Star Wars + The Matrix + Fern Gully = Avatar

Rating: 6/10 (19 January 2010)

Cameron created a beautiful world to get lost in. Very rewarding to take in the trees, floating mountains, and waterfalls in all their 3D splendor. I would recommend seeing it in a theater for the eye candy.
That said, Cameron really isn't good at character development and dialog. All the main players have the same kind of attitude... the army colonel, the CEO, the lead scientist, the main female native and her warrior brother... they all toss their ego about until our protagonist "proves" himself to them. Another fault is that the movie is pro-environment for some very strange reasons. It invokes a very pagan type of mentality that everything is connected, everything is one... so we don't kill more than we need to eat, we walk on trees rather than paved roads, don't set up schools, and reject medicine. But when push comes to shove and our protagonists are trying to defend the natives' way of life to the business men who want to strip mine the natural resources... they say that the natives are right, because... they have scientifically determined that all the jungle is electro-chemically networked like "synapses in the human brain". Meaning that the land has this emergent mother-goddess entity that "isn't voodoo BS... it's real." So, I'm thinking... for us here on Earth where the plants aren't one giant brain, I guess the message is that it's OK to do whatever we want.