Hey now.. I haven't seen it yet either.. maybe just wait for the blu-ray at this point..

Avatar is worth seeing in theaters in 3D. And I'm notoriously stingy.

FINALLY went to go see this on Tuesday night since it's bargain ticket night ($6!) and my wife was out of town, so I had nothing better to do, lol.

I will certainly agree that the visuals and special effects were done extremely well. But honestly, that's about the only thing I enjoyed about the movie. To some degree, I liked how Cameron didn't do any 'gratuitous' 3D stuff, like plants coming out of the screen at us and such. However, I also felt like the 3D was kind of wasted on this film because of that too. 'Journey to the Center of the Earth' (the newer one with Brendan Fraser) is sort of a good example of what I mean by this. IMO, it did a great job of tossing in a few "woah!" moments in the 3D, and then just using it to build the world otherwise throughout the film. I like a few things being tossed at me. To me, the 3D in Avatar just felt more like "been there, done that", as movies like 'Journey', 'Beowulf', etc. have already done the 3D world stuff in the past. Granted, Cameron did it better than everybody else, but he also spent twice as much money, and came a couple years later. So, didn't really impress me THAT much.


All that said...I absolutely HATED the story. It was EXTREMELY predictable. The acting was pretty horrible throughout. Grace, Spelman, and Netyriri (sp? lol) were the only characters that seemed believable to me. Eh, maybe the military leader guy was too (can't even remember his name though, lol). Jake Sully was just so...eh, I don't even know how to explain it. I'm not that impressed with Sam Worthington. I thought he was OK in Terminator Salvation, but maybe that's just because he was playing a robot. His transition from being a spy for the corporation, to falling in love with the Na'vi was not believable at all, and I knew it was coming!

The pacing was really odd to me as well. It seemed like the entire first half of the movie was 100% focused on the planet, and looking at all the pretty stuff. It was more like an ad for Weta's capabilities than a movie. WAY too much time spent on that kind of stuff, such that I think this is a major part of why the character transitions around the mid-point didn't make sense. All the focus of the movie is on the pretty visuals during the first half, so there's no connection to the characters in order to care that they changed how they felt from destroying the world to saving it.

The language really irritated me as well. I honestly didn't expect that. To some degree, it kind of made sense, since it was the Marine/military people using it most of the time. So, in reality, the language that did make it into the movie is probably quite a bit less than actual Marines would use, lol. But it was still unnecessary, and unfortunate, because it will keep a lot of people from being able to fully enjoy it or show it to their kids. Boba52's comparison in the OP to Transformers 2 in spot on, IMO. Unnecessary, and the movie would've been just fine with cleaner dialogue.

At the end of the day, I would tell people that it would be good to see it just to enjoy the visuals. That aspect of it was pretty neat. Also, to see how far along the technology has come. I definitely don't think it would be worth full ticket price of $9 or $10, and certainly not more than that just to see it in IMAX.

Oh, and seeing it just reinforced my opinion that Cameron is just a giant ego-maniac. There's nothing new about this film at all, just advancement of current technology. Everything he said leading up to it made me think like there was something spectacular and unseen about it. New Star Wars? No, don't think so. Irritates the crap outta me that it's made as much money as it has.