James Cameron's "Avatar" gives movie-goers something they have truly not seen before - a thrill ride adventure in a fully formed world inhabited by fantastic creatures who manage to be as believable as anything here on Earth. At the same time, it gives us something we've seen countless times before - greedy colonists intent on pillaging unspoiled nature and the protagonist who "goes native" and fights back. This is a film which almost needs to be reviewed on two levels - one, as a narrative and secondly, as a spectacle. 

As a narrative, it is not a failure, but it never soars. The film's plot is familiar and the metaphors a bit too on-the-nose (describing the human campaign against the native Na'vi as "some sort of shock-and-awe campaign"). Some questionable dialogue and some odd pacing hamper the film. Thankfully, Cameron has cast some wonderful actors who manage to make work what would come off as trite in less capable hands. The story is not all bad, familiar though it may be, Cameron adds some interesting sci-fi twists through the introduction of the Avatar Program, which allows human beings to inhabit lab-grown Na'vi bodies. He revisits concepts from his previous outings - cryo-sleep for space travel, giant mechs used for battle, and fully realized and believable futuristic settings. He also fully delivers on the action sequences which are tense and riveting. Even so, the film occasionally falls too deep into its new-age spirituality and eco-friendly message and becomes overly preachy at parts.  But then, none of these reasons are why audiences go to see a James Cameron film - they go for the spectacle, which is something "Avatar" delivers in spades.

Like our hero Jake Sully, the audience is thrust into a strange, beautiful and sometimes deadly world which seems truly alien. The first hour or so of this film is a travelogue of sorts through the world of Pandora. Trees the size of sky scrapers and bio-luminescent fauna dominate the landscape; deadly creatures and floating mountains all seem perfectly at home in this world. And most impressive - the Na'vi - the ten foot tall, blue, cat-like heroes of "Avatar". The Na'vi are why you go to see "Avatar". In these creatures, James Cameron gives us a glimpse at the future of film-making. Never before have computer generated creatures this convincing and this able to convey subtle emotions through facial expressions and body language. Created by the team which brought Gollum to life in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, these are not animated creatures, but virtual costumes which allow actors to truly inhabit another body. No longer are the actors just providing voices, every nuance of their performance is captured and portrayed by these creatures of virtual flesh. The true splendor to be found in "Avatar" is the way in which the audience is able to quickly forget that these creatures don't exist in any tangible space and become invested in the story. Add to that the 3D which is done so tastefully that it fades into the background - serving to merely add depth and immersion to the world that Cameron has created - and you have a level of immersion previously unseen in film.