What a shame...

Rating: 2/10 (18 July 2010)

Like most people, I was extremely excited to see this, especially in 3D and Imax. Once the movie ended, I looked around at my fellow movie-goers, who were all absolutely blown away, and I thought: "Did I miss something?" Apparently I did not. It was an absolute disappointment.
Superficially it is beautiful. Pandora is a wonderful world, with nice special effects and whatnot. I didn't feel that it was revolutionary; we've seen brilliant imaginations at work before that I've found far more revolutionary (i.e. anything by Miyazaki) But I will still give it some credit for the hard work on making this planet look like paradise.
OK, what went wrong? Basically everything else. The story had an excellent premise, but took every wrong turn leading to so many things we've seen before. One third of the way into the film you can call what will happen, who it will happen to, and what the end will be. It's really a shame, this could have been phenomenal with a good script. But for some reason, James Cameron thought crap for a story would be nice for a thick layer of visual effects disguise.
I see the appeal, but in today's world all we seem to care about are special effects. I guess it's taken over the most crucial part of cinema, the plot.