James Cameron has done it again. He placated us with beautiful CGI world-building to help compensate for two hours of minimal plot and character development followed by a predictable overdrawn 1-hour showdown between uncomplicated good vs. Evil characters.

The protagonists' vulnerabilities? Moral ambiguity? Complex characters who are neither good nor bad but somewhere in between like real people?

No.

This type of movie, once common, recalls the cliche all-American movies of the early 2000s: It's centered on a nuclear family led by a smooth-talking stoic hero dad who risks everything to save his family, the fate of the world hanging in the balance.

Difficult outcomes? Heavy losses? A challenging ending? Of course not.

Miraculously the protagonists' primtive bow-and-arrow calvary take down an futuristic high-tech military fleet and yay happy ending!

Luckily this time around we aren't made to sit through a sappy predictable Pocahontas love story like in the first Avatar movie, presumably thanks to prudent editors who amputated a budding love story sub-plot foreshadowed in the first half of the movie but never carried to completion.

In sum, the movie is worth seeing only because it's pretty, but expect to lose some brain cells along the way.