Well, clearly I do, but I'm getting tired of explaining why (not your fault BTW!).  I liked Avatar, and I really loved its visual presentation and certain scenes, but in the end, when you analyze it, the core story was totally unoriginal (except in setting) and didn't really offer anything most people won't have seen in other films or read in books.

Aliens felt fresh at the time, particularly as a sequel (which let's face it rarely feel fresh) while T2 mixed new effects and sights with a story that again felt reasonably fresh, particularly in its action beats.

What I find telling is that what most remains for me about Avatar after two viewings are certain purely visual scenes, Jake taming his mount and flying, his first experiences at night, the aftermath of the attack on the Home Tree.  Most of the scenes with dialogue were just faily forgetable.  Although I did enjoy Lang whether growling threats or holding his breath while seeking to bring down those daring to cross him, and call me a romantic but I did find the scene where Neytiri finally meets Jake 'in the flesh' to be interesting and a memorable image - I'd have liked to have had more interesting scenes between humans and Na'vi vs the by the numbers tale of someone from an advanced society going 'native' - particularly when that someone is a soldier.

But yeah, the story of Avatar simply isn't that strong, but visually it's amazing and I suspect for most its the visual images that will remain, rather than the story.

I was going to point that out as well, but why bother...some people have their dogmatic views, so why bother.

Just got back from watching it. Definitely, definitely worth watching. In IMAX. In 3D.

I turned off my brain and ran with it. As a sensory experience it's stunning. That final battle sequence was better than all the "good parts" of Lucas's Prequel Trilogy combined.

Generation X is loosely considered to be 1961-1981. Lucas' reign was from 1977-1989 with the end of the Indy trilogy. You're getting your generations wrong, not me.

And sorry but ROFL at even mentioning Cameron and Kubrick in the same breath. Kubrick did NOT have a "machine-like" direction to his films. You're playing up 2001, which used that style of fimmaking as a device to give a certain feeling to the film, and completely ignoring his 12 or so other films. Kubrick's amazing ability lay in his ability to create completely different feels for each of his films, something that Cameron has not shown the ability to do.

I wouldn't go quite that far but the final battle was pretty extraordinary. The problem for me was that I had to suffer through over 2 hours of predictable dialogue and trite plot devices to get to that point. The movie felt far too methodical and contained many unnecessary parts IMO.

Not a bad movie, far from it. But it's not some pioneering piece of cinema. It's a visual extension of everything that came before it, only more so.

I'd put it on par with Jurassic Park if I was feeling generous. That's definitely not an insult, BTW.

Anybody who takes that as an insult is no friend of mine.

I also liked how the most bad-ass character in the movie was the bad guy, for once. The Colonel was so manly that I had to come home and shave.

The Colonel had me convinced that he was pretty much R Lee Ermey. Funny, but completely one-dimensional and too predictable. It would have been nice to see him show just a little more depth to the character.

But it was pretty damned funny to see him kick down that door when they're leaving the base. Anyone who has seen the movie knows what I'm talking about.

Even if Cameron had shown a little more depth to Giovanni Ribisi's character, I would have let the "crazy military Colonel" character slide. I just thought that the "enemies" were far too cookie-cutter and SOMEONE should have shown some doubt before committing genocide, as most educated and reasonable people would in that situation. It didn't seem reasonable to me at all. Everyone just kind of got in line and watched it all go down.

I kind of liked the Colonel exactly because he was such a stereotype, but he was an inversion of the hero stereotype in action movies: unstoppable bad-ass, walks calmly away from the exploding wreckage of his own vehicle, manages to kill the giant leopard monster, that whole scene with him holding his breath while they were escaping (same scene you mentioned). There was no depth - none at all - but he was almost hysterically awesome as an action movie character. I think that's kind of what he was there for - to provide periodic doses of testosterone to hold the jughead demographic over until shit started exploding.

I think we generally agree on him - I just enjoyed him because of his one-dimensionality, because it's a dimension I enjoy so much.

I remember quite a few people cringing and looking away when the assault on the Hometree started, and even Evil Corporate Guy seemed to question things. The Colonel was the only one who was just flat-out reprehensibly evil.

I wanted to be bored or even offended by the whole "evil military industrial complex" angle, but then me and my wife talked about it on the walk home and we came to the conclusion that, as a story about colonialism, it's actually true to life - every single colonial society has done that sort of thing to aboriginal peoples, with about as much remorse

I think you're spot on about the colonial approach throughout history...the movie was spot on in that regard.  As to the one-dimensional Colonel, I've encountered a few in my life who can aren't too far from him...but the point is that Cameron could have/should have made both of them with a little more depth.  These guys were on a totally alien world, and all they could think about were their mundane existent...  Warfare for the Colonel and Money for the Administrator.

See I completely agree, I can only think of visual scenes when it comes to this movie.  However I am talking about an OOMPH. In Aliens it was duct taping a machine gun and a flame thrower. Everyone knew she was gonna go save newt, but what she did really exceeded expectations, even though she didn't use the contraption all that much. In T2 you had the Terminator with a minigun vs the entire police. Same thing, you knew he was gonna take care of it, I just didn't expect it to do it that way.

I'm not saying any of those scees made the movies as good, they didn't. In fact if the movies were just those they would have been pretty bad. However they did add that oomph that I keep repeating. Something I go and tell people about. With Avatar I can only talk about how good it looks, but can't speak of specific scenes which surpassed expectations. The closest thing we had was the final fight against the robot, but even that didn't surpass my expectations like those moements in T2 and Aliens (don't get me wrong it ws awesome, just not awesome enough). If I had to describe this movie in just a few words:

Gorgeous, but also doesn't surprise and just meets expectations. I guess that's my only problem with it.