sorry, hate to take peoples thunder =P
i'm not surprised about all the hype for Avatar to be honest. James Cameron had written the story in 2months and started pre-production promptly afterward. Then he thought "we should wait a couple years for CGI to improve" so he did and they almost made it a 2000 release (or something close). The on that pre-production meeting they agreed that CGI at that time was still lacking to James' standards so he said "lets wait another couple years" then get got to 2007 after getting a special made camera for the film and filmed all the CG in "real-time" and then released it in 2009...
so a film 10years in the making would have a tonne of hype. i had to do an essay of 3D modelling and animation techniques lol, so i know a fair bit about the production of Avatar 😇