Stop paying attention to the marketing department, and pay attention to the actual movie creators by seeing the movie. It will be well worth it. Much like my industry, marketing is done by a separate group of people paid to hype things. I'm not going to let their work ruin the actual movie.

And Matt, odds are the marketing team was given a huge bucket of money due to the cost of the actual film. The more a movie costs, the more marketing is going to try and pull in as many people as possible with tie-ins everywhere to recoup costs. Yes, marketing in many cases may just be trying to polish a turd, but not so with Avatar.

I just got back from seeing it a second time, this time at a normal screen but with Real 3D. Still just as impressed with the movie, and debating where it fits on my all time movie list now.

The story may have it's weak points, but overall I found it quite good. And just the style of the film (outside the effects) worked really well. One of the things I realized recently is that it's a nice solid single story. It's not bouncing around between multiple subplots and such. Thats probably part of the reason I am still surprised that it's nearly 3 hours long. It feels shorter, even after seeing it again.

Put another way, most of the crowd clapped when it ended on opening day. And today, most of the audience clapped when it ended. So both the "must see" and the "well, it looks good enough to see" crowds are really enjoying it.

I'm now debating when I want to see it a third time. I'll probably wait till I'm back in Austin to see it at a civilized theater though. I had to stand up and ask the person behind me to stop kicking my chair about 5 minutes in.