Important message with a flawed execution

Rating: 7/10 (28 March 2010)

Avatar is a hard movie to review, mostly because I don't think it's supposed to be a movie at all, mostly a vessel, a shiny eye-catching carrier pigeon.
Reading through reviews here and over the internet 2-3 themes repeat on and on: visually great but poor story ; entertaining but it's a rip-off of other movies ; not original, big hype, shallow... etc This is a good example of linear thinking. The people who have seen Dances with wolves rightly say it's a rip-off, and a poor one at that, while missing the point, that most kids alive today haven't seen it! Those who rate it as a great action movie with a passable story forget that while being entertained they have also been slipped a mickey. The story is simplistic, it is a rip-off but it has a simple point to make and it has to boil it down so that everybody gets it, no matter their cultural background or how educated they are.
The point of Avatar is to get a message to as many people as possible, same as was the case with The Matrix. It is made as a blockbuster with over the top budget and CGI so that people go see it!!! If Cameron had made another Dances with wolves or packaged the message in a different story but with similar depth not even a quarter of the people (who saw Avatar) would have seen it.
This is sadly the sad state of affairs which people refuse to acknowledge: if you want to get a message across to as many people as possible you need to package it as a blockbuster and market it as such, otherwise it remains an unseen and forgotten masterpiece.
I rate it 8/10 for the poor delivery of the message in some aspects, boiling it down is not the issue, the issue is the points it's making, some of the message gets lost in poorly chosen metaphors that the average moviegoer simply won't get and will explain away in different ways. The "in your face, stupid" approach is not a flaw of the movie, it's the essence of it, it is made so that kids in Bangladesh "get it" as much as an university graduate gets it.