I saw Avatar last night and I was really unimpressed. It’s (essentially) a heavy handed and preachy retelling of the story of Pocahontas, that doesn’t bother with creating a decent motive for the antagonist’s actions, and a tacked-on Hollywood ending; with the exception of a couple of characters the acting and dialogue was only adequate, and the directing and cinematography was very beige.
I’m not trying to say that the movie was bad, it was a fairly well paced movie with good special effects and plenty of action; but I would say that outside of the effects categories any awards it wins would be more a statement of weak competition than anything else. There are movies like The Wizard of Oz which were visual spectacles when they were released that people are still interested in 100 years after they’re released; and a movie like Avatar will have a massive box-office, great DVD sales, and get decent TV play for the next handful (5 to 10) years and then be forgotten because it is so unoriginal and has been done so many times (so much better) before.
Essay Pro