Breathtaking visuals, weak entirety

Rating: 6/10 (18 January 2010)

Despite all the hype and it's enormous budget, Avatar was a disappointment for me. Although I was very skeptic towards all those rumors claiming it to be this decade's best movie, an instant classic, a new dawn of film making and so on, I still expected a good movie. After all it's a James Cameron movie. I didn't like Titanic, but Terminators and Aliens were good.
I saw Avatar on 3D and when the movie ended I found it hard to believe that this was the movie we had been waiting for twelve years. Don't get me wrong, I really liked the scenery and cinematography and how everything looked so alive, even though they were computer made. At their best, the visuals were breathtaking. But the runtime was 2 hours and 44 minutes. That was one of Avatar's weaknesses. If the film is supposed to be a classic, it shouldn't make the audience check the time every half hour. No matter how magnificent the effects would be, even they can't carry the movie for almost three hours.
Again, because of all the hype I would have expected a little more unforgettable characters. Most of them were just flat. Most of the actors did their job alright, but I felt like I couldn't connect with the characters. Sam Worthington handled the leading role pretty well with his voice overs.
The story is an other weakness in Avatar. It lacks originality and seems like a mixture of different adventure and fantasy movies. It doesn't feel like an epic adventure, which it is supposed to be. Cameron also has an environmental message in the movie, but sadly it seemed to drown under all the action scenes.
So all in all Avatar is an average movie. I recommend watching it in 3d theater if possible, because on DVD you'll probably miss about half of the visuals. Cameron has said that there will be a sequel, but the movie didn't leave much plot for another movie. Avatar is not the "new dawn of film making". It is visually stunning, but I wouldn't compare it to neither visual nor epic masterpieces like Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey or The Lord Of The Rings –trilogy. Avatar is not the best of it's decade or even the best of it's year. It had potential, but eventually it was a disappointment.
6/10