POPULAR SCIENCE gives a lukewarm (at best) review to Avatar and asks: “It’s an intriguing paradox–the success of a film as technologically elaborate and ambitious as James Cameron’s Avatar will come down to a simple question: Will audiences marvel at the movie’s groundbreaking production methods enough to forgive Cameron’s curious choice to frame everything on a script that is, almost above all else, obsessed with the evils of technology in the wrong hands?”

Cameron doesn’t think of himself as “wrong hands.” To me, though, the stills I’ve seen look ugly, populated by what appear to be Terminator Smurfs, as stiff and unrealistic as a kid’s diorama. Less tech, more aesthetics might have been smart. Er, and better writers, apparently.