Mighty-whitey shows noble savages how it's done.

Rating: 1/10 (28 September 2011)

You've seen this story before. You haven't seen it in this exact way before, but the story is so basic and awful that it'll take away from all of the "stunning" visual effects.
First off, let me address the 3D in this movie. It's worthless. Officially worthless. You see, the trouble here is that there are a few scenes that just scream out "OMG YOU'RE WATCHING THIS IN 3D!" The rest of the movie is comprised of scenes where there are a few things up close enough for your eyes to focus on, and then literally everything else is too far away to grasp the distance on, so your eyes are focused on infinity, thus sending most of the 3D effect in to the trash. If you were super impressed with the 3D it's because you've either never seen a 3D movie before, or because you went in to it wanting to be impressed. I watched a documentary on sea creatures back in the late 90's that had the exact same 3D quality that the 3D scenes in this movie had. The 3D in this movie is nothing that hasn't been done before.
Second, the story. This movie may have been filmed in 3D, however they couldn't get the characters correct because they're all one dimensional. Yup. Flat as cardboard. At this point you may as well be watching Twilight. The story itself follows a very basic path. And it's not a good one at that. Hero comes in and misjudges everyone in his new environment. Hero goes out on a mission and meets the natives and has his eyes opened. Unfortunately by this point the hero has already given critical information to the people he thought were the good guys and they use it just at the moment when he is ready to convert to the real good guys, showing them that he's actually one of the bad guys. But he's not, he's the hero. So our hero goes out and accomplishes the token difficult task and the real good guys are now suddenly impressed with the hero. Big battle ensues. Deus Ex takes over, and the hero is now one completely and totally one of the good guys, all of his dreams come true and he lives happily ever after with the girl of his dreams.
This movie uses every trick in the book to not just lead the audience through the story, but to beat them over the head with just exactly who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. The Navi's with their giant eyes signaling to you a sense of honesty and vulnerability. Captain Douchebag with the scar across his face and the comedic scene where he drinks coffee while watching horrific destruction, signaling to you that he's evil incarnate.
People, did you watch the trailers? I know they were shoved down my throat with every movie I watched before Avatar was released. Each and every trailer showed the beginning, middle and hinted at what the end could be. A couple friends of mine wanted to see it and so I ended up going with them. My suspicions were confirmed. This movie is absolutely, without any exception, a terrible terrible film.
Save yourselves. Don't see it. Or if you do see it, at least put up an MST3k silhouette on your screen so you can at least pretend the movie is entertaining enough to warrant an MST3k episode.