"cultural phenomenon"....And what a smelly pile of crap this was !!!

Rating: 2/10 (5 April 2019)

Don't. Believe. The. Hype.
How many time do we repeat that , only to be caught off guard by the next assault by the modern PR/marketing apparatus ?
At the time of its release this movie was the very definition of organized buzz (to sell the 3D experience?) : and, sure enough, people went in drove to watch it.
They went because, otherwise, how lame would they look (at school, at work, on a date, etc) if they "missed on" Avatar ? *shudder*
Fear of social inadequacy is a potent motivator these days.
And worse, people then just HAD to say they loved it on social media, because otherwise how uncool would they look, right ?
Get real, dude, one can actually lose "friends" and "followers" over that kind of stuff !
The elevator pitch for Avatar is : Pocahontas set on an alien planet, only with the twist that the natives somehow repel the settlers back into the Mayflower..
Yaeah right, because to get a surefire blockbuster in the early XXIst century, you have to check EVERY SINGLE PC boxes, so that the thought police watchdogs can give it their moral blessing. And for the "wow" factor, just pump up the GCI volume. Et voilà !!!
This covered the main need : ensure that the product was going to be the "movie event" of its release window, which nowadays is not half but ALL of the battle ; the one studios need to win so they get butts in theater seats, sell mountains of junk food ,and deliver on the promises made for all themerchandising contracts ect.
The movie itself ? an afterthought and it shows... Bland, unimaginative, clichéd to the hilt. Carboard characters, laughable plotline, ludicrous (but oh so politically correct) denouement.
I did not even find the artwork and design exceptional (but esthetics are fundamentally subjective, so..) . Still, as "eerie/alien/luminescent forest" go , I seem to recall a zone in World of Warcraft that was much more stunning visually than what you can see in Avatar..
I know that, at the time it rolled out, I was in the minority in finding this movie a signal turd. And maybe I am still in the minority. but I noticed that the trend for Avatar here at ImDB is solidly negative.
I believe Avatar will eventually join the vast cohort of movies which were smash hits at the box office but, twenty years later, leave people scratching their heads wondering "what did they/we ever see in this movie" ?
We are halfway there .
So trust me guys, steal a march on the consensus and don't waste your time watching this movie.
It is, quite simply, NOT - WORTH - YOUR -TIME.