August 21st – We saw 16 minutes of footage at Avatar Day.

December 10th – The premiere happens and people go a bit mad for it (92% on RT).

December 13th – We start to worry that the Top 10 Movies list in our Review of the Year is going to be invalid by December 17th.

December 15th – We attend the first 3-D IMAX screening in the UK.
Here are our findings:

Avatar is rubbish. Sorry.

You probably already know the plot: evil human government-types attempt to capture land from a group of indigenous aliens on a strange tropical planet by adopting alien bodies, or avatars. In practice, this means that about half of the film is a weird CGI nature documentary, while the other half is a boring political allegory. So basically it’s BBC4: The Movie.

It still looks brilliant. The 3D is the best I’ve ever seen and even the cartoony Na’vi people are believable when rendered so beautifully. The planet itself is a masterpiece, and if this was a 90 minute wildlife documentary set on Pandora I’d give it two thumbs up.

But it’s not. It’s a bloated 3-hour message movie full of broad characters, predictable outcomes and completely ludicrous dialogue.

Bad one Cameron. Bad one.