I have been doubting that objective criteria of artistic quality are known to people these days. I have seen a bunch of reviews even from critics I am familiar with (i.e. deem ‘fair’ even when I disagree) that just don’t bear any resemblance to the film I saw or come across as just being derogatory for the sake of being derogatory.
I have seen stuff that has been given a pass (STINO) that was not extended to far less egregious errors in other films. Transformers for instance was seriously trashed but the script of that mess is tight compared to JJ Trek and yet to say this aloud is like speaking another language.
With Robin Hood it seemed to me critics ran it down mostly because it wasn’t Erroll Flynn and not on any particular lack of merit. I didn’t see most of the reviews as accurate or fair. I have seen a lot of this lately, judgment of a film passed on what was expected or desired. What I’m getting at here is whether or not a person ‘likes’ the film or gets what they want out of it has been having far too much of an impact on whether it is deemed ‘good.’ “I didn’t like it” =/= “It was a terrible movie.”
To bring this back to Avatar and your claim that it wasn’t even good, I suggest that the film made you think and you didn’t want to do that and so the film is ‘bad.’ Given some of your other comments on the board I am not surprised that you didn’t care for the film and your opinion is in line with others who didn’t like it and share some of your opinions. I understand your criticism and it would seem ‘you watched the same movie I did.’
Another example would be Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull which essentially committed the ‘crime’ of not being Raiders of The Lost Ark. The critics seem to feel very positive about it but the users are nearly split. I think the attitude of movie goers (what I like is good, what I don’t like is not) has been seeping into critics and movie goers have been making less and less of an effort to be objective.