I saw it last night in 3D, here is what I thought about it....

3D - For me a total gimmick that added little to the telling of the story and acted as a distraction most of the time. Wide shots seemed to have no 3D effect at all while close up shots seemed to be more like layers of 2D rather than real 3D. At no point did I feel I was in the movie or the movie feel like it was coming at me.

Story - For a film of it's length very little of the story was developed beyond the blinking obvious. Dialogue was pretty weak and had little depth.

Animation - I felt like I was watching a badly acted intro for a computer game that lasts 3 hours. I still think the technology is light years off being realistic and in a few years time we will look back at it an laugh. Although impressive I never really felt transported beyond what was clearly a computer generated landscape with people added in here and there. The most impressive work I have seen of this kind but still off the mark for me.

£18.50 VIP Cinema experience - At our local cinema it works out to be around £8 extra and for the food and drinks you get, as well as one of the best view I have ever had at the cinema it was overall worth it. We had seats in a gallery that were above the projectors, so you were looking slightly down on the screen which seemed strange at first, but it was a lot easier on the eye.

Unfortunately in Manchester £18.50 isn't quite enough to get rid of all knob heads and we did have some annoying people sat next to us who sat in our seats and refused to move, the staff were typically useless. The free popcorn and nachos also ensured you had an added surround sound track of every single person around you munching rather than every other. They were a bit further away from you and there was a nice amount of leg room too.

So overall, I wouldn't see Avatar twice. It was an enjoyable film, but as a non-fan of Sci-fi this film suffers from all the same problems that every other film in the genre I have ever seen. Such a shame as I think with a better writer it could have been a real epic.

Cheers

Cris.