Derivative, ordinary

Rating: 1/10 (17 December 2009)

Any film would struggle to live up to the gargantuan hype that Avatar had placed upon its narrow shoulders and this movie, unsurprisingly, falls well short. That's not Cameron's fault, of course, as the PRs are only doing their job. Suffice to say that promising the 'redefinition of cinema' in championing something so ordinary is never going to win many admirers.
As to the flabby mess that is the film itself? There's only one person to blame for that, I'm afraid. It's eighteen years now since 'Terminator 2: Judgement Day' and in the intervening time, Cameron has totally flat-lined as a director of vision and compelling narrative. One can overlook the vacuousness of 'Titanic' as it had mass appeal to people who didn't really know any better but it is insisted that Avatar was 10 years in the making. Really?
If that's true, then Cameron needs to manage his time better. What on earth was he doing over the past decade? Certainly not developing the turgid and derivative plot - I could have knocked out something equally as hackneyed over a weekend without too much difficulty. Certainly not fine-tuning the dialogue, which is clunky ('numbnuts' - WTF?) and stereotypical in the extreme - a good deal of it sounded like lines that would have been rejected from the 'Aliens' script.
Cameron was, we're told, waiting for technology to 'catch up' and enable him to make the film he envisaged but there's nothing here that hasn't been done before, and better. It's really hard to see where the money went. If you want to see a film that looks good with minimal plot then I would recommend '2012' over this.
Cameron's arrogance and insufferable smugness are the stuff of legend and his overbearing attitude and belief that only he knows best are undoubtedly responsible for this stab at fantasy. He's clearly seeking a legacy on a par with that which Lucas achieved with Episodes IV - VI but this doesn't even run the loopy and convoluted Episodes I - III close.
You had it, you lost it. Such is life.