I don't believe the hype on The Dark Knight can be justified because it still comes down to personal opinion. For every person that loves it there is another that hates it or thinks it's overrated. The hype on that film is so much that even if it is a work of brilliance I'm not going to be able to be objective about it and see it.
I can sit and watch the cheapest looking, mind numbingly useless films and TV shows and enjoy them for what they are. I know I can't do that with this film. I got given a copy of it on DVD and I gave it away unopened for a charity raffle. I really can't see me watching that in the next five years.
As for Avatar blowing every other CGI film out of the water there again lays a problem. I'm bored of overly CGI films. I watched one of the second batch of the Star Wars films and was enjoying it and then in the last 15 minutes or so I switched off as it turned into one mass CGI-fest.
In one of them you had Yoda fighting Christopher Lee with lightsabers and Yoda was bouncing off walls like a pinball.
People in the cinema literally swore and walked out at that rubbish.
I like sci-fi, horror and superhero films but am finding them harder and harder to get into because of the CGI stuff. It looks too weird and fake. If I see Spiderman swinging on his web flipping and umping across buildings my brain goes tilt. It may very well be a man filmed in a costume but I know it was added in CGI because nobody can move that fast or in that way without help.
I want to see a stunt man crashing through a window not a CGI.
Hollywood is spending millions on SFX and they look less realistic than the old action films from the 50's. They seem to have the mentality of.. "We can so we will." It should be, "We can, but do we need too?"
Like The Dark Knight, I'll see Avatar one day but it wont be for a long long time yet.