms", not as lovers. Cameron doesn't even bother to show us their getting together after the "break-up"; there is absolutely no time spent on showing how they rebuild their relation. In a typical love story the plot would unravel differently.

What I was saying when I used the phrase "a bit of a corny love story" was that you couldn't simply say that's all the film was because Cameron had created this huge world and culture for it.

I will argue however that that is mainly what the plot is… I mean let's look at it really. What happened? A marine went to a planet to do a job, fell in love with a girl and decided to side with her people rather than his own. That's what happened. That was the driver to the story, the rest is dressing. That relationship is central to film, that's what gives it a beginning, middle and end. He meets her, he falls in love with her, he saves her. That's what happened.

Otherwise we just had a half hearted attempt at diplomacy followed by a military operation with soliders killing natives.

Sure, the film didn't devote all it's time to developing that core relationship, but then again it didn't spend a whole lot of time developing any relationships…

When you look at LOTR, the driver in that film was the quest to destroy the ring, the romance elements were weaved in where they fit. That was not the case in Avatar. Not the way I see it anyway. I mean, if that Jake / Neytiri relationship isn't the core of the story then what is?