A familiar story told poorly and shown beautifully.

Rating: 5/10 (14 March 2010)

Probably not unlike the experience of most Avatar viewers mine was an emotional one but perhaps not for the same reasons. I was in no hurry to see this movie it had been out for months and grossed 2 billion plus dollars already surely if there was ever a film that did not need my support this was it but eventually I decided to go see it. I even felt I was genuinely excited to do so (despite the nearly sixteen dollar ticket) being a sci-fi fan and since everyone I had spoken to who had seen it had only ravingly positive things so say about it.
As I had herd from so many people the academy included it was visually remarkable and a real treat for the eyes but what everyone had failed to mention or more frighteningly perhaps failed to notice at all was the rest of the movie. The story was a very familiar one, Pocahontas, Dances with wolves, The New world, The Mission and The Last Samurai to name a few have all done this story before many of them exceptionally well. Avatar was not nearly as successful at telling this classic story, the characters were all clichéd and flat without any back story at all to tell you who they were or make you care at all about what happens to them.
Rather than taking the opportunity to develop a unique and rich native culture on an extra-solar moon James Cameron opted to transplant an aboriginal cultures of the Americas, make them blue and belittle the aboriginal capacity to live harmoniously in their environment through respect and understanding by giving every organism on the moon essentially a USB port with which they can simply plug in and communicate telepathically.
Mr. Cameron seems to have successfully pulled the 3D wool over everyone's eyes distracting people from deficiencies in the characters and originality with a groundbreaking visual experience. It seems the extra added visual dimension of the movie was taken directly from the characters themselves in my opinion the characters were in greater need of that dimension. I have always thought telling a good story was at the heart of film making and the visual experience should add to that but in this case the I was immersed far more the 3D then I was in the story and in my opinion there needs to be more then that.