Here's the thing about this movie...it's pretty good/awesome/rather subtle introspective on the human condition. Visuals top notch, acting solid, characters are diverse enough not to be bland and a couple are interesting enough to sink into.
Now don't get me wrong there are a couple things to criticize, one of which being my own distaste more military personnel being portrayed as psycho fuck-tard's, but here such a display is actually appropriate given that the personnel portrayed ARE supposed to be the retards among the ranks strung out, paranoid and light-years from home. Theses are not first rank professional soldiers, they're the cheap low end bargain deal dime a dozen guy's. The only respectable soldier's on screen being our hero and the antagonist Colonel, and the only reason the Colonel is as psycho as he is derives from his own paranoia and years (at least 12) spent off world in a world where the ROE went right out the window.
Another complaint being there needed to be more movie, the universe of Avatar deserves much more exploration and time then put on screen and the game released failed to deliver any depth what so ever. Character development could use a couple kicks beyond don't do bad things because they're bad. There much more room to explore human nature and the psychological effects of splitting the human mind into two living beings but the film barely touches on these thoughts. Probably because such an introspective would cause most peoples head to explode, that and they need a return of investment for this picture given that your general movie goer just wants to unwind after the days work and be entertained not mentally challenged. Moreover I personally would have liked to see more of the world Pandora then the jungle and the four or five seconds of plains and sea regions portrayed, explore the diversity of culture between each tribe of native personnel etc.
Also I wasn't joking when I said this film does give a stab on the human condition. Granted these may just be my own thoughts but It's what I saw. It simply has to do with perception, now in the Avatar universe the navi have the ability to mentally and emotionally patch into the environment itself. Now don't dismiss this as "oh they can talk to trees and shit". This means that the planet they live on is in some sense alive and self aware not only that but is actively communicating with them with regularity to the point of an understanding of a maternal relationship, this isn't just home for them this is mother to them. In this universe human beings lack this ability and as such cannot even fathom the perception of a living world, meaning that to them this is just another rock drifting through space one of which has a rather valuable resource to mine and sell, they not evil they just see opportunity and are pursuing their goal with the knowledge and as such point of perspective available to them.
Now tack this little piece of information and dissect it, what it breaks down to is lacking any means to understand a living environment they are unaware of any damage done and as such will have little motivation to restrain themselves as well as with no understanding of a living world would be prone to dismiss such a thought as non-sense. Take that thought and apply it to a real world context, human beings will dig and extrapolate every available resource of value and with out the ability to perceive the natural living world will not only have no motivation to slow or stop but would easily dismiss such a thought. You know the exact train of though explored in the film...then again this could all be my own delusional mind fabricating non-sensible gibberish.
All said in down, go see the movie, it's well made and got a wicked firefight in the end. There's a lot to take away from this movie.
