So predictable yet so beautiful.

Rating: 3/10 (21 December 2009)

So predictable yet so beautiful. Avatar does not belong in the top 250 list at all. Not even in the top 2.500 if you ask me. It's unoriginal, transparent and every character is a cliché of itself. I will not give any spoilers, thou the very idea of "spoiling" anything, is a joke. You will accurately predict the full storyline of the movie, within the first 15 minutes. There are no twists or turns in the story, and you can easily recognize the bad guy, by the scars in his face. Having said that, I enjoyed this movie, in its full 2h, 45 min length, and yes they seemed to pass fairly quickly.
Before I get to the good parts about this film, I will just finish of the negatives. I watched this in Denmark (where I live) and we don't have any IMAX theaters. So that sucks, however I cannot blame the film for that. The 3D glasses we got, was really bad, and perhaps made for children? I could CLEARLY see the frame of the spectacles, and it ruined the 3D effect some. The other thing that ruined the 3D was the subtitles. All the debts in the picture are put in to a really shitty perspective from the yellow subtitles, which is impossible to ignore. Yes the subtitles are in 3D as well, but it's hard to get lost the picture, as I can easily imagine doing, if there were no subtitles, and I had a pair of decent 3D glasses.
Having said all the above, this film deserves a big thumb up, for its STUNNING visuals. The CGI is beyond anything I have ever seen, and the 3D knocks it up another notch. The world James Cameron created is realistic, imaginative and attractive. I would describe it as the most exotic place imaginable, without any spiders, scorpions, snakes or bugs. All the animals are big and colorful, and always just 1 inch short of eating our hero. The native people are a parody on Native Americans, and there some scenes with chanting and summoning spirits, I could have done without. However they are fairly short and surrounded by impressive CGI to grab your attention.
Other films (like Transformers) have no or bad content, and totally depend on CGI to have any entertainment value. However, this is a class beyond that. Despite the cliché characters and the predictable plot, I would not compare this to other films like that. Not just because the CGI is better, but because the story is not insanely ridicules, or completely missing. (like in the Transformers movies).
Go watch this film (don't rent it), and go for IMAX if you can. Watch it in 3D and try to get some decent 3D specs. Avoid subtitles. Try to get seeded in the center of the cinema, slightly closer to the screen, than to the back wall. (In a cinema with 20 rows of seats, go for row 7 near the middle, where row 1 in is near the screen and row 20 is near the back). Where you sit, makes a world of difference when it comes to the 3D effect. If you get all that right, you will enjoy this movie, no matter what kind of movies you like. (I did not like this movie one bit, but I did enjoy it).
7 out of 10 for decent acting, amazing CGI, impressive world and great action.