entertaining, horrific, formulaic gaia-gone-mad script

Rating: Null/10 (14 March 2010)

did this really get delayed a decade? Why? So they could make sure they stuck to the formula? So they could steal part of the ending from LotR? Hadn't they seen Dances with Wolves yet ? Weren't there sufficient characters in DwW to steal? Let us count the ways this script was pabulum
1. usual sexist, racist Hollywood PC BS. Every white guy is evil except two. Jake, who really has to turn into a blue-guy to stop being evil & the other scientist/avatar, who was not evil but was basically incompetent at everything & really a non-event in the script. Otoh, there is a female &/or minority "doing the right thing" everywhere we look. How uplifting! I guess there must not be many theaters in China yet, since none of the "good guys" were Chinese. There's 6 billion or something people waiting to be pandered to.
2. about 1/3rd of the way thru, I said to myself "I'll bet jake & the evil security guy will end the movie in hand-to-hand combat. I'm hoping he gets impaled on a hot steam pipe & the steam keeps coming out, like in some Governator movie." ... Check! Though, I will give it a minor award for creativity b/c it wasn't actually jake versus the evil guy. It was Jake's mental avatar versus the evil guy's mechanical robot/avatar. Nice little touch. But killed by arrows? Cowboys & indians comes to the 2010s.
3. when the battle started turning against the "good guys", I said to myself "I'll bet the trees will come save them, like in LotR." Check minus! I was close. It wasn't the plant-life but the animal-life. Wow, so unique. I'll bet P. Jackson is blue with envy.
4. Lest we forget the really dumb suppositions, (I'm sure there is a better cinematic term but unlike most imdbers, I never flunked out of film school) how about when we see Jake having meetings with the evil white guy(s) during the day or taping his thoughts during the day. So, what is his avatar doing, napping? "Hey, wake up blue dude. It's 2 in the afternoon." Oh, maybe he did most of it at night? Right, the guy lived on 2 hrs sleep/day.
And then there's the idea that the indigenous blueies, who are supposed to be the paragon of simple virtues, who innately understand good versus evil, real versus fake, etc. will open their arms and take as one of their own a freakin avatar, a dreamwalker. The blue chief-to-be, you know, one of the ones who came over from DwW, said it correctly early on ... "he's a demon in a fake body." that is exactly right. The blue paragons of virtue would have accepted him about as much as they would have accepted having a McDonalds built at the foot of their hometree. Crikey.
Random thought ... Will G Ribisi win Best Facial Tics in 3 sec appearances Oscar?