300 million and they couldn't spend a buck-ten on the writing..?

Rating: Null/10 (3 January 2010)

Avatar reportedly cost a staggering 230 to 310 million dollars if you are prepared to believe what Wikipedia claims. Me, I can't help thinking I'd rather have had either Terminator 5 or Aliens 7 or, given the budget, both.
Go and see Avatar for the visual spectacle – and believe me when I say that describing the visuals as spectacular is an understatement. Pandora is beautifully conceived and rendered, though obviously by people who have never been in a forest in their lives given the lack of dead trees, dead leaves, mud and general detritus. The plants, animals and people are convincing and beautiful.
The critics have been going on about this being a breakthrough in film-making technology but I can't see it. It looks good but doesn't look better than, say, Lord of the Rings. The wholly animated alien people, plants and animals are no more impressive than the CGI Gollum was a few years ago. I actually felt rather disappointed, I was expecting something new but this is more of the same computer jiggery-pokery.
Do not go and see it for the plot and writing. The plot is a monumentally formulaic "don't hurt the environment, man" riff. We have seen all the characters before in a hundred other films: the driven research scientist who's brilliance allows her to be rude to everyone; the greedy corporate schill prepared to do anything to ensure a profit; the battle hardened colonel with an itchy trigger finger; etcetera ad infinitum. The dialogue, while not awful, is dull and unmemorable, lacking any humour or wit.
Go and see it, the critics like it, most people like it, you'll probably like it. I thought it was okay with a side order of gigantically missed opportunity.
Spoiler
Giant corporation, "The Company" (Weyland-Yutani perhaps), plans to strip-mine the Eden-like planet/moon Pandora*. All that stands in their way are a race of technologically primitive aboriginals, the Na'vi (who suffer from what literary grammatologists call the "Fantasy apostrophe").
Jake Sully, a paraplegic former marine, is recruited by The Company to operate the titular alien clone "avatar" originally made for his deceased twin brother. Sigourney Weaver's driven botanist/anthropologist wants him to help her study the aliens and their environment. Colonel Doombringer wants him to deliver intelligence on the aliens so that he can destroy them and Mr Corporate McEvil (Giovani Ribisi) wants him to persuade the Na'vi to leave their giant tree house so that he can drill for the precious unobtainum beneath it**.
Jake, however, quickly becomes enamoured by the culture and ways of the Na'vi and his teacher, a stunningly gorgeous Na'vi called Neytiri (voice and, I assume, movements of Zoe Saldana). Coming to value the environmental harmony in which the Na'vi live, Jake leads them in a final battle to try to reclaim their world from the humans***.
End Spoiler
Expect a director's cut a few years after the DVD comes out where the voice-over has been removed and a bunch of unnecessary scenes added back in.
* Who names a planet Pandora, for God's sake? Seriously? Anyone who knows their mythology knows that Pandora's Box contained all the world's evil. It's like saying "I know, we'll call it Deathworld, that sounds nice right?".
** A quick google search indicates that "Unobtainium" is the material that Oakley use to make the frames for their shades (check it out if you don't believe me). This suggest the fascinating concept that, in the future, Oakley sunglasses have become humanity's primary means of exchange.
*** !BIG SPOILER! Which they unsurprisingly win – I couldn't help thinking that before the credits there would be a screen of text saying "Three years after these events, humans returned to Pandora, cleansing its surface with nuclear fire".