As far as the special effects go, they were good, but so what? Remember in Star Trek the Motion Picture, when the Star Trek production people were so excited to actually have a special effect budget beyond foam rocks they spent roughly half the movie lingering over multiple angles of the Enterprise and stuff like that? We have some of the same thing going on here. Basically, the nerds are showing off their CGI-rendered world and their abilities to show it from multiple angles. But you know what? They still haven't corrected the major problem where characters can't touch things, or especially pick up objects realistically. Anyway, I never really cared about special effects, being happy to concede the fourth wall and move on to the characters and story, and accept the shortcomings of human beings to show certain things, just as Shakespeare asks the audience to do in Henry V.

As for the imbecilic ending - first of all, as in the third Brendan Fraser Mummy movie, I found myself admiring the evil general more than the good guys, since he clearly had the biggest pair of cojones in the film. Despite the myriad environmental and plot-device advantages enjoyed by the good guys in both films, the evil general took them right down to the wire. What is so heroic about killing a smaller, weaker person, who needs a gas mask to survive in the environment, when you have that same environment on your side, as well as a genetically engineered body that is twice his size? His toughness is EARNED through ongoing workouts, while the "hero" is tough because he had a custom-made superhuman body.

Anyway, once the good guys win and defeat the humans and save their magic tree, there is a scene of them escorting the evil humans off-planet and the smug narrator talking about how the "aliens were sent back to their dying planet." Oh, really? And these numbskulls think they won? An appropriate analogy would be a 300-lb serial rapist, recently released from prison where he was the inter-penitentiary weight-lifting champ, cornering a 100-lbs Hooters waitress in a dark alley with no one else within miles of them. He pats her butt, she pushes his hand away and slaps his face and spits in his eye. Fade to black, end credits, happy ending! Except we KNOW what is likely to happen next! Avatar does the same thing and the monkey-cat people of Pandora are not going to fare any better than our plucky heroine in the alley.

Basically, gathering the Pandorans (I forget their retarded species name) of three nations produced a force that was almost sufficient to get itself killed while doing negligible damage to a glorified security detail with light vehicles and small arms. They were able to win by calling on the fauna of the region to save them, thanks to their Great White Hope managing to better commune with their nature-goddess than their own pseudo-clergy, and some heroics from human defectors (notice how the indigenous people always need someone from the "white" people to win in these fantasies, but in real life, the white guys win with the help of natives who come over to their side? ). And now, the evil greedy humans are going to slink home with their tails between their legs and rot on their apparently dying planet? The HELL they will! You KNOW they'll be back with more than infantry and support vehicles! The Pandorans don't stand a prayer against futuristic tanks, artillery and REAL air power! Hell, a company of contemporary M1 Abrams tanks could go through that entire force like a hot knife through butter, and there would not be a whole hell of a lot the human collaborationists could do with their two rifles, five radios, three grenades and one tilt-rotor helicopter.

As it was, with their tiny force and a jury-rigged field expedient bomb, the humans came within seconds of blowing up the main server of their little biological internet. How would the Pandorans stop them if they used a jet bomber with a REAL "daisy-cutter" bomb, or a MOAB or a fuel-air bomb, or a nuke? How would they stop a precision-guided cruise missile? Heck, even as it is, the humans, having a spaceship in orbit, possess the capability of dropping a kinetic-energy weapon on their heads. Does anyone remember the LAST Sigourney Weaver-James Cameron collaboration? With the line: "I say we...nuke the site from orbit." What happened, Jimbo? So busy promoting your laughable anti-Christian documentary that you didn't have time to remember things you knew back when you made good movies, where you would make Bill Paxton look like an ass and kill that freckled chick? These hippies are getting kind of idiotic with their constant insistance that people and corporations are vile and greedy and would do anything at all to make a buck, expect push past their very first setback when their plans are barely thwarted by a plucky idealist with almost no resources. Somehow, the hippies who make movies always believe that is enough to get the corporations to take a hit on their quarterly reports and throw in the towel. In real life, when Livingston disappears exploring Africa, Stanly comes looking for him. When the Zulus slaughter the English at Islanlwana, the English then pile them up like cordwood at Rorke's Drift and go on to win the war. Crazy Horse & Sitting Bull massacre Custer, and end up murdered in virtual captivity. I'm betting a realistic "Avatar 2" wouldn't have nearly so 'happy' an ending as this one.