Reality Check: 'Jurassic Park' More Convincing Than 'Avatar'

From my “Avatar” review:

“Steven Spielberg’s sixteen year-old dinosaurs are light years ahead of “Avatar” in the reality department.”

Cameron might have used more terabytes, megabytes, spiderbytes, or whateverbytes to create the Na’vi and the paradise planet of Pandora than Steven Spielberg ever dreamed possible in 1993, but in the convincing me this is real department — in the convincing me this is not computer generated department — “Jurassic Park” blows “Avatar” away. Peter Jackson’s Kong and Gollum are also light years ahead of “Avatar.”

The Na’vi look animated. They absolutely look computer generated, and so does their planet. You might think the difference is that Spielberg and Jackson mixed their digital creatures into the real organic world, but so did Cameron in a number of scenes and still … never for a single moment did “Avatar” convince me it was anything more than a garishly colored, computer-animated creation.