5. Avatar
Probably no film has received a more undeserving backlash over the last few years than James Cameron's monster hit Avatar. After earning substantial acclaim and smashing all sorts of box office records, it became somewhat cool to bash Avatar for being cheesy, unoriginal, and preachy. While all those criticisms have certain levels of merit, they're mostly undeserved and don't overshadow the miracle of craft that James Cameron achieved while making this movie. The area that is incontestable is that Avatar is an absolutely brilliant work of visual filmmaking, with special effects that still have not been bettered. Cameron managed to create a near-perfectly rendered alien world, and most of the movie is one-hundred percent CGI, even though it rarely feels like it. While the characters and dialogue in the film are hardly standouts, they aren't liabilities either, the main focus of Avatar was to push the boundaries of filmmaking technology and create an entirely new movie universe, and Cameron succeeded magnificently at both. One of the most notable aspects of Avatar is that instead of hypothesizing a future earth, like seemingly every other modern sci-fi film, Avatar tries to emulate the best works of science fiction and envision an entirely new place in which to tell future stories. With three more sequels in development, the Avatar mythology has a chance to reach series like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Dune by creating and exploring a fascinating new universe.