The film is fucking terrible, the characters have no depth, from the red indian stereotypes to the general that is given absolutely no motive for wishing to kill everyone! seriously, they give him the option of telling the na'vi to move rather than just slaughter them and he just yells "theres no time, man the death cannons! aim for the children first" it'd be fair enough if they'd spent a bit time making him out to be a bit mental but he is an otherwise sane man.
Unobtainium? Is that seriously the best name you could come up with? Seriously?
The messages of the film were a huge turn-off to me as well, the first one explored is about a guy becoming reliant on living in another body and allowing his real life to suffer (an idea i'm sure anyone with a WoW playing friend will be familiar)but they got a bit bored of that one so after the first 7 or so hours they just drop it completely. hours 8 through to 12 are all about how man didn't look after his planet properly and in their quest to keep themselves alive they must continue to destroy everything them come across. It lacks any subtlety whatsoever and it wouldn't have seemed any less desperate if the main villain was a fat cigar-smoking guy in a big swivel chair who laughs as the na'vi are destroyed.
My main issue with that second message is that it isn't just built on it, everything in the film is built up to remind you. the story will follow the general for a bit, cut to Jake Sully and then when it's back to the general, they use the mallet of exposition to pound into you what happened 10 minutes ago. I remember! I'm not a fucking moron! what does that say about their faith in the target audience? I don't consider it coincidence that everyone so far that has told me they liked it would reckon the plot to terminator: salvation 'deep'.
One example, and if you watch it (/again) be sure to take note of what happens when any character dies, any human character killed lets out a big girly scream in stark contrast to the na'vi. Do we really need to demonise humans to get our point across? especially when it is so obvious, it's quite jarring to here a largely built soldier whimpering like a small child.
Unobtainium? Seriously?
Now, on to plot holes/characters doing illogical or stupid things:
There are so many huge plot-holes, I don't know where to start. Actually, I mentioned the first, we are given no reason as to why the general favours war over a peaceful solution. Even if he considers the na'vi to be completely insignificant, surely he cares for the human soldiers that will needlessly die in the conflict, or at least the cost of ammunition that this war will cause?
The humans are completely ill equipped for their job. To take out na'vi, they are armed with walkers (weaponised versions of the loaders from aliens) with huge bastard guns, we're talking 3 inch diamater bullets, for taking out many unarmoured targets on horses. This would be the equivilent of Michael Caine using a cannon to try and take out zulu hordes.
Unobtainium? Really?
There are quite a few Vietnam parrallels thrown in there but when it comes to fighting, the Na'vi just try to fight in an outright manner for no reason other than it would make a better action scene. At this point they've already seen the power of the human army and know they can't defeat them but nobody even seems to question the tactics of run at them screaming from a long way-aways.
I'm sure you've seen the comparisons between this film and Pocahontas (
here it is if you haven't) or Dances with Wolves/Smurfs, and it's not really a problem on it's own (I really fucking love A Bug's Life for example, and that is just a retelling of Seven Samurai, the same as the Magnificent 7 for that matter) but is there any reason to drag the film out to 3 hours? It told one linear plot and took 3 hours to do it, Disney did it in 90 minutes, South Park did it in about 3. There are huge stretches in the film where nothing happens, the montage scene alone was like 15-20 minutes and we learned nothing more than we learned during 'Eye of the Tiger' in Rocky 3!
I particularly hated the science explanation of how the na'vis religion was 'fact'. It is completely unimportant whether someone puts a stamp on their religion and says true or false as to whether their argument for trying to protect the jungle is valid. For those that haven't seen it, just imagine the midichlorians scene from star wars episode I.
I get the whole thing that where they're living has the highest concentration of (sigh) unobtainium, but the rest of the planet isn't tapped out, why not cross that bridge when you come to it? maybe unobtainium prices would drop severely between now and by the time you need to kill to get it? maybe they discover a planet made from the stuff in that time? maybe they try pit mining instead of drag mining so they can mine it without harming the area? nah, that's too obvious.
This one is a minor point but towards the end, that bird from lost and dark knight decides to fight for the na'vi and so she flys a helicopter at them. It's important to note that she hasn't been hanging out with the na'vi, she's just a sympathiser coming from a human camp. Why the hell does she paint her face blue? Why? it is the pandoran equivilent of blacking-up! did tom cruise paint up his face when fighting along side the samurai? she's lucky she died in a long drawn-out heroic fashion, if she survived, she'd have had to explain that to the na'vi.
While we're on, the film had a nasty habit of showing us characters that had very little dialogue or purpose in the film and then expecting us to care about them when they're brought back for a quick kill. This was very reminiscent of that other critical smash-hit, x-men origins: wolverine.
Last point for now, I may update more later, why the hell are the dragon things called banshees? bit of a coincidence that the ancient na'vi name would be an english word? and fucking direhorses, what is the point?!
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