I'm frankly baffled why people went crazy for this film.

The characters are too flat to be emotionally engaging, and the Naavi (sp?) are clearly designed to make us feel sympathetic to them. E. T. Was a far more evocative alien despite being an ugly potato man.

The plot... At no point in the film did anything unexpected happen. It's like James Cameron, while looking for an idea for his next film, found a notebook with a story that he wrote when he was 10 years old about humans fighting on an alien planet; everything is signposted a mile away, so not only do we have uninteresting characters, but they move from one predictable scene to the next.

Admittedly the visuals are impressive, but it reminded me of running 3DMark around 1999/2000: looks great but with no content.

James Cameron has made some absolutely great films, but this is not one of them.