Avatar wasn't that great... visually and aurally it was amazing, and I'd go to see it again in a heartbeat... but as a movie the storyline and all of the characters were really clichéd and obvious. But it's only worth going for the sensory experience alone.
The dialogue was mediocre at best and the acting was done better by the art director and his crew of Merry Na'vi Makers than the human actors. They were stiff and boring.
The storyline is contrived beyond belief. It was shamelessly robbed from every [insert white male in new culture] movie, every [insert alien or human race moving to a new planet/Earth and wanting natural resources from the foreign race] movie, and [insert unsophisticated underdogs with weaker technology fight against bad guys with better technology] movie.
You guys act like no one has ever made a motion capture film or a live-action 3D movie before. How is this ground-breaking? The Curious Case of Benjamin Button wowed me over a year ago by doing some of the best facial-motion capture material I have seen, easily more impressive than this film since it involved making actual human faces rather than aliens, which people expect to look somewhat abnormal.
The motion capture in this film was good, the 3D was above-average, the CGI was good, but how does that make this film groundbreaking? I can name several other films that are as good or better in any one of those categories. You guys are overemphasizing this film's accomplishments. Not to mention ignoring how abysmally bad the actual movie is.
This is merely the most beautiful 80s action flick ever.
Killer effects but not much of a story, sure you can call it a great movie but only after you have turned your brain off. And that's not a bad thing, but no, it certainly does not deserve praise along the lines of "Best Movie of 2009" or "Academy Contender."
"Oh James Cameron, you took one one beautiful dump and called it Avatar."
And I think we should be wary of this frightening trend of partially/formerly human heroes that twinkle. There are far too many of them being made.
Also, consider merging this thread with this one
http://www.yahooka.com/forum/multime...20-avatar.html