Great special effects mask a lame, cliché' filled plot

Rating: 5/10 (29 March 2011)

Okay... let's take it from the top.
The movie opens with some fairly direct and uninspiring narration. (Cliche count: 1) An ex-marine who's lost the use of his legs, and his twin brother, get sent to another planet for a fresh start. The planet Pandora contains some incredibly valuable resource that makes it worth the time and energy everyone expends to get there. There's an indigenous population that lives on top of a major deposit of this rare resource. (Cliche count: 2)
The Avatar program puts people's minds in the bodies of half-alien, half-human hybrids to better relate to the natives. Our hero is one of these people, and instantly goes bonkers-happy at being able to use his legs again. (Cliche count: 3)
The other characters include a nerdy little buddy who's excited about everything. (Cliche count: 4) The base commander, who's an irrepressible douche because he's a hardened marine with no emotion. (Cliche count: 5) There's lead scientist lady who's a bitch outwardly, but a bleeding-heart liberal inwardly. Not sure that's a cliché yet, so we'll let that slide. There's the hot, tough fighter pilot chick who says stuff like "five by five" and shows off cleavage at every possible opportunity. (Cliche count: 6)
Now here's where the movie really gets moving. Our hero, in his Avatar body, stumbles across a great big monster that makes him run away and get lost in the jungle. (Cliche count: 7) Where he is alone, unarmed, and is being watched by the natives. One of them takes aim at him with a bow and arrow, but decides to spare his life because a dandelion puff lands on the end of her bow. So, instead, she saves him from death, then treats him like garbage because he's an outsider who doesn't know the ways of the forest. (Cliche count: 8) She takes him back to her village. (Cliche count: 9) There, he finds out that she's the chief's daughter. (Cliche count:10) And she is next in line to be high priestess like her mother. (Cliche count:11) Her betrothed is an insufferable jackass to the outsider, and wants to kill him immediately, (Cliche count:12) but her mother intercedes and says that she must show him the ways of the tribe so he will understand them better. (Cliche count:13)
Well, when our hero wakes up, the General wants him to use his in to get Intel, the scientists want him to use his in to improve relations, and the annoying, one-dimensional corporate ass who runs the operation wants to just bulldoze the natives to grab his valuable rocks. (Cliche count: 14)
Ooookay... that takes us through the first 25 minutes. Only two hours more to go!! And it goes on like this. I invite you to watch this movie with a notepad and pen, and count the clichés. I cannot understand why this movie is so amazingly acclaimed. It it because it fills a plot we've already seem before with extraordinarily expensive, stunning visuals?
Anyway, I'm gonna rush through to the end here. Hero learns the way of the tribe, recreates the fairy sex scene from Ferngully, lands the chief's daughter, then tells them they have to leave as the bulldozers are on the way, they try to kill him, the marines try to kill him, the scientists try to help him. They end up in a cell, the pilot chick busts them out, Sigourney Weaver dies. They go back to the tribe, our hero bags and tames some giant pteradactle and earns their respect enough to lead the various clans in an epic battle against the evil humans... of which, he is one.
They fight. It looks pretty. The Marines lose. Our hero gets transferred into the body of his avatar permanently. He likes it. Everything works out fine for everyone...
Except the human beings.
My cliché counter explodes. The End.