All that is just personal opinion. Some like one film better and some another.
I can accept that for a fact, and nobody should really take another's personal opinion too seriously, or ones own for that matter.
The thing is that virtually ALL of the reviews for Avatar say the same thing that I did :
Great FX, Visuals, technology
and..
Average to poor writing, characters, and acting.
Most of the reviewers were willing to give an overall positive grade due to the incredibly well done (best ever so far?) FX and technology, but I guess I'm just not that impressed anymore.
Even if T2 had the old-school effects of T1, it would still be a compelling film. The terminator character was tailor-made perfect for Arnie, and the supporting cast and writing were exceptionally well done for an action film. Aside from a couple of scenes, even Edward Furlong did really well, and his performance was crucial to carry the film.
Aliens was just genius on so many levels, and is widely regarded as one of the best action films of all time (along with T2). The cast was really diverse and worked together well, again the writing and pacing were really good, and the film holds up very well to this day.
Hell, T1 holds up really well as a film, the effects are dated, but the thing was just a good overall film.
Titanic is already being looked at as pretty much an FX marvel with a hit pop song that rode a giant wave of popularity, but is pretty forgettable overall. There were a number of characters that were incredibly short-changed beyond an almost 'walk-on' presence, and it's a shame they were written so thinly. As a technical masterpiece, it EXCELS truly. As a film about people, their motivations, and what makes things tick, it was pretty weak.
Avatar takes this to another level, it's like JC didn't even bother writing anything original whatsoever. He adapted Pocahontas into Space, and added a subtext about the evils that he perceives in our current times.
I listened to Cameron speak about Avatar on NPR recently, and he described how he really wanted to give some anti-Bush hits in the movie, and I thought that was pretty silly really.
I really dislike Bush (don't want to get P&N here), but is a future Space Epic really the place to do that? I don't want overt pro or con subtext in my fantasy or sci-fi movies where our world should be pretty irrelevant to that otherworldly storyline.