The brilliance in the movie was in making people care enough about CGI characters and bringing an alien world and its people to life in a way that a wide range of people can understand and accept at a logical and emotional level. Most stories have been told and most movie goers have seen pretty much every variety of character imaginable especially if you break them down into bullet points.

The quality of the movie to me is not the critical reviews, its the fact that I went yesterday and two screens showing the movie were both sold out and the fact that they sold more tickets in the second week than the first. They had to rely on stereotypes to give people a starting point, because the whole world couldn't be alien or people simply could not relate. A stereotype is a needed shortcut here to speed familiarity, and these were all well acted stereotypes as well.

P.S he upped his badass female count to 3, womens lib would love this movie!

It had enough blue people, but not enough blue dong.

I loved this movie except for a couple scenes that were just weird. 9/10 for me overall but the special effects make it a lot better than that. I really can't believe how real Pandora looks. It took me almost half the movie to remember that it was 100% CGI. And I pride myself with being a CGI junkie, so that's saying something...

Its not perfect, not by a long shot, but it is an excellent, excellent movie and if you haven't seen it yet, for the love of GOD GO SEE IT ALREADY!!!

I think you hit the nail right on the head Squilliam. Good post!

Funnily enough I did argue in another thread that I was suspicious Cameron had deliberately simplied everything to make the only focus of originality Pandora itself.

However, I can't quite cut him slack on that in the end becuase I don't believe in over simplifying and do think he should have challenged the audience more than he did.  I loved the scene near the end where the lovers finally meet in their real flesh, for example, and for the first time it is clear that we reallly are looking at attraction between two aliens (from their respective viewpoints) and I would have liked more scenes like that.

Also, in the end I am a Kubrick loving cinema elitist!  I can't ignore stereotypes just because they helped the film be successful!

I did note the badass females, although none really matched Ripley from Aliens, who probably remains one of the most belivable tough females ever.

Thinking about it more perhaps that was part of my disappointment with the Characters.  Burke was a much better corporate Weasel in Aliens, the marines were more believeable in Aliens, Reese was a more compelling and sympathetic character than Jake, Vasquez a more interesting badass female ally in Aliens, etc.  I just felt Cameron had delivered far better versions of his main characters in the past - in fact, to be honest, he has delivered better versions of the main characters in Avatar in the past.

I will so though that the main marvel was Neytiri for me.  She worked, with subtle gestures, large expressive outbursts and a real sense of life and character about her.

Great visuals and a truly worthwhile use of 3d technology. Good but not great narrative.

I'd probably give it a 7.5 to 8 out of 10 or so.

Yeah!, Avatar has already surpassed revenue of rOtK, and becomes the second highest grossing film!

Yay! 2 billion and no stopping in sights =)

I'm with Reasonable on this one. I think it's even worse if Cameron intentionally dumbed down the characters in an attempt to swing the focus to Pandora and all his pretty little CGI techno-wizardry than if he unitentionally created a set of weak characters to begin with. Good story is driven by the events and characters, not whiz-bang graphics.

Besides, the movies we remember down the road are the ones that had characters and situations that challenged an audience. I don't see Avatar holding that kind of power over people because once the flashy visuals have been repeating by dozens of other filmmakers, there will be nothing to capture the audience.

Look at what we remember from other sci-fi/fantasy classics:

Star Wars - In a nutshell, Vader. There were many other cues but Vader is just so damned perfect as a villian.
Aliens - "Get away from her, you BITCH!" Ripley sold that movie.
The Matrix - Agent Smith. Another fantastic villian that sold the movie. Fishburne was also great as Morpheus.
The Lord of the Rings - Among many fantastic moments, the thing that still reverberates with me is Gollum from The Two Towers. A brilliant tragic character.
Jurassic Park - Probably the closest thing on this list to Avatar. A story that is kind of lacking with loads of stellar CGI shots. Even with the somewhat predictable story, the characters are still more memorable (especially Goldblum) than anyone from Avatar.

I saw Avatar a little over a month ago. You know what's sad? I enjoyed the movie but I can barely remember the name of a single character in the movie.

That doesn't bode well for how it will be remembered by people as the shiny new-ness of the effects wear off.

I found Avatar pretty ironic in that they spent so much time and money developing impressive 3D visuals and made a movie with flat one-dimensional characters; a movie where there was an amazing effort to present new unique environments for a generic cliché filled story.