He’s focusing so hard on his themes being timeless that he’s no longer challenging the audience. Which is why they’re only winning visual art Oscars.

I mean he’s been using visual shortcuts to human emotional states instead of, you know, character development since fucking Titanic, if not before.

The obvious example to contrast the Avatar films with is District 9, which came of the same year as the first Avatar film. The “prawns” of District 9 are absolutely ugly to behold, but they are “humanized” through character development instead of shortcuts like giving them giant, dewy, innocent looking eyes and making them look like innocent animals like cats or dogs. Cameron make the Na’vi aesthetically pleasing to humans because it’s easier to make them the “good guys” this way than it is if they looked like District 9’s “prawns.”

I mean, no shade, Cameron is good at using the techniques he has chosen as a way to short circuit his audience into feeling the things he wants them to feel… but that doesn’t make them not cheap, easy, and overall weak compared to serious character development since it’s a complete reliance on visual shortcuts to emotional depth without the actual emotional depth.