I saw Avatar just before Christmas. Brief note of gratitude to the new Odeon at the Metro Centre in Gateshead here. I had originally booked seats for the previous Saturday, but was snowed in and couldn't attend. They happily exchanged my tickets for the following Wednesday with nothing extra to pay. It wasn't one of the smaller venue screenings either, it was the IMAX 3D variety, so presumably they lost money by accommodating me.
As for the film, thoroughly enjoyed it. Complex it isn't; predictable it is - not to mention simple to the point of banality. To concentrate on these things, however, is to miss the point. If you just want to be entertained with gob-smacking visual and sonic effects, and a decent, well-produced story, it cuts the mustard and then some. I suspect that it will be roundly panned a few years on as it becomes fashionable to deride it. The same thing happened to 'Titanic' and 'The Sound of Music', two of its predecessors among the contenders for world's*most popular film. I wonder how many of those films' modern detractors secretly rather like them.