Saw this yesterday during an afternoon of football I could care less about. Went to AMC and saw it with the Real3-D glasses.
Overall, I did like this film. It was a grand scale epic with dazzling special effects, and just amazing to look at. For that, the film lived up to its hype--except I still wouldn't call it "groundbreaking". After "Lord of the Rings", just because you create a race of people and make them CGI doesn't make it groundbreaking. Same thing with the world. In some ways it was too familiar to look at--but it was still breathtaking at times. Because of the 3-D experience, I did feel like I was a part of that world. The colors, the atmosphere, were all very delightful to look at.
But we have seen this movie before, done better. "Bravheart", "Last of the Mohicans", "Dances With Wolves", just to name recent examples. As JP said, the dialog is pretty bad. One thing Cameron doesn't do well is dialog. I sometimes wish he'd hire a screenwriter doctor at least to clean up the clunky dialog that he writes. It's very comic bookish and amateur. As far as storytelling, it's right on the mark. But it's predictable and formulaic as well. There isn't one thing that happens in this movie that you won't see coming from a mile away. The villains establish themselves early, and it's pretty clear Cameron wants you to think about Pilgrims vs. Native Americans and other indigenous injustices all over the world.
It also devolves into a campy action flick toward the end. While I did get caught up in the characters, I still realize there are some real eyeroll inducing ways that Cameron wraps things up. It gets very hokey and if you're a cynic, you'll resent the film for it. The fact that this movie was so overhyped, cynics can lick their chops at how appalling some of the climactic scenes resolve themselves.
But, the film deserves credit for delivering where it matters most--and that's visually. At its best, though, CGI is still CGI. There's really nothing you can do about that. If Cameron thinks he did anything better in this film than previous filmmakers, he's delusional. While some of the slower, softer moments allow for the CGI to really come alive and you can see subtle things the creatures and characters do that are impressive--once the action starts, it's no different than watching, as JP put it, a video game. There's no way you can pixelize real life. I can't say it necessarily looks "fake" but it looks like graphics. Very good graphics, but still graphics.
I don't know why Cameron didn't think he could use actual people for the tribes. The creatures are one thing--and while they look good, they're not all that creative or interesting. But it's not like the tribes are *that* different looking from humans. It just, at times, took away from the drama because you knew these were just computer graphics and not actual people.
There are only a few examples that come to mind when I think CGI has made a world or character look convincing. "Jurassic Park" always comes to mind first. Because Spielberg mixed CGI effects (which at the time were new, and still that movie looks great) with models, it was the perfect blend. And that world *did* come alive. *That* is groundbreaking. Smeagol in "The Lord of the Rings" felt like an actual character alongside *real* people Elijah Wood and Sean Astin. And King Kong in "King Kong" 2005, the eyes alone made that character look real. Now, those last two examples also used a fantastic character actor to help make those characters come alive. But still, if you're going to invest this much money in a movie and have the balls to call it "groundbreaking", then you have to show something better than what I think "Avatar" ultimately did.
It's certainly not a failure--it deserves Oscars for visual effects. But it's not going to "change the way films are made" like Cameron predicted. He accomplished most of what he was looking for.
But he didn't master it.
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