Not really - what I am saying is that pretty much everyone agrees that Transformers is a mindless action-flick with some T&A tossed in (by a terrible actress who thinks too much of herself) ... but some seem to refer to Avatar as though it was something different ... as though the correct amount of eye-candy can somehow make all of the lacking quality elsewhere acceptable. I have no problem with Avatar as a awesome looking spectacle which is good looking enough to distract you from the fact that it is just another braindead action flick with a totally recycled plot ...
Since they had to start with a toy that starts as a robot and turns into your favorite car, I thought they did a pretty good job of coming up with a story to back it up, so I would not agree that it is totally mindless.
The only real technical question I would have asked is how do they explain the different character masses from say a new Camaro into Bumblebee...
You can really get into a nit picky discussion about what makes a good story and a lot of it boils down to personal preference. Alien- Freighter crew sent to planet to investigate new life form without their consent. One survives. Aliens- Marines sent to planet to figure out what happened to evil corporation's mining crews on same planet... well Aliens got them. Double crossing evil corporations? That pops up a lot in stories. So how original does a story have to be to be enjoyable?
For Avatar, considering the creator, honestly I was hoping for something more original. Not simply a might-makes-right story, let's us technically savvy types, screw the indigenous species, while the hero goes native. But that story has happened for real many times through human history. Last time I saw a variation of it was Dancing With Wolves. It was not mindless, but it was not original either. However there was a twist in the end. spoiler>
The underdogs win.<spoiler. I still enjoyed the gee wizz effect which you alluded to. Now I'm going to have to see this movie again, before I can decided if it meets my "buy" criteria.