> The plot of "Avatar" was depressingly cliche; a standard retelling of the standard action movie plot, done once again.
I liked when Avatar was described as "Pocahontas in Space". It's pretty interesting tooling around on TVTropes.org and seeing exactly how you can break down a movie into well-known and well-worn cliches.
It reminds me a bit of high school literature critique. It used to bother me quite a bit when we'd tease out these meanings from books since I couldn't believe that authors spent their time trying to come up with hidden metaphors on every page. It took a long time to change my perspective to recognize that these books were successful decades after they've been written because of those buried metaphors and tropes. All of the books that were facile and poorly written disappear into history, and whether the authors intended every single sunset to mean something unique, the books are worth studying because they connect in that way and for whatever reason, we connect with those meanings.
Warning for those who get sidetracked easily, TVTropes is a worse wormhole than wikipedia, but it's endlessly interesting to see what's behind successful media: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/Avatar