More a great experience than a great movie...

Rating: 7/10 (19 December 2009)

This movie is a tough one to rate. Avatar without a doubt is a new experience in the movie theater. I left this movie pretty confused on how I felt about it that it has taken me a couple of days to break it down and figure it out.
Avatar impresses right from the start with the amazing use of the 3D technology. Never before has movie come across so visually precise. This really heightened the movie experience for me, and it's safe to say that the 3D technology is here to stay. Director's will be pushing studios for its use to get extra mileage out of their films for years to come.
Along with the amazing use of 3D imagery is the near perfect CGI implemented into the film. It's impossible to fault any detail created by Cameron's whiz-bang movie making machines and makes the Star Wars prequels look like Space Invaders.
With his new tools Cameron has been able to create the fascinating world of Pandora. This is a world that has been allowed to evolve biologically in comparison to Earth that has been evolving technologically. The Na'vi, Pandora's intelligent tall blue human/monkey/lizard species, live in their habitat with a strong philosophy in keeping the natural balance of life and giving nature the respect it truly deserves. Quite inspiring and mind blowing stuff, and the vast amounts of creativity involved in creating Pandora's landscapes, flora and fauna is second to none. The world of Pandora one its own is a sheer work of art and deserves much praise.
What does distract from Pandora is the movie's poor script. The Avatar concept is tricky at best, very frustrating to fathom as the movie goes on and its use to try and boost a very generic epic plot was at times a bit condescending. The dialogue is tiresome and you will later be wishing that Cameron had cut out more of the human scenes to get to the wildlife scenes, where everything including the acting is so much better. If the screen writing had the same amount of attention to detail that the world of Pandora had, this movie could have been one of the best of all time.
See this film for the visual feast of Pandora, it's the real point of all this, it's spectacular and you will not regret forking over the hard earned. Best to see this movie wide awake to as it is lengthy and the plot and dialogue may distract you from paying attention to the real good stuff. I hope this isn't the only movie I get to see this world, it's an exciting place to experience. Cameron has created something truly incredible, a breakthrough in movie technology, I just hope that screen writing and character development continues to get the respect required to make truly great movies.