Yeah yeah I saw it. I suppose the 3D made it bearable. But this revolutionary CGI that is supposedly ready to be made? Nope. Made no difference to me. Reminded me of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within with regard to quality. Okay, maybe a little better. My quick thoughts?

* Ferngully
* The Colonel was at times more cartoonish that the creatures. And this entire dialogue was craptastic.
* It was way to predictable. Like I called stuff in the first hour that happened in the last 20 minutes.
* I did not need to see a nekkid Sigorney Weaver profile.
* The story told was not epic.
* Who told Cameron he could throw in music from Titanic at the end of the movie?

Then again, I have never been a Cameron fan.

I think I agree with both of you in some aspects. Blain, I agree with what you said about the story. Although the story wasn’t completely original, I thought the visuals breathed life into it perfectly. Most stories borrow elements, concepts, and characters from it’s predecessors, this was no surprise there.

The CG was definitely top-notch, I mean, the subtle inflections in the mouth, slight movements of the hands,the subsurface scattering on the skin, the animation (omfg!) the whole mystical world of Pandora, I thought it was all top-notch.

J_bark, I agree with the statement about the Capitan, sometimes he sort of stood out more than I wanted, almost like a G.I. Joe movie stand out. Also agree on the predictability at times.

All in all though, finding a movie that EVERYONE will think is truly amazing will be hard to do, I think out of all the slime Hollywood has thrown at us this year, Cameron has really done an amazing job at leaving me completely speechless at the end of the movie.

I enjoyed the movie and definitely think the world building and the effects were very very good. But I thought the movie dragged on when they took the side tour to explain everything about the relationship of the Navi with their planet.

I enjoyed it, but there was to me nothing at all new about the plot—I knew what would happen frame by frame—and the CGI was hardly revolutionary. It was still CGI, which will always be unfortunate in my book.

Oh, and I get really tired of the Earth people are evil storyline. I would have appreciated if the bad guys had had more dimension.

For example, Cameron could have made more of the fact that Earth was dying. He could have shown how desperate the humans were. He could have had at least some of them be plagued with doubt.

I have a question about box office reports for the movie I am seeing this morning. I see a bunch of talk about this setting a new bench mark in 3d opening weekends, but I was quite surprised that my local theater, or at least the one that I go to all the time, only had 3d presentations. Anyone else have a similar situation?

OK, so I watched this again this weekend. This time it was in 3-D, and personally I thought the picture was clearer without 3-D (especially during fast-moving action scenes). I don’t recommend this version. But that said, I found myself liking the movie much more this time around. Maybe it was because I knew what to expect: I knew the story would not be any great revelation, for example. So I was able to just accept it for what it was and go with it.

There’s still a lot of cheesy dialogue, though. >;) Really: I paid attention this time. There’s a lot.

Yeah, the panther scene blew me away on the regular screen. When I saw it in 3-D, I was so disappointed–mostly because I knew it was the first time seeing it for my dad.

I agree that the dialogue is better in this movie than Titanic. And overall it isn’t bad. There are just more silly lines than I realized the first time.

All in all, I take back a lot of what I said about Avatar. I’ll even buy this one when it comes out.