False emotion, fake uplift; predictable plot; good action sequences

Rating: 5/10 (24 December 2010)

Avatar is everything you've come to expect from today's blockbuster: designed for mass-market appeal; a simplistic time-passer with the emotional weight of the popcorn you spilt in the cinema while marvelling at the effects. I watched this film on blue-ray for the first time rather than the cinema, so maybe that makes a difference, but to me you could basically view the first 15 minutes or so of the movie and then chart out the plot developments on a graph.
I certainly wouldn't knock people who like it, or, like the equally simplistic if technically brilliant Titanic, worship at the altar of its phony emotionalism, but to me the film is an over-earnest, humour-free diatribe about the ecological damage we're doing to our rain-forests, and our planet, while no doubt the capitalists behind it are mass-producing Avatar merchandise from our precious resources to sell by the bucket-load. I'm not sure if it's heartfelt or not but to me it stinks of hypocrisy.
I also thought there's an Iraq war parallel here - "When somebody is sitting on something you want turn them into an enemy." Cameron is back in his futuristic marine-mode from Aliens, and he does conjure some wonderful action beats - it's what he does best after all; but if you really wanted to make a film expressing concerns about our environment, would it not have been better if the Narvi had lost? Instead what we get is fake emotional uplift and everything's okay after all bunk.
Sadly this is the way modern movies are going - nothing to challenge your views, nothing to really make you think.