(First things first: You didn't like Terminator 2 or Titanic? Not even a little bit? Guilty pleasure level, even? I really find this hard to believe.)

The Hurt Locker to me has been done before... War is hell, yep, and yet some types are seduced by it to the extent that they feed off of it as if it were some kind of drug. Platoon, The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, Taps, Full Metal Jacket, insert your own example here... It was brilliantly executed to be sure. But Best Picture? Not much of a story, frankly. I think it won because of: a) US politics (while it didn't argue in favour of the war, it certainly didn't go out of its way to make any kind of heavy-handed indictment, cf. Paths of Glory, Coming Home, Born on the Fourth of July, etc.) and, b) because it was Oscar's first real opportunity to say 'yes' to a female director, which I suppose comes back in a sense to politics.

Avatar suffered from many flaws, not the least of which was an at times contrived and maudlin storyline (I don't think a spoiler alert is required when I say that), some pretty piss-poor dialogue and a relatively limp ending. Disappointing, to be sure... But overall it was a spectacle that had no precedent, IMO, not only in terms of the use of CGI and 3D elements but with respect to the epic scale of storytelling that incorporated those elements. It had vision, grandeur, romance, and invoked a sense of wonder... It mattered very little that a heavy dose of CGI was involved because you could literally get lost in it as you watched, transported, if you will... It was a Wizard of Oz of sorts for our times, except that it was based on Cameron's genius and not Frank L. Baum's adapted screenplay. It was magic. So while the negative elements detracted from the movie, for me they were far outweighed by the scope, imagination and the sheer creativity required to execute such a work. None of the other nominated films came close to going where Avatar went, as far as I'm concerned. Call me pedestrian, if you like, because I'd say the same thing about 1997's Titanic... Good Will Hunting? I don't think so...