BACK TO AVATAR
I went in to see it hoping to prove my boyfriend, who said it looked dumb, wrong. I wanted to love it. I knew very little about it, only about the concept of the avatar.
Within the first half hour, my boyfriend and I predicted nearly every major plot point, besides the information that you find out about the biology of the planet. By the time they revealed that, however, I was totally unattached. They could have told me that the Na'Vi were all Shiina Ringo clones in disguise, and I wouldn't have cared, because I knew how it was going to play out, regardless of how awesome the world was. In my totally inexperienced and uneducated opinion, the movie should've chosen a focus:
Either
1) Pandora
OR
2) Emotion/Character
I know you guys are all saying that people were crying in the theater and what not, and I accept that people interpret things differently, but for me it is so hard to get emotional over such a tried plot. I know that there probably was depth put into the movie, but the characters all seemed so flat (Haha, yes, I did see it in RealD) to me, as if they were just along for the same old ride. Not one character made me look forward to them being on screen. I felt as if I had met them all before.
Now, Pandora was certainly an interesting place, and if the movie had been instead focused just on avatars in Pandora, and made up some new conflict rather than "THEY'RE KILLING NATURE", then I probably wouldn't have been about to fall asleep in my seat.
I suppose it's all a matter of what you're looking for in a movie. I personally want to see real character interaction, and while the actors did wonderfully, the script did not lend itself well to natural character development.
Disclaimer:
These are my opinions written at 6AM. I'll probably want to put foot in mouth after letting this sit a few days, but I'd rather get it all out now while it's fresh.