Reasonable said:
*facepalm* if you don't have the cinematic depth to understand the difference between broad brush, easy strokes as Cameron uses in Avatar vs the excellence of narrative and depth in films like The Hurt Locker and Moon, to name a few this year. Opinions are fine, we can all have them, but cinema has defined standards and levels as well, and these can be used to measure true excellence, and Avatar falls sure of the high end of excellence. Also, there are clearly plenty of ways to be original, I see many movies do this every year, not to mention novels and theatre productions. Avatar was well presented and solid, and in case you didn't notive I wasn't saying it was terrible, but every beat was telegraphed and obvious. We need someone to get them out of lockup? Fine, we'll have one sympathetic pilot, we won't explain why she alone has doubts while everyone else is a warmongering jarhead, we'll just have her do what we need with the barest reason to do so when in fact her actions have little basis in her character at that point. The problem with Avatar is that it was hugely unoriginal in narrative and very basic in motivation - for the most part its characters are caricatures, and if it wasn't for the fact the cast delivers very good performances the weakness of their dialogue would be all the more apparent. I do appreciate that basic motivations and characters were there at all, look at the awful horror of Transformers 2 to see the real bottom of the barrel, but Cameron has shown before he can juggle broad strokes with detailed characters better than he did with Avatar, and that's why it's dissapointing he didn't push things a little further. He's got aliens, except they never really act alien, more like a mix of Native American Indians with a few other elements added from other tribal examples. He's got an interesting character in Jake, but he doesn't really explore him much. Now if you thought this was told wonderfully fine, but I can tell you that it wasn't as original as it could have been, nor as well written. Cameron seems to genuinely have a talent for broad narrative and basic characterisation, but he falls short of true excellence in the details. I just wish he'd give in and hire a great scriptwriter to take his final draft and give it a little character polish. With Cameron's excellent direction I think we'd then get something trully worthy of this otherwise excellent creation of another world.
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Edit: I know I put spoiler tags in, but really, if you haven't seen the movie don't read this post.
I didn't say this was genius (I'd appreciate it if you quoted my post further down where I expanded on the three sentence reply you quoted instead), I said it was better than you were giving it credit for. By the way, I love how you're changing your description of it. First it was "not bad, but in a way that almost seems worse it's simply bland" (almost seems worse than bad, now what's the word for that? Oh right, terrible). now it's "well presented and solid."
There's this word for telegraphing in story telling. It's called foreshadowing. This movie was full of it. It was a lot like a Miyazaki movie in that all of the minor stuff presented earlier on becomes full of import later in the movie. Nothing is shown without meaning. All of the portions of the training shown plays a role in Jake's survival. *SPOILERS*SPOILERS*
Even the seemingly meaningless jumping down from a high branch and rebounding off leaves to slow speed comes into play. The story about the massive bird (I forgot it's Na'vi name), foreshadows his capturing of it. The failed attempt at saving the lead scientist foreshadow's Jake's transformation at the end.
*END SPOILERS*END SPOILERS*
What you call telegraphing is really planned from the beginning by Cameron (again, we call that foreshadowing, a legitimate technique). Why? Because the plot's purpose was not to excite you with plot twists (in the grand scheme; in individual scenes, of course there were surprises), but to convey a message, a warning almost.
As I said before, this colonialism is practically its own genre at this point. In terms of literature, you've got Things Fall Apart, Heart of Darkness, Speaker for the Dead, etc. In film, you've got Dances With Wolves, Pocahontas, etc. Each of these go about showing the same message in very different ways. While nearly all of them try show you a culture entirely unlike yours, but still valuable and worth protecting. However, that isn't enough because they simply can't create a convincing enough world (this is especially hard in literature). They have to use something else as well. In Heart of Darkness, it's heavy symbolism. In Speaker for the Dead, it's the attachment of a family's tragedy with that of the native population. However, what this movie is able to do (as I said in my previous post) is create a world so real and beautiful that it on its own is enough. It's actually incredibly original in that respect. I've never read or seen anything where the world has been enough. But, he spends a lot time just developing that world, and it pays off.
The other unique thing he did was justify the whole spiritual belief of the Na'vi with something that made scientific sense. Normally, it's just seeing value in the spiritual beliefs, but here, there's a tangible reason as to why they adhere to the whole "everything's interconnected, energy is only borrowed" belief.
About dialogue: You have to remember that a lot of the dialogue in this movie takes place in something other than the speaker's native tongue. The only noticeably rough parts for me felt like they should have been like that (e.g. Jake stumbling through the native tongue, or Neytiri when she's speaking english and full of emotion).
About pilot: She's the one carrying the scientists around on the time. You don't see how that connection could possibly make her feel more sympathic towards the Na'vi when she gets to see them interact (also bare in mind she was in the Mountain hideaway for the three months watching Jake interact) all the time?
