10 Unpopular Movie Opinions (And How To Justify Them)

3. Avatar Is A Smart Movie

Despite being the highest-grossing film of all time - or perhaps because of this fact - James Cameron's Avatar has been subject to a steady decade of abuse from film lovers, who have readily dismissed it as a dim, generically-scripted film propelled forward solely by its engaging visuals.

And while it's correct that Avatar is a technical showcase above all else, it's also a much smarter film as written than most will freely give it credit for.

Cameron is dabbling in archetypes, as most blockbusters filmmakers do, but it does a huge disservice to the film's incredibly sharp world-building to simply dismiss it as "Dances with Wolves in space."

Cameron wanted to make a mass-market movie with a near-universal appeal in order to hammer home his environmentalist message, and that he certainly did.

It paints in broad strokes, yes, but it's also a shrewdly constructed and brilliantly paced narrative that delivers just enough of what audiences expect with a few sneaky surprises along the way.

As much as the style is the substance in Avatar, it's also disingenuous to suggest that Cameron didn't know exactly what he was doing when he shot his $237 million movie through the prism of elemental plots and characters.

That Cameron managed to make an extremely weird piece of chest-thumping environmentalist propaganda, then package it up and sell it to the tune of $2.78 billion worldwide is the ultimate proof that Avatar isn't just a dumb story for dumb people.