I will take crisp high definition visuals in motion over 3-D any day of the week. A lot of the visuals they seemed to deem unimportant so when the camera moves they become all blurry. It seemed that James Cameron's priorities were in the couple of key scenes. The visuals were spectacular in those but were suffered in other areas. And it really, really needs to be said how pretty the Na'vi are. They are so lifelike and there was no sense of uncanny valley at all, it was awesome. Also, they dress up in paint at a few points in the movie and my jaw was pretty much on the floor.
That being said the movie itself was one of the worst things I've seen this year. James Cameron NEEDED someone to, at the VERY least, look at his script and say "Wow James, you suck at writing anything." There were no characters, the plot was horrible (I called every. single. thing. before it happened, something that I barely ever do) and the worst part was how completely unimaginative it is.
For 15 years in development you would think that Cameron would have been more creative than Native Americans who have horses and birds that resemble butterflies. I kept wondering to myself "what would this movie have been in the hands of almost any other director?" There are SO many great films in Avatar, all of them are touched on with a couple things of dialogue but nothing more. What could these awesome movies have been? There might be slight spoilers but if you're angry at me for spoiling the plot of Avatar then there might be something wrong with your priorities.
1. No military, it's a love and coming of age story between Jake Sully and the Na'vi chick. I would have paid money to see this one. And it seems, for the entire middle of the story, that this is the film that James Cameron wants to make....but then there's all this military stuff and it ruins everything.
2. Play with his legs. Jake Sully is in a wheelchair, it could have been a major part of the story and his character....but it's not really. They offer to give him his legs back at one point but he refuses because he has other stuff to do. And he makes the decision so easily, so readily. Instead of being something that could have injected humanity into the film they skip over it and then never touch it again.
3. He goes slowly crazy as he loses all aspects of his self-identity. This is sort of touched on, it's mentioned a few times but it never, ever, becomes a big deal. This bothered me quite a bit, they could have done some absolutely great things with it.
4. Big Dumb Action Movie. Obviously this is the film that had the highest likelihood of being made. It's funny because it seems like this was what the film was but it isn't. I'm glad it wasn't this because with a 14A rating the violence in the film is completely and utterly unsatisfying. People have been raving about the action scenes in this film but James Cameron has missed a lot of action films in the past 15 years since he's made a film and needs to play some SERIOUS catchup.
For me, the film was just a series of giantly missed opportunities. I guess visuals don't really phase me, 3-D is cool but the sacrifice for definition is way too much. I went in not expecting any kind of story at all but I felt like the movie was teasing me all the way through. Telling me "oh, we could have a really good plot twist or maybe even some character development right...here. But we're not going to." I guess I really just realized that I would much rather have a good story than 250 million dollars worth of visuals any day of the week.