The story itself has gotten a rise out of the Vatican, but frankly has little else to recommend it: it’s all about the surroundings.  You’ll hear a lot about the floating mountains, but, as real as they may seem, they’re really nothing more than Myst-ic images in motion.  The air battles are terrific, but no great advance over Star Wars, nor even, as a friend has noted, Howard Hughes’s Hell’s Angels.

The jungle, though: this is where Cameron’s computer artists truly earned their keep.  The jungle is the heart of Avatar’s story, and it succeeds by eschewing the space in front of the screen, where virtually all directors in in the history of 3D cinema have sought to grab their audiences, and realizing a pulse-quickening sense of living space.  This extension of the frame all but obliterates our sense of animation at work; the pity is that it can’t do more to bring the characters beyond type.  Cameron’s achievement lays out for filmmakers a 3D philosophy that will get us at some point past the spectacle (and, of course, the spectacles) and deliver an experience that is artful and compelling as well as immersive.