Yesterday was Avatar Day, and at the last minute I found myself in attendance for the 6 pm showing at NYC’s AMC Loews in Lincoln Square. (The theater and I have a long history together that mostly goes back to me drooling over The Dark Knight in IMAX and feeling insanely dizzy thanks to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in IMAX 3-D.)

Three things you should know about me before we get started: 1. I love IMAX, I love 3-D, and IMAX 3-D is always a treat for me when it’s well done, 2. While I was curious about the Avatar footage, I wasn’t planning to attend Avatar Day until the opportunity fell in my lap, and 3. I actually liked the Avatar trailer that was shown earlier this week though I cared little for the design of the Na’vi alien race.

Worthington and his Na'vi-like avatar counterpart.

Now that we have that out of the way, we can get started on what really matters: the footage itself. Amounting to about 16 minutes, the scenes came from various points throughout Avatar, though James Cameron — via IMAX and not in person — assured us they were all from the first half of the film and did not contain spoilers.

Unfortunately, this movie looks to be so paint-by-numbers that spoiling the audience is a given once they know the premise. As I wrote on Twitter last night, “Avatar: visually impressive, but I’m not sold on the script/story.” That’s because, Avatar, for all its shiny new paint and CGI, is a story you’ve seen before.

But first, let’s discuss the positives. Avatar is gorgeous and takes full advantage of everything IMAX 3-D has to offer. Though I did not initially like the Na’vi design, their close-ups — complete with slight twitches of the ear and lifelike eyes — quickly endeared me to them. Between their expressive eyes and ears, the Na’vi are clearly aimed at triggering the oh-my-goodness-I-love-puppies-and-kittens-and-everything-cute part of your brain. And it works, allowing you to quickly forget any doubts you may have had regarding their cartoonish look.

Their appearance does get in the way later on, though. It’s a bit disconcerting, and more than a little incongruous, to witness Sam Worthington’s voice coming out of an adorably blue Na’vi as it says, “Whatchu got?! Oh yeah who’s bad? That’s right. Yeah that’s what I’m talking ’bout bitch!”

Of course, this line arrives just as Worthington’s character, Jake, is scaring off a predator only to find out that a bigger, more threatening creature is behind him and that’s the real reason why his foe backed down. It’s a scene you’ve seen a thousand times before and the only cause you have for liking this version is that it’s a tad prettier and in IMAX 3-D.

In fact, the visuals seem to be the only reason to watch Avatar at the moment, since you’ve pretty much already seen this movie several times — only back then you called it Pocahontas, Ferngully: The Last Rainforest, or Dances with Wolves. That Cameron wanted to make his own take on the classic tale about the outsider gone native is not a problem. The film industry and practically all of entertainment is about taking the same couple of stories and themes and recycling them for new audiences, after all. The problem is that Cameron’s interpretation doesn’t appear to have anything new to offer audiences.

Though you may not be able to predict the lines word for word, you can certainly tell where certain scenes and characters may be headed, and the footage shown on Avatar Day only served to reinforce my fears about the hackneyed plot. We see foolhardy, human-born Jake being taken under the wing of the native Na’vi, participating in a tribal ritual and then — from what I can tell based upon the montage of scenes that followed — the Na’vi fighting against the humans, and Jake being forced to straddle the line between the two.

Again, these views are only based upon the 16 minutes shown on Avatar Day. I’m not disputing that Avatar will likely be a fun and entertaining watch, but from what I can tell there’s no reinvention of the wheel going on here plotwise. It looks to be a passable story that’s riding by on its visual effects.

I should also note that I’m not writing about this in order to dissuade people from seeing it. Kids will absolutely love it and, if you can tolerate or even like the story, you’ll certainly want to take it for a spin. Cameron’s team has accomplished much in the realm of graphics and motion capture, and Avatar will likely set the pace for a generation of films to come thanks to its technical accomplishments.

But unless Cameron pulls out some amazing stops in terms of plotting and characterization, this film won’t be very memorable aside from the visuals it has to offer. This is disappointing, because for the groundbreaking film it is graphically, it deserves to have a much better story and longer staying power. For all the years that were spent working on the look of Avatar, I wish that more time had been spent with the script.