I live in a slightly rural area and FINALLY saw this last night.
I can't say how bad I thought it was. Just absurd. Most overhyped fall short type movie since Waterworld, which I kinda liked better. And the special effects were just not that special.
Granted I didn't get to see it in 3D, but maybe that's good.
I can understand someone complaining about the lack of originality of the story, bit to complain about the visuals seams out of left field. What exactly was bad about them?
And seeing that you have a star wars prequel avatar, do you think the star wars prequels were better films than avatar?
Also I need to ask, did you go into the theater looking to hate the movie, or did you go in with an open mind?
Let me explain. First I went in expecting to loooovvvveee the movie, which may be part of the problem. I heard stuff like "Will change movies forever".
The visuals were good. Very good. I was just expecting visuals I had never seen, and I just can't say that I think that the cgi was that much better than say the dinos of Jurassic Park, or the clones, droids, space battles, Yoda, etc of Star Wars, or the Matrix stuff, and that was years ago. I'd say it might be a toe step forward, but not much more than that.
I definitely thought all Star Wars was much better.
But let me go into some depth
SPOILER ALERT.
It's a sci fi film, so I will try to get by the interstellar travel 154 years from now. I'll allow for the 5 years of cryogenic hybernation. I'll even go so far as to allow for combining dna from humans and aliens successfully, even though currently scientists find it more likely to combine dna from a human and a cucumber, but now we're pushing it. I'll even allow for the avatar technology. I'll even go so along with the huge brain of a planet that's interconnected.
However I'm a little tired of these disguised no war for oil films where the evil military is evil just cause it's evil, and in 154 years we will be even less culturally and sentient rights sensitive than we are now.
I won't go along with a people essentially in the stone age successfully fighting modern weaponry 154 years in the future. Not only are they stone age...they're pre-agricultural, yet we have nothing that they could want. Oh gee. Let's see. We have traveled to your planet, can recreate things that look like you in a pod, have weapons way way stronger than yours, but we can't possibly have anything they want.
I also don't buy this whole "Oh we have sooo much to learn from nature" BS that Hollywood finds sacred or something.
Also it didn't help that they took a plot I've seen at least three times now and stretched it into something like 3 hours, or at least it seemed that way.
I was just expecting to see something original and good, and didn't get either. I don't want my money back or anything. I just reject the premise of the film in a big way. If I can't buy into a film I don't usually like it.