The movie is visually stunning, and the world-building is incredible, but the plot is plain at best. Some plot points that should have been epic end up feeling cliché and predictable. The stop-aging serum is too on your face to resonate as a pertinent social commentary. We expect the whale hunter to his left arm almost as soon as he appears on screen, but that no longer feels poetic when it actually happens. And, the rejection of the outcasts is as standard as it could be.

However, my biggest issue with the movie is the characters. Most of them are unlikable, flat, and static. The emo girl who feels like an amalgamation of every teen character Winona Ryder has done before. The golden boy with no other personality trait. The middle child feels like he is disappointing everyone. The little sister serves as a comedy relief. And the wife who sacrifices what she knows to support her husband. It plays out like a collection of stock characters got released on Pandora. Diminishing all the momentum created by the world-building and the cinematography.

Pandora, for a community that is all about balance and spirituality, they have a very rigid social structure. At the begging of the movie, Zoe Saldaña's character begs her husband to stay home and fight. But he convinces her to run away instead... Three hours later, she loses her son and community and has been living as a refugee. It's then that Sam Worthington's character says he now knows better and they should stay and fight. It feels misogynistic and makes the plot meaningless as we finish where we started. But now he got the idea of defending themselves all by himself, not from a woman. The worst part may be how little the Sully clan cares about Spider. A human that loves the Na'vi and sees them as family. He is loyal to them under extreme circumstances. Yet, none of the Sully spends a second of their time thinking about him. He has every reason to betray them, yet he never does.

Despise the flaws, the movie is a visually immersive adventure that makes Pandora feel alive and very real. Definitely worth the trip to the movie theater.