7. Avatar
Arguably the most overly maligned film of the last decade, Avatar suffered from being too successful, too groundbreaking, and too popular. Despite creating one of the most immersive cinematic worlds of all time and offering a quantum leap in special effects, pretty much anytime someone talks about it now, they criticise its unoriginal plot and unfairly pin all the recent overuse of 3D on it. Yes, it doesn't have the most original narrative, but it's not alone among very good movies that freely borrowed from other stories. Even if it was, Avatar more than makes up for it in other areas, most noticeably with the special effects but also in the music, the size and scope, the attention to every on-screen detail, and the completely realized world that James Cameron created for his characters to inhabit. Avatar is designed to be a spectacle through and through and it remains one of the all-time great ones. While I do think that the upcoming sequels should definitely focus more on narrative and interesting characterisations, Avatar successfully did its job of stretching the limits of moviemaking and setting the stage for a very interesting fictional universe.