DavidBrennan said:

I defy anybody to watch 'Capturing Avatar' (or the dozens of terrific "Making of" featurettes that the production released for free online leading up to 'Avatar's release) and compare that to the PT. James Cameron's philosophy for creating quality performances for actors in synthetic environments (all green screen for the PT, mostly performance cap for AVTR) was 100% the opposite.

Yeah, but it didn't matter in the end; I thought Avatar was crap. Every fictional Cameron film since True Lies has been an unintentional comedy. Compare the "acting" in Avatar with that in Aliens or Terminator.

But modern audiences have held blockbuster films to lower and lower standards for many years now. I think the only major summer blockbuster of the last 15 years that I have enjoyed was Iron Man.

And for the record: Jake Lloyd's acting sucked in TPM. He actually lowered the quality of the dialogue by his terrible delivery - quite a feat.