Stale story, cardboard characters, new high-water mark for visual effects

Rating: 3/10 (22 December 2009)

My wife dragged me to this movie, and it was exactly what I expected.
First of all, the visual effects are spectacular. This movie should win awards for visual effects, no question. However, given the budget and amount of time spent on this movie, this is what I would have expected. A new high-water mark for CGI special effects.
The story is pretty stale as others have said; it's not a bad idea but it's been done to death.
My real problem with this movie is the characters. They're all so cardboard and lifeless. Let's see:

Grizzled shoot first and ask questions later military guy that only cares about "results" and blowing stuff up. Check. And he squints and grits his teeth all the time, just in case you don't get it.

No-nonsense sciency type that gives it to you straight and plays by her own rules. Underneath the rough exterior of course, she really cares. Aww. Check.

Slimy company man that cares more about golf than genocide. Check.

Hard to get female lead with attitude, complete with talk-to-the-hand scenes, who just happens to be the daughter of the chief. Check.

And of course, the down on his luck hero, who defies all the odds and comes out on top.

I would contrast this with either of the first two Alien movies, which had many of these stereotypes but did them so much better. You laughed with them and cared about them, unlike this movie.
While the visual effects were awesome, the actual visual design is totally weak. It looks like it was all designed by a 12 year old. Why the hell does the forest glow in the dark? To wow the audience, and that's it. As for the Navi, they're blue native Americans. They didn't even try.
This movie is not revolutionary. Earlier on I thought that the ENTIRE movie was CGI, and they were working on hyper-realistic humans. THAT would have been something. This, not so much.