Saw Avatar last night, and wow what a mixed bag it was.
The movie is EXTREMELY uninteresting for a good 45-50 minutes. I was bored for quite some time after the movie started, and the person sitting behind me fell asleep and was snoring. It does pick up and get more interesting, but it is never really attention grabbing, though a few moments come close.
The CGI for the first hour and a half to me were totally unimpressive, and I had thought previously previously that ILM would lose out on the Oscar for Transformers again, and I'm sure they'll still lose, but they certainly don't deserve to. The first 90 minutes the CGI, for the most part, does look like what you'd see in a video game (such as Final Fantasy). Some of it was actually rather poor, even before you even really see Pandora and it's just the humans and their machines. There was nothing special about the world of Pandora, and it is actually a large part of why the CGI fails early on.
The CGI for the last hour (save a few scenes), however, was quite impressive and much more realistic. The textures were better, the detail was better, everything was better. The characters/world/effects were a lot more real.
Plot wise, there is nothing new here. Stupid villains with power vs. primitive natives who are saved by one sent to find a way to bring them down...Dances with Smurfs certainly applies here. All the typical characters are here. And while it's all been done before, that doesn't make it bad, and it is still done decently for the most part. The problems are that it's way too predictable, and the villains are TOO cookie cutter, and lack any personality for the most part. In fact, most of the characters except for one lack personality.
And then there's the completely unnecessary, over the top, treetarded crap that Cameron just felt the need to throw in. He couldn't keep it simply to the natives just trying to protect their land, the places that are sacred to them, or even to the planet being alive/thinking. That would have been perfectly fine, but he had to throw in specific, over the top crap in there. Lines that only serve the purpose of sending the message that humans are evil and are killers of planets. It's a disservice to the story, and insulting to the intelligence of the audience.
Overall, I think I'll give the movie a 6/10, because it's a simple movie that is handled decently, and has a good bit of decent action towards the end. I think the film is in serious need of a fanedit to greatly strip down the first 40 minutes or so, and to excise all of the excess, unneeded, over the top, "humans are evil" BS.
