A visual feast with nothing much else to offer

Rating: 5/10 (25 December 2009)

Avatar is essentially 5 other films which Cameron stirred up and spit out into a wild, cgi alien world. How can you honestly give this film a 10? If you took away the special effects and cgi this film would fall so fast and so hard that Shazaam would have to get out of it's way. I was in different in the end as to whether the humans or Na'vi would prevail. Isn't Na'vi a term for fairies/ sprites? The term "unobtainium" is about the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Why is it so desirable? They say it's worth billions. Well, what does it do? Is it just so some rich guy can have the rarest of all belt buckles? The film is set in 2154. In a 145 years we have the ability to travel to other star systems where not only do we find life but intelligent life. But screw it rich guy needs his rare rocks so let's blow all of Pandora's life up. Pandora is a lame name for the holy grail of planets. We're searching the stars for a planet that harbors life. The love story here is laughable and Cameron didn't do any favors distancing himself from "Dances with Wolves" by hiring the same Cherokee actors to portray the natives. People get excited by shinny things and this is by far the shiniest movie placed in front of our eyes thus far. This film brought nothing to the table besides stunning visuals. Nothing new plot wise, flat dialogue, laughable characters. I particularly liked "Braveheart" going shore to shore riling up the natives. Oh, yah...three moons? Your going to have some out of control tides and the low gravity bit was just an excuse to make everything huge. I could give the visuals a 9.5 or higher but every other element feels sophomoric. Maybe Cameron will get it right in the sequel. He'll be forced to write something vaguely original this time around.