Avatar.

PROS: Great first hour, where the military scenes feel like a hyper realistic, tough, gun nut paradise, and show great promise. Alarmingly engrossing use of VFX at the military base. Giovanni Ribisi shines in every scene he's in and rises above his material. The scenes of running through the bioluminescent Pandora at night are bar none the most beautiful I've ever seen; Cameron is at his best when observing the beauty of his world like a nature documentary. Jake's first flight is lovely. James Horner's music is mostly amazing and filled with meditative beauty, when he's not going OTT with TribalPercussion (TM). Jake and Neytiri's central relationship blossoms with real tenderness, in fact whenever the film focuses on that it works very well. Zoe Saldana is both a gentle sweetheart and a fierce warrior, the heart of this film. The Hometree genocide is extremely powerful in a 9/11 tone and hit me across the face. All the best scenes here stand alone with deep heart combined with an honest, forward thinking creativity that doesn't tax your intelligence, no matter about the rest.

CONS: The plot and dialogue is often painfully derivative (and baggy, like Mark Kermode said), pulling your attention out of the scene, and makes the emotional and energetic tone highly inconsistent: it makes the final battle a case of 'seen this before' and very toothless, despite the fact it could very well be the technical battle of all times, Return Of The King's battle utterly destroys it in emotional and artistic impact. Sam Worthington simply doesn't have the acting chops, the facial expression, or dare I say it, the heart, to bring this work to life here. The attempt to make the human technology plausible detracts from the sci-fi premise at times, and I wished both the world and the Na'Vi could have felt darker and more alien, to give this work an evil thrill and an edge, instead of feeling like the sometimes vacuous and toothless space hippies they came off as. Though I blame Cameron's militant nature for his overlooking the deeper spiritual elements that actually made the best of this work, it's ironic to me that a truly spiritual culture is far from toothless and boring, and you think the director of the highly intense Aliens and T2, of all people, would recognize this: faster, more intense please. The first thanator chase and the flying mountains made me feel 'ehh'. Some of the CG actually still needs work.

OVERALL: Veers from the sublime to the ridiculous, but just about enough of the former. C.