Avatar does not disappoint - what a shame.

Rating: 1/10 (20 December 2009)

I went to a 3D viewing of Avatar last night with very low expectations, and was not disappointed.
Let me explain - the trailers and promotional campaigns have focused so intently on the "groundbreaking" CGI/3D breakthroughs that Cameron has developed, that commenting about how compelling a story it might be seems to have been an afterthought. Unfortunately, it appeared to me that it was also an afterthought for Cameron. When so many interviews and stories revolve around the technology of the film, the look of the film, the immersed CGI landscape of the film, the technical breakthroughs of the film, without leaving time to discuss the story and character development that accompany it, I feared there might be a problem.
The CGI and 3D look of this film are most certainly to be appreciated for the clean look that Cameron has presented. Watching it in 3D, the audience is immersed in the world that Cameron creates. The CGI is clean, and the 3D effects are the purest I have seen to date - but not much better than Pixar's UP if I'm being perfectly honest. So Cameron delivered on his promise of a groundbreaking EPIC in motion picture and story telling. There it is, the end.
Not quite.
Avatar falls well short in Cameron's attempt to actually TELL a story. It is not a new and unique approach to story telling, and only a moderate improvement on story watching. The plot is revealed in a series of scenes that are lifted directly from the storyboards of such relatively recent films as: Dances with Wolves, Last of the Mohicans, FernGully, Tron,Starship Troopers, Aliens (I realize it's his own to begin with, but c'mon man have an original thought). I'm not alone here. Scroll through the message boards and you'll begin to read a slew of other films that immediately came to others' minds as they watched this film. Each scene felt as though I'd seen it before. The dialogue was so familiar and predictable that I was able to correctly guess much of what was going to be spoken next. I began to wonder if Cameron was using Avatar as the medium to produce an homage to the films that he wished he had written. In short - there is nothing original about this story.
It is beautiful. It will likely be considered the "cleanest" 3D/CGI film to grace the cinemas. It may become celebrated by many as "groundbreaking" movie watching, but it is far from groundbreaking storytelling - and that is where the movie ultimately fails its audience.