Gigantic waste of money on a poor story and rotten dialogue

Rating: 5/10 (1 January 2010)

It's an eternal rule of film-making that the story-arc must be powerful and the lead roles believable for any movie to make it into the top few hundred of all time. On this basis, Avatar will be quickly forgotten. The story is hackneyed and the dialogue is bland and delivered without much conviction. Director James Cameron has to take the entire responsibility for this failure, since he takes sole credit for the script. The special effects and photography and costumes are mind-boggling in 3-D, which is why the picture is watchable, but they will not combine to thrust the picture into legend. The gigantic budget of the movie could easily have gone towards dozens of engaging little films such as Juno or Once, allowing many writers and directors to get on to the big screen. One point that is key for me: Avatar breaks every single rule laid down by the Dogma Film movement(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogme_95) that has produced so many excellent low-budget cinema experiences.