So I gave in and saw Avatar today with the gal and my oldest brother (not the crazy one) & co. In Real-D, not IMAX 3D. Some observations:
The plot was paper thin and the story was as crippled as the protagonist. Who? What? Why? Where? all thrown out the window.
Very much the standard "Chosen One" BS we've been getting for far too long. Another stunner is the use of the "Samurai" described in Michael Moorcocks 'Starship Stormtroopers' essay: he rejects their training and education, he doesn't need it-he has superior instinct.
Real shockers from James Cameron.
The Natives interactions with one another and the character Jake were out '40s & '50s Westerns or equivalent vintage depiction of other natives (like our own Jedda) - or a soap opera for that matter, the "budding romance" that of a teenage boy day dreaming.
I'd like to believe Wes Studi had the integrity to say to to Jim "You know, I did this movie already back in 1989 but it wasn't this childish."
In fairness I should say that like The Abyss the films pacing and narrative flow demonstrates what could be some very major and awkward editing done to speed things along, to illustrate as I recall from the 1995 treatment that is pirated online there was supposed to be a great deal of set up on Earth first. But if people are going to see a film that is already 162 minutes then its fair to say they'd sit for an additional 20-30 minutes. However I doubt that material would suddenly make the film mature. Or I could be wrong and this is all there is.
And then there was the slow motion. In previous Cameron films it was used as a build up to an action sequence, think of the Tech-Noir nightclub in Terminator. Here however he demonstrates his true descent into the banal by embracing the 'technique' of the Wachowski brother & sister and every tv-commercial of using it during every sequence of action or fighting.

As a final insult Cameron seems to have attempted to be subtle about things, perhaps a left over from an earlier draft when he didn't have to please untold numbers of executives and bankers in order to get the funding, but then lets one bad test audience member get the better of him so every time something is left unstated (except character motivations that is-Robert Stack couldn't solve that mystery) for the audience to figure out (which I did thank you very much) Worthington pipes in delivering a narration that makes Blade Runners sound like Russian Literature, and these weren't hard concepts either. He did the same thing on Terminator 2, originally the Terminator simply hands Sarah Conner the control mechanism for the crane in the steel mill but because some shmuck needs everything explained they went back and looped in the line "I can not self-terminate you must lower me into the steel." That sort of shit is scattered all through this film.
The effects might be good but what are they being used for? The same action/adventure we've been getting for years, just with higher rendering. We'll get even more next year and this will be a dim memory.
A good example of a good use of CGI would be the landscapes in Terry Gilliams most recent film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, genuinely wondrous visuals that left me stunned. But that has nothing to do with software or hardware or rendering farms or photo realism, that is about translating the vision of an artist to the screen. Not blowing things up real good or having an impossible monster chase someone for the umpteenth dozen time, but translating an artists vision to the screen.
If you must do it then for battles I would suggest Ridley Scotts Kingdom of Heaven, the shots of the Saracen army are excellent and I suspect one reason why it is good is because he was restrained in his use of it and didn't go in for the convoluted sweeping shots of LotR and Troy and so on.

I've heard some complaints about the "native" chorals and singing and stuff in the soundtrack, but what made me furious is that James Horner is still using the same damn cues and motifs from Wrath of Khan and Aliens!

A basic knowledge of evolutionary biology concepts like common descent destroys Camerons claims about the biological plausibility of it all (the tree network can be left for another day)-they need to be a lot more than fluorescent blue Jimbo. And one does not need to be an agronomist to be perplexed as to how the Natives are able to feed their riding and flying mounts despite being strictly hunter-gathers lacking all forms of agriculture and being in a rain forest thus lacking grazing land.

Later that night we (minus brother & co) went and saw Alien at the Astor Theatre. After 30 years it still scares the hell out of people - in 30 years time what will they say about Avatar?