This wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen, but if work hadn't filled me with food and drinks and bought the tickets, I'd have been less generous with my thoughts about it.
Since everyone is talking about the visuals and knows that the story is basically terrible, I was a little disappointed with the visuals too. Now, I haven't gone back to watch the first Avatar again to see if it was the same way, and it probably was, but everything was way too "clean" for my eye. Nothing was ever dirty, or even smudged. They are on a goddamn beach for a good chunk of time, and sand never sticks to anyone. They swim through absolutely crystal clear water at all times (yes, I'm sure it is the planet spirit and the lack of humans that makes it so awesome). Hard for me to explain I suppose, but it was just jarringly artificial to me this time around. Granted, it looked amazing if you take that factor out of it, particularly in IMAX 3D, but I had a hard time not seeing that "too clean" look.
Now, let's get the true elephant in the room out of the way. There were no people of color in the movie, unless you count blue as a color. Where was the diversity??? There was one absolutely fucking retarded asian chick character, and brief appearances by that brown scientist guy from the first movie, but I am almost positive there was never a single black on screen. This is an outrage! (touches ear) Hold on...I'm being told by our producers that all the humans are terrible, evil people that are trying to rape the planet and deserve to die, so obviously they couldn't ever be black. So scratch that, it is no longer problematic that there were zero black people in the movie that weren't also covered in blue cgi. (And without looking first, I would bet good money that close to half the Navi are played by blacks.)
Speaking of CGI, I felt they did an absolutely horrible job of differentiating some of the new blue characters. I couldn't tell one fucking brother from another until way late, and many of the new bad guys, including the big bad Phoenix has in his spoiler, took way too long for me to recognize just by sight. When he started talking it was obvious, but the faces of a lot of people at the beginning, when we're being introduced, were too similar for my eye. Which is funny because all the people we meet after that, like the sea people, are super easy to tell apart.
There's a human boy/man that was super-duper annoying, at least to me, and it is even worse when you see just how badly he is used in the movie. Spoiler alert, he gets captured by the humans at one point. They talk about it, then decide meh, nothing to be done, he's fucked, let's move. Later they see him again, they risk a lot to get him back, then they have to go back in for others and he goes with them, and when the blue family makes it out, not a single one of them says "Hey, where's the fucking human we just risked our lives for, and who is currently risking his life for us?" Nope, just fuck that guy. Oh wait, he's back again? We were so worried!! Also, looked super dumb having all these cgi beings running around, and one just as almost naked human running around with them, but with his oxygen face mask on too. GTFO.
For the less serious but still slightly annoying thoughts...if I heard the word "Bro" one more fucking time, I was going to unzip my backpack right there in the theater and start passing around the Natty Ice, play some Gamecube, and wave my big black dildo around to start some bro raping. Seriously, who the fuck thought it was a good idea to say bro 400 times in a movie non-ironically? Furthermore, when they literally wear nothing more than strands of rope/fabric and some fucking beads, how is it possible to go for over 3 hours without at least one goddamn nip or scrote slip?? How does that one remaining strand of fabric always cover the nip somehow? And before someone tries to explain it to me, yes I know it is all cgi and fake. But can you imagine being the guy that has to go in and make sure every scene has proper nip coverage?? Well, if they even have nips. Now I'm not so sure, because if they do, one strand shouldn't be enough to cover up the entire thing for every female ever shown. Particularly the pregnant ones. You know those nips would be huge and brown (purple?) and require a couple square feet of fabric to hide.
Oh, and did I mention that I had to sit next to an honest to God tranny for the whole movie? He/she (male masquerading as female) started the movie trying to act like a giddy schoolgirl, literally making "teehee" sounds while drumming his feet and clapping his hands on his knees like he just can't control his excitement. First half hour or so was like that, and I was contemplating murder the whole time (and that's not transphobic you faggots, I'd have wanted to murder anyone doing that fucking bullshit right next to me). However, I think the lackluster story eventually got to him and even he lost much of his enthusiasm. (EDIT: I forgot to add that the tranny was wearing his mask throughout the entire movie.)
Overall rating, meh. Not terrible to see in IMAX 3D, and I didn't hate it, but if work doesn't pay for the next one I won't be seeing it on my own, and I will likely never rewatch this one. If it had just average visuals I'd say don't bother. Particularly for how fucking long it is. I could almost picture James Cameron masturbating to some of the way too fucking long scenes of nothing but shit swimming around to show off how cool he is.