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Official Site: AvatarMovie.com

Release Date: December 18, 2009

Director: James Cameron

Main Actors: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang

After a 12-year layoff, James Cameron returns to the director’s chair with the heavily hyped Avatar, a 3-D sci-fi epic that industry observers and fans are hailing as a potential Hollywood “game changer.” This time around, it’s humans who are the alien invaders, and Sam Worthington stars as Jake Sully, a paraplegic ex-Marine selected for participation in the Avatar program, which enables humans to remotely inhabit an alien body. Initially brought to Pandora to infiltrate and gain the trust of the indigenous humanoid population, the Na’vi, Jake finds himself torn between two worlds when he unexpectedly falls in love with a young Na’vi princess (Zoe Saldana).

While it’ll be hard for Cameron to match the success of Titanic (only the highest-grossing movie of all time), anticipation is high for Avatar, a movie that many view as a referendum on the future of 3-D.

The writer/director shows a firm grasp of the added dimension and is able to create a sense of depth without any of those “it’s coming right at you” shots that have relegated past 3-D attempts to the realm of mere gimmick. Cameron’s goal is to completely immerse the audience in the fantastical alien world he’s created, and in that he certainly succeeds.

However, while Avatar’s technology may be sophisticated, its story is far from it -- essentially it's Dances with Wolves with giant blue cat people. And while the dialogue is no more cliche-ridden than most sci-fi action movies, Cameron’s resume and all the breathless hype surrounding the film comes with added expectations. There’s some potentially fertile territory here, but it gets bogged down by simplistic social commentary. Instead, it becomes abundantly clear that far more time was given to developing Avatar’s world than the beings that inhabit it. For all of its gargantuan budget (which is rumored to push $500 million including marketing), Avatar doesn’t have nearly the same depth as this year’s other alien action hit District 9.

For a period of time in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, few could match James Cameron’s cred as a go-to guy director, but his latest effort lands somewhere between Terminator 2 and Titanic. While Avatar is certainly an above-average sci-fi action flick, it isn’t an instant guy classic; at its core, it boils down to the same love story that made his last film such a hit with the ladies.

The geeks will certainly love it, but if you don’t have a fetish for cat people and couldn't care less about the needlessly comprehensive grammar and syntax Cameron developed for his alien race, don’t worry, there’s plenty of gunfire and high-octane action for you too.

Avatar’s special effects are nothing short of spectacular, with giant sweeping sequences and epic aerial battles, and the final showdown between the Na’vi and the humans proves Cameron hasn’t lost his touch as a first-rate action director. Thankfully, he’s an equally gifted storyteller, and despite its two-and-a-half-hour run time, he keeps the story moving at a good clip. There’s rarely a boring moment or unnecessary scene. Avatar isn’t going to redefine movies as we know them, but on the level of pure visual spectacle, the bar has certainly been raised.