Well, I saw this movie... and I thought it was great. Of course, I don’t see movies that much, so maybe my definition of great is different from most others… but considering that I see maybe 2-3 movies a year, and never a movie twice… I would have to say that the fact that I am considering seeing this movie a third time is pretty impressive.
I have seen that allot of people complain that the story is mediocre, and they are probably right.
It’s pretty hard for a sci-fi original story to catch on to the general audience... I mean, think about how hard it is to get a friend to play dwarf fortress. James Cameron was pretty much forced to play it by the book, and so while the setting was original, the story, and the characters were pretty standard. It was predictable, but then again, Titanic was also. (Ship hits iceberg and sinks…. Duh)
That said though, the movie was supposed to be significantly longer than it was, and allot of character development that would have made the characters much more well rounded had to be cut to allow the film to fit inside the IMAX film canisters.
It is a shame that a lot of the criticism about the movie being shallow, would be fixed if we saw the “director’s cut”. For example:
In one cut scene, in which was probably meant to be the scene where if you haven’t gotten to the point where you were emotionally attached to the characters, you are going to become attached now. (or, your heart is so hard that nothing is going to touch you, and you might as well get up and walk out of the theater now)…
Grace talks about how the school was closed down... not because the na’vi left, but because a few troopers came in the middle of class, and act of vengeance for the destruction of a bulldozer, start shooting the place up. Naytiri’s sister, (you didn’t know she had a older sister, did you? If you look closely at those 3d photographs in the shack, there she is) is killed, and Grace takes a bullet before the scene is over.
The bad guys also get a bit of depth… at one point …
Selfridge (the corporate guy) gets a backbone, and stands up against Quaritch (the colonel), right before the final battle, who then gets a few troopers to “get him out of here”. When Max(the science guy, not norm) says “Quaritch has taken over, he is rolling and there is no stopping him” he means it.
How much of this missing material is going to make it into the dvd? I don’t know… they clearly changed some things from the original script.
In the final battle both of the shuttles were loaded up with explosives, and after the first one goes down, the second one turns back…. If you notice… at one point in the final movie, someone says “bombers”… because literally there were 2 in the original script, and this is the only real plot hole I have found.
Anyway… I think the movie’s plot and story will be deeper and richer when we get to see the whole thing, but that doesn’t mean you should wait for the dvd. The movie is best in 3d, (I have seen it in both 2d and 3d), and as long as you go in there with an open mind, and watch it with uncrossed arms, (im serious about that) and you are not an insensitive prick, you will definitely enjoy, maybe even fall in love with, this movie, I was teary-eyed almost the entire time… although it is hard to tell if it is from becoming attached to the characters, or if it was just the amazing effects.