Films don't often inspire me to write, but Avatar is an exception. As a visual experience it is fantastic, stunning, vibrant, inventive. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything else particularly interesting about it.
The premise -- obvious from the trailers -- is that there's some military-ish group of humans on some extra-terrestrial world, and they have some way of taking on bodies that match the indigenous people. Now that you know the premise, you're all set. Imagine the story you would expect to be told based on that premise, and imagine the characters you would expect to meet. Imagine the character arcs intersecting with all the main plot lines at all the major plot points. Yep, that's the movie. And the experience of your expectations being precisely met doesn't end with this exercise -- it continues in much greater detail through the entire film.
Titanic didn't tell a daring story, either. That's probably why I only saw it once. I'll want to see Avatar again in the theater, definitely in 3-D (again). But after that, I don't expect to maintain any lasting interest in the film. This is obviously a case of high expectations being dashed -- if only I hadn't expected a daring film, I might be going to sleep right now thinking about how gorgeous it was. But I had hoped for more than a retread of the stereotypes, clichés, and Messages ("war is bad (but using LOTS OF GUNS to illustrate this is entertaining)" and "yay for the environment!") that I've gotten from Cameron before.
Avatar's timid story has really distracted me from how great it looks, and that's a shame. It's just worth seeing, just for the seeing.
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