Best software I've seen in years

Rating: 3/10 (28 December 2009)

Here's my advice to James Cameron: please hire a decent script writer for the sequel you are undoubtedly going to make. Or at the very least: stop borrowing random scraps of story from two dozen other movies. If you're going to invest 300 million into the big machine that churns out this soap bubble, give half a percent to the development of a real story with characters that are as 3D as the jungle.
Avatar is the most beautiful piece of software I've seen in years, but there is no ghost in the machine. It is lifelike, but there is no life in it. The story feels like it's written by Sesame Street's script writer... at his worst.
I knew that when I went into the cinema. I was expecting nothing but a thrill ride with a lame story, and what I got was even worse. A paraplegic jarhead that still looks at the world like a newborn baby. A beautiful noble savage girl that falls head over heels for him. A businessman pretending he's the godfather's 22nd century offspring, and a colonel who's biggest ambition is to be the spitting image of Duke Nukem.
And worst of all: the holier-than-thou theme of the story that big business is bad, bad, BAD! Ain't that rich, coming from the man who makes the biggest block busters for the movie industry, and makes more money in two weeks than most third world countries make in a year? So I took it on the chin for two hours, being the sci-fi fantasy loving computer geek that I am. And then my surviving brain cells forced me to walk out. Gladly.