Avatar, bland, boring and unimaginative

Rating: 3/10 (22 April 2010)

I've seen this movie twice now, since everyone is so crazy about it.
Well, I'm not impressed, and I wasn't very impressed the first time either. I mean honestly what does this movie give apart from a powerful advertisement campaign and some bland 3d effects?
The story is good, but horribly unoriginal, I checked this post for spoilers, since anything you can say about this movie will spoil the plot. The plot is basic and predictable and it thus we receive nothing good in that department, granted, the setting does have a cool ambiance. The feeling of being in a lush jungle world gripped me a few times, however, never as thoroughly as other better movies.
The characters are boring and unimaginative, all of them are a single facet, making this into an odd fairy tale world of nothing but yet another struggle of good VS. evil. There's no tale to tell but the old tale of evil man wanting gold from the natives.
Mr. Cameron tries to create a complete world with all manners of odd creatures, flying dragons and what give, but it seems there is no room for just letting this world live, all the things are things we've seen before with a few modifications, the idea of a people connected to the forest is good, but old, nothing innovative there. And worst of all, the setting adds nothing to the story, the exact same plot could easily be played in any other setting, meaning there's no reason for having an otherwise cool setting.
The actors? Well, none of really do anything particularly mention-worthy, their role is pretty much set in stone, and all of them act out a single emotion, till it gets too extreme and the characters seem unbelievable, so we can easily conclude there is no noteworthy acting here, the love-scene is sweet, but bland, unimaginative and boring.
The effects (and I usually love effects) are rather cool, but all animated, I fail to see why I should like animated effects so much. At all times in the movie, it's pretty clear we have a blue screen somewhere or other, or it's simply just a blue screen.
So what makes this movie any good? I fail to see it, there is nothing good, innovative, thrilling or otherwise interesting about this movie, it's not even good in the action movie genre, where the effects gets dwarfed by the lethal weapon masterpieces (or the terminator series).
And it's not because of in-adequacy on the part of the director, James Cameron has a few good movies, the terminator series are an iconic action movie with a better story line. And Titanic still boast one of the sweetest romance plots I've seen. Titanic in comparison had a real deal of better acting (even though I personally despise Di Caprio, I must admit he's good in these roles), a lot of sob-scenes that worked wonders, and generally the themes of the movie where implemented better into a story we liked.
If you take into account the money ($280 million without incorporating marketing, which would probably double this price) it took to shoot this movie. It'll be pretty clear that better movies could be made for less of the price. Or perhaps a writer could be assigned to write the plot line, making this movie original. I don't know why this is a terrible movie, I just know it's got nothing good, so I suppose that makes it terrible in my eyes. Sure, everyone will have to see it, but given the choice of this movie and almost any other, I'd go with another movie. 1492, for example brings out a much better version of this story, and incorporates more layers and themes.
A bad movie for the price, and an average movie disregarding the price.