Observations on Avatar

A few observations after seeing Avatar yesterday...

1. It's about an hour too long for the story.

2. The new-age eco-spiritualism stuff is unimaginably cheesy (and there's a lot of it).

3. The 3D doesn't really add anything and, in fact, is often more of a distraction. It rarely creates a sense of depth, but rather just picks out certain objects or characters and 'projects' them forward. I watched some bits in 2D and there's no qualitative difference.

4. The Na'vi and the various creatures, plants etc on the planet are very obviously CGI. For all the early talk of 'photo-realistic' rendering, there's still nothing here as good as the raptors of Jurassic Park. The CGI is more effective in rendering non-living things.

5. Neytiri is still kinda hot though...

6. The film is at its best and most visually spectacular when Cameron gets back to what he does best, i.e. hardware-heavy action scenes.