Avatar’s strengths and weakness — and there’s a lot to talk about — are rendered useless under the weight of the film’s success. Combine the grosses of this movie and Titanic, and James Cameron could just flat-out buy an entire third world nation and become an actual king of somewhere. Obviously people are reacting favorably to this movie. You don’t make billions of dollars if you suck.

But despite the film’s obvious strong qualities, I can see where Avatar’s critics are coming from. The story is pretty perfunctory. It’s there. It’s nice. But it’s very similar to a bunch of other movies (Pocahontas, Dancing with Wolves) and near-identical to the Australian animated film Fern Gully. Right from the when I saw the mysterious Na’vi princess I knew she would fall in love with Jake. Right from when I saw the scowling Na’vi warrior I knew Jake would endure his bullying at first but would eventually become his friend. The hideous peace-and-love hippy themes were annoying as fuck, especially the scene where Jake first meets the princess. I was almost expecting her to break out singing “can you sing with all the voices of the mountain? Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?”

Regardless, the movie looks amazing.

Yes, liking a movie because of its visuals is an entirely valid reaction. There are countless classic movies (King Kong, Jurassic Park, even the LOTR trilogy to an extent) that emphasised special effects over storytelling, and they don’t necessarily get worse with age. In fifty years people might not be amazed by Avatar’s technology, but they will probably still appreciate how it must have looked back in the day.

And make no mistake, there is no overstating just how good looking Avatar is. The CGI is state of the art, and the third dimension takes it to the next level. In the scenes where Jake is diving down on his flying bird thing, I felt a sickening plunge in my stomach. A movie has never done that to me before. And I wasn’t thinking “wow, that’s some nice 3D!” I was thinking “wow, I hope Jake doesn’t fall off!” And forget about that crap, even the scenes with Jake walking around Pandora at night, with all the bugs buzzing around and the trees looking like they’re about to enclose and smother him are beautifully, beautifully done. Every part of the world of Pandora looks incredible. Snap a random screen capture from any of the on-planet parts of the movie and you’d have postcard material. Things don’t just look right, they move right. Everything has weight and heft and momentum.

And this was the first 3D movie I’ve seen that really took the medium places. A lot of 3D movies take the approach of “HOLY SHIT, LOOK AT THIS, IT’S 3D, WE’RE REACHING OUT AT THE SCREEN AT YOU.” Just trying to beat the viewer into submission. Avatar seems more reserved, and usually the 3D does what it’s supposed to do, blend into the movie without distracting you and thereby enhancing the movie rather than hijacking it.

So that’s Avatar, people. Very pretty. So pretty, in fact, that it’s obviously compensating for something. Your ability to enjoy the movie depends on your ability to forgive an average story. I suppose the ideal moviegoer in this case would be somebody who doesn’t go to the movies much.