Perfect beginning with a downhill movement as it carried on

Rating: 10/10 (19 December 2009)

I was fortunate enough to see Avatar opening night in 3D. From my experience it was easily the best movie I had seen all year and possible one of the best movies I have seen ever.
Avatar really shines in the first half when Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) was first discovering the planet Pandora and the Na'vi race. The visuals were absolutely stunning and for that period of time it was difficult to believe you were watching something instead of actually being there.
Unfortunately reality hit during the second half of the movie. Without spoiling anything, the at first unique and incredible movie turned into what seemed like almost every other action movie out there. While this was not enough to ruin the movie for me, I felt like I had been rudely awakened from a perfect fantasy.
I was pleased with the acting. It was easy to like the characters that were meant to be liked and easy to hate those that were made to be enemies. I actually was disappointed when negative things happened to the good characters and acting overall was believable.
However, there were many moments of over-the-top epic explosions and slow-motion bullet instances that reminded me of the matrix but unfortunately not in a good way.
The plot started out incredibly gripping and unique but towards the second half of the movie became incredibly predictable but still worth watching.
Overall I think the movie was fantastic and you definitely owe yourself to see it in 3D while it's still on the big screens. While in my opinion it was easily the best movie I have seen in a very long time, it did have its flaws but they were not enough to detract enormously from the movie as a whole.