I rented the Blu-ray tonight to see if my theory that the movie would become irrelevant without the aid of digitial 3D was accurate.

...Eh. It's still kind of a fun movie, and it looks effing gorgeous in high definition. The writing's still generic and bland and the characters are underdeveloped, but it doesn't completely pull the movie down. I still think a movie can work as sheer spectacle (keep in mind that film is the collaboration of numerous elements, many of which are purely visual). See, Cameron is a much better director than he is a writer; he should be handling other people's scripts. He's got the budget and the skills, and everything in Avatar that isn't related to the screenplay is superb. (This was true for Titanic, too, albeit to a lesser extent. It sucked as a love story, which it mostly was, but once he got down to business it was a damn cool disaster movie, enough to put Roland Emmerich to shame.)

Point is, we can berate Avatar for not living up to expectations and for having a generic, predictable story, but where grandiosity is concerned, the movie delivers. It's great to know that even without grade-A screenwriting skills, Cameron still has an eye for scale and can film a terrific action sequence when he wants to. Compare this to Michael Bay, whose Transformers 2 had horrible dialog... and was also a shitty, poorly shot, unconvincing action movie.

I feel sorry for anyone who didn't catch Avatar in 3D, since so much of the appeal is visual, but still: Go into it without towering expectations and enjoy it for what it is.

MEANWHILE: Cameron is penning an Avatar novel. This is a very stupid idea.