I realize I am probably going to get flames galore for this comment, and you all have the right to your opinion about my opinion, but hey, I'm entitled to my opinion too. Avatar is grade A crap. That's right, it's crap. I say this for one simple reason: Without the special effects this movie would never, ever captivate and take a hold of audiences like it has in the past week. Ask yourself this one question: If it didn't have the effects, the Navi plugging their hair into the trees like it's a damn broadband jack, mech suits(just like the ones in Matrix Revolutions) and barely futuristic ospreys, would you care about this movie at all? It's a truism when they say this movie is nothing more than Dances with Wolves in space. Some people may argue back that Star Wars borrowed from Hidden fortress, but at least it had enough compelling plot points to make it look different, such as I don't know... the force? The Death Star? Outer space? A location that has NOTHING at all to do with Earth? This important set of points clearly differentiates Star Wars and Hidden Fortress. But The difference between Avatar and Dances with wolves is... CGI. This CGI may be pretty but it cannot ever substitute for story and plot development. Speaking of, the characters save but a few are either very bland or stereotypes. The worst part is the story and the movie gives us no reason to care about the characters. You know what? I'll go one step further and say that the only difference between Avatar and a Star Wars prequel is this: Avatar has an environmental story that we can relate to. That's it. True, the action scenes in Avatar are well done, but hell, the action scenes in the Star Wars prequels were also arguably well-done. Still, there's that nagging lack of story development. Avatar is a huge let-down and doesn't belong on the best-of list of anybody with common sense.