Avatar Rocks

James Cameron's Avatar could have been the most expensive and technically ambitious flop ever made, but early reviews of the film say it's going to be anything but. The Hollywood Reporter called the film a "jaw-dropping wonder," in which every element of the groundbreaking technology "serves the greater purpose of a deeply felt love story," while Variety hailed it as "a film of universal appeal that just about anyone who ever goes to the movies will need to see." Cameron wrote the script years ago, but waited to make the film until the necessary special effects technology, including exquisitely rendered motion capture, became available. The story focuses on Pandora, a planet filled with blue-skinned natives who don't take kindly to the mining colony a multinational corporation has established. The corporation sends in a crippled former Marine to negotiate by putting his mind into an avatar, a remote-controlled biological body that mixes human DNA with that of the natives. The only element of the movie to take issue with, Variety says, is its simplistic treatment of the "stereotypical evil-white-empire/virtuous-native cliches."