Beautiful scenery, tired old plot.....so why the hype?

Rating: 4/10 (30 January 2010)

This was a very cool movie to see in theaters. Once. The first time I went to see it, I rather enjoyed it, despite the fact that some dumb kid yanked the fire alarm 15 minutes before the movie ended. Little did I know that this kid had more sense than I.
Let's go with a system ranking I've seen entitled "The Good, the bad, and the ugly".
THE GOOD: This was a beautiful movie to behold. Everything was blue-ish, things glowed, plants leap out at you, and you felt like you were actually on Pandora. Especially since this movie was in 3D. Big explosions, APU's from "The Matrix Revolutions", and a plethora of colors exploding in your eyes all at the same time will give more than one viewer a euphoric sense of awe.
THE BAD: Spoiler alert. Good gosh. This plot was awful. Take Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, and Ferngully. Then throw all three into a blender, take the most clichéd moments from all three and remove all sense of character development, and you have the billion-dollar gem known as Avatar. The most emotional moment in the entire movie makes you want to yawn and say "Yeah, saw that coming." Predictable in every sense of the word, and an ending that will make most intelligent people say "Florus ex machina much?" Near the end of the movie, a character jumps into the cockpit of an APU, jumps out of a moving vehicle that soon after explodes, and lands on his feet...in the APU. Why couldn't the movie be about him instead of the almighty Smurfs?
THE UGLY: Other than the plot, nothing. This movie was beautiful. Worth seeing once in theaters.
I give this movie a 4 because it's not the worst movie I've ever seen. And it's certainly not the best. For taking him 10 years to make this movie, you'd think he would come up with a better..or at least more original plot.
MOVIES LIKE THIS THAT I RECOMMEND: Pocahontas, Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, and District 9.