Step 1: Listen up, all aspiring 3D filmmakers: Pay attention to what James Cameron has done with his truly spectacular looking Avatar. This, my friends, is the right way to create a 3D film experience.
Step 2: Describe it aptly. The story isn’t half bad, either, if you don’t mind a little tree hugging here and there. In fact, the morning after the screening – as I was trying to sum up the film for my 10-year-old daughter – I said it was Dances with Wolves meets … and just as I was about to say Pocahontas, she chimes in “blue people?” After spitting out my coffee, I laughed, “Yes, that’s it exactly. Dances with Wolves meets the Blue People.” Very TALL blue people.
Step 3: Follow the traditional natives-vs.-the-big-bad-white-man scenario. A greedy corporate jerk (Giovanni Ribisi) and his military backup invade the planet Pandora to mine its precious resources in the lush woodlands and drive off its native population, the Na’vi. This doesn’t make scientist Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) very happy since she’s been on Pandora awhile, long before the bad guys showed up, studying the Na’vi – who are completely in synch with their environs. She is also the one who developed the technology to interact with the Na’vi called “avatars.” As she 
and her team are plugged into cylinder machines, their Na’vi look-a-likes walk among the tribe. Things get dicey, however, when paraplegic Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) shows up as the newest member of the scientific team. The gung-ho military leader Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) zeroes in on Jake and convinces him to gather intel on the tribe while he is one of them. He agrees – but then Jake experiences his first real avatar excursion and is hooked. He begins bonding with the Na’vi people, who decide to train him to become a warrior, and eventually falls in love with the beautiful Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), his teacher. When Jake starts to side with the Na’vi, Quaritch takes matter into his own destructive hands. You can see where this is going, right?
Step 4: Throw some actors in there. Aussie actor Worthington continues his tough guy-with-a-heart-of-gold persona he started earlier this year in Terminator: Salvation and comes off winningly as Jake – both as the paraplegic AND as the Na’vi. Saldana, too, adds a certain tender fierceness as Neytiri, and she and Worthington make a pretty hot couple, even if they are blue. Weaver seems to be channeling a bit of her Dian Fossey from Gorillas in the Mist, protecting the planet Pandora and all, while Lang completely overdoes it as the mean old Colonel. Michelle Rodriguez as makes an appearance as yet another solider type, but who softens and becomes an ally for the good guys.
Step 5: Know who the REAL star is: writer/director James Cameron. He is incomparable wielding the reins behind the camera, a director who just can’t do the norm but must challenge himself each time he makes a movie – from the amazing visuals in Terminator 2, to sinking the Titanic so convincingly, to inventing this new 
form of digital 3D filmmaking with Ghost of the Abyss and now Avatar. While he may lack a certain pizazz as a screenwriter, his what must be obsessive-compulsive perfectionism in making Avatar a groundbreaking feat in filmmaking astounds you. Beyond just placing the audience “in the moment” with the 3D technology, Cameron manages to create this world of Pandora around you so exquisitely, you can almost touch it. It’s lush, mossy green, quiet, explosive, filled with sights (giant rainbow-colored flying birds, hairless dogs) and sounds (the Na’vi’s rebel yell). This guy deserves SOME kind of an award for this remarkable achievement – and with his recent Golden Globe nomination and possible Oscar nod, he may get it. Again.
Level of difficulty in watching Avatar: As easy as soaring on one of those dragon-like warrior birds the Na’vi love so much. Wheeee!