Avatar, James Cameron's much-hyped sci-fi epic,

Avatar, James Cameron's much-hyped sci-fi epic,
James Bond 007 movies dvds is many things: a mind-blowing technical achievement, a lyrically beautiful paean to nature (albeit alien), Walt Disneys 100 Years Of Magic dvd a rousing adventure story and an overly familiar, cliche-ridden hero's journey, but there's one thing it's not. Simple.
House MD dvd box set The movie premiered to rapturous applause in London on Thursday night, and early reviews have been similarly glowing. Michael Jackson ultimate dvd collection We appreciate the film's good qualities—and there are many of them—but we came away troubled byThe Beatles Limited Collection dvds the story's problems. Still, it's hard not to like Avatar for a lot of reasons.

The human forces on Pandora unleash tremendous firepower in an epic battle against the Na'vi, the indigenous population.
The Beatles Limited Collection dvds The main thing, though, is that early buzz about the movie's look and feel—that it looks too cartoony or video-game-like—are completely off the las vegas box set mark. It took us about five minutes to get used to the masterful 3-D (starting with a floating water droplet that slowly One Tree Hill dvd coalesces right in front of our and Sam Worthington's faces). Once we're on the completely computer-generated surface charmed dvd box set of the alien moon of Pandora, it also took us about five minutes to believe that what we were seeing was completely photo-real, True Blood season dvds including the performances of the giant blue natives, which were achieved through extremely accurate and subtle motion-capture married with children dvd technology.
The L Word dvd box set From then on, it was easy to become completely swept up in the sci-fi fantasy world of Avatar. Bones Seasons dvd The story kicks off aboard a giant floating starship, kind of the next generation of the Sulaco from Cameron's own Aliens (there are Star Trek Collection Series dvd other callbacks and echoes of that great Criminal Minds dvd box set movie throughout). It's not long before we and hero Jake Sully (Worthington), a paraplegic Marine, areDoctor Who dvds downloaded into the consciousness of his giant blue "avatar," designed to resemble Pandora's native Na'vi humanoids, Farscape seasons dvd and are literally and figuratively running in an adventure that is equal parts Dances With Wolves, Pocahontas and Ghost Whisperer dvd box set Braveheart.
Smallville seasons dvd Jake finds himself overmatched by Pandora's native beasts, including a giant Thanator, and by the Na'vi themselves, Boston Legal dvd box set personified by the lissome warrior Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). She despises him and his kind, the "Sky People," who have CSI Miami Seasons dvds come to the planet to mine a valuable mineral and see the Na'vi as a nuisance. But he quickly ingratiates himself prison break dvd box set into the tribe, in part because (we are led to believe) the planet itself seems to think there's something special about Mash Seasons dvd Jake.
Jake, meanwhile, is co-opted by the nefarious The Tudors complete seasons dvd Col. Quaritch (a growling Stephen Lang), who sees in Jake an opportunity to infiltrate the enemy Audrey Hepburn Ultimate Collection dvd and learn its secrets. Jake initially agrees, but he finds his allegiances in question the closer he gets both to The Simpsons seasons dvd Neytiri and to the Na'vi. The scientists led by Dr. Grace Augustine (Aliens' awesome Sigourney Weaver), meanwhile, NCIS seasons dvd worry that the corporation in charge of the mission to Pandora will ignore her team's attempts to winBuffy The Vampire Slayer dvds the hearts and minds of the Na'vi and instead take the planet by force.
If the story sounds familiar, it is, Battlestar Galactica seasons dvd and it's one of the largely computer-animated film's ironies that the only cartoon-like thing about Warner Bros Cartoons Movies dvd it is its plot. The dialogue often lapses into real cornball—Lang's Quaritch actually says Law and Order: Special Victims Unit dvd "You're not in Kansas anymore"—and the situations and events are predictable almost from the first frame. Cameron has argued that the story is necessarily familiar Mad Men Seasons because of its mythic roots, but there's practically nothing in Avatar that isn't telegraphed from the wordTales from the Crypt dvds go.
That familiarity Supernatural DVD box set is compounded by the one-dimensional nature of most of the characters, with the notable exception of Jake and Neytiri. Monk Seasons dvdsThere's the venal corporate executive, the wise medicine woman, the noble chief, and on and on.
But the film works on many levels, Dexter Seasons DVD owing to Cameron's virtuosic filmmaking abilities. We've mentioned the technical achievements, but Cameron South Park Seasons dvds has also succeeded on an aesthetic level: The vistas and jungles, flora star trek deep space nine dvd collection and fauna, of Pandora are truly breathtakingly beautifulMinuscule Complete Series DVD Box set (you gotta really like the color blue). The action is balls-out great, especially when Jake and his fellow Na'vi take to the air aboard their dragonlike Banshees, soaring over and Medium Seasons DVD around massive floating mountains. Again, it's easy to get swept away by the romance of the adventure, and Cameron NCIS DVDs knows how to stage and pace the action so that the two-hour-and-40-minute film Emergency Room dvd box set seems to race by.
Jake and Neytiri's relationship is plausibly romantic, Stargate SG-1 dvds owing mainly to Saldana's deliciously alien performance as the catlike Neytiri, Family Guy dvd box set but key scenes feel a bit underwritten.
Curb Your Enthusiasm seasons dvd Cameron has been saying over and over again that Avatar will change the way movies are made. That's also ironic, considering how old-fashioned it is in many ways. But it's certainly Star Wars: The Clone Wars worth a return trip, just to immerse oneself in the complete universe that Cameron and his company have created.
(Avatar opens Dec. 18. We are publishing this early Cold Case seasons dvd review with the permission of two and a half men seasons dvd 20th Century Fox.)

Pandora's majestic floating mountains dwarf a massive gunship.