Film · Prime Video · 2009

Monsters vs. Aliens

A woman outgrows a small man. Loud, and not wrong about the wedding.

Susan is about to marry a man who introduces her as an accessory to his career. The meteor is not subtle. Neither is the film. The monsters in the secret facility are the company that actually needs her, and she discovers she is allowed to be large. The groom's proposal to keep her if she can hide it is the villainy that matters.

The alien plot is noise. The useful refusal is hers. A girl can hear it. A man should hear it too.

The eight

Industry
5/10
She learns a power and uses it for the city.
Household
6/10
A bad match is declined. The new company is odd and loyal.
Piety
2/10
None.
Courage
7/10
She stands up, literally, and fights.
Republic
5/10
A government that locks up what it fears, then needs it.
Temperance
6/10
His ambition is to be unembarrassed by his wife.
Truth
7/10
She stops pretending the marriage was mutual.
Stewardship
6/10
Strength spent on a city, not on a man's brand.

Live historicallyDo not marry someone who needs you to stay small.

Film · 20th Century · 2009

Avatar

The land is not a warehouse. The sermon is right. The body he borrows, and the war that follows, are the part to hold lightly.

A corporation will burn a place for a rock, and the film is not shy about naming that. That is the line to keep. Jake Sully's answer is to become the people he was sent to betray, and then to lead their war, which is a thinner answer than the warning.

Watch it for the warning. Do not take the blue body as a permission to throw your own life away for a feeling of belonging.

The eight

Industry
5/10
The scientists do a job. The mine does a job. The story respects only one of them.
Household
5/10
He takes a mate and a place among her people. He left a twin's life to do it.
Piety
6/10
Eywa is a real claim in the story: a world that is owed something. It is not a church, and it is not nothing.
Courage
6/10
He changes sides in public, at the cost of the unit that carried him.
Republic
4/10
The company is a private army. The people have a chief and no neighboring law.
Temperance
3/10
The last hour is a battle the camera loves. The moral arrives as an explosion.
Truth
7/10
It says plainly that a quarterly metal is not worth a home. The scientist is the one who says it first.
Stewardship
8/10
The whole plot is whether a forest is left for the people who live in it.

Live historicallyName one thing this house uses that was dug out of someone else's ground. Decide whether the use is worth it.