Avatar has been over ten years and $300m in the making and the hype for it was fairly bold, claiming that it was going to revolutionise cinema FOREVER! In truth, the visuals for this film are often very impressive but while the appearance of the film is often astonishing and does mark a watershed in effects, this is offset by the remarkably clichéd and banal story.

There have been been many rather unkind comparisons to Ferngully and many to Dances With Wolves. In fairness, aspects of both are in the film... but it borrows very heavily from the general area of film that equates the military and big corporations as BAD. The scientists are all very reasonable, seeing the unique ecology of the planet and thinking that IT and not the uber valuable unobtanium is the important thing on Pandora... and yes, they called the material they're there for unobtanium... So, they go for a LITERAL connection to the planet... because the Na'vi can literally plug into trees, animals, the big flying beasties... presumably evolution on Pandora has managed to bypass the biological equivalent of not having a laptop recognise the printer that's plugged in. It's ALL very hippy and it's the kind of tree hugging Gaia type claptrap that would have felt dated... well, back around the time of Ferngully.

It's very much set up to make it obvious that the corporation is BAD AND EVIL and the colonel is clearly spoiling for a fight from the get go, complete with his big scar and bad ass attitude. It's very clear that there's no compromise possible, the imperialist forces of capitalism are bad and evil, the noble savages can do no wrong with their hippy ways.

The events of the film are related by a handy capable ex-marine who apparently fell into it because his twin brother got shot and he's a genetic match, blah blah blah and he's there because it pays well and he needs money to get his legs fixed. So he goes to Pandora, which is apparently 5 years away... eh, whatever - this film has giant flying mountains and biological USBs and a military too stupid to know what orbital bombardment is. Anyway, John Generic is on his whole - gain trust of noble savages schtick. Obviously, initially he is working for the EVIL corporation but one he gets himself some sexy blue space babe, he's all about saving Ferngully - uh, sorry the rainforest... or whatever the hell it is he's saving.

So, we basically go through what amounts to about two hours of Pandora's Walking With Dinosaurs. Really, that's literally about it for the first two hours, John Generic just explores the world, the Na'vi and gets it on with hot Na'vi (your mileage may vary). Then the military/evil corporation get unhappy and go to war! This is an action film with very little action, basically this film pulls all the action punches until the final act. It's visually impressive but there's just no real plot here and the characters are all so forgettable. It just goes to show, you can spend hundreds of millions of dollars and never bother with a script... hmm, that sounds like the Star Wars prequels... this is better than them, certainly visually and at least the plot is coherent.