This movie is going to make a squillion dollars. It has everything you need for a blockbuster: aliens, magic, and funky interspecies lovin’. It’s even got mechs, for Pete’s sake. It also has a Captain Planet-level pro-environmental and anti-imperialist message that is likely to earn it some attack cycles on the Fox News Channel, which will probably help with promotion.

Visually, the movie impresses, albeit in a very mushrooms and prog-rock way. It’s a Yes album cover brought to life. There are floating cloud-mountains and screaming dragonbirds. Nearly 100% of the flora is groovily bioluminescent. The rainforest is strewn with conveniently load-bearing vines. The Na’vi – the wise woodland folk who inhabit the planet Pandora – look like giant blue beach volleyball players. Every one of them sports the cornrowed hairstyle sorority girls are always bringing back from Jamaica and dresses like an exceptionally immodest yoga instructor.

The story, however, is unworthy of the presentation. It’s essentially Disney’s “Pocohontas” mashed up with a little Saturday-morning enviroganda and a dash of District 9. A giant, vaguely evil Earth-based trading company discovers vast stores of valuable unobtanium (literally) on the planet Pandora. These reserves are located beneath a city of Na’vi, which the company proposes to move out of the way. In order to convince the locals to evacuate peaceably, the company sends in avatars. These are bio-engineered Na’vi bodies digitally linked to a human’s consciousness. When this “hearts and minds” plan doesn’t work, the military hijacks the agenda and co-opts our hero, ordering him to gather enough intelligence to destroy the Na’vi instead.

During the course of his mission, our hero learns to love and respect the Na’vi, completing their manhood ceremonies and joining their society. He realizes he must try to defend the noble savages and repel his employers before the Na’vi and their matriarchal, nature-worshipping way of life are destroyed.

If this sounds like boilerplate 70s sci-fi, it’s because it is. It’s a typical “gone native” narrative, and it brings very little in the way of new ideas to the table.

Sadly, at least for those who like their sci-fi on the heady side, this lack of ideas doesn’t really matter. The draw here is the technical brilliance of the movie. Audiences will likely be so impressed with the visuals that they won’t realize the intellectual limitations of the movie until long after they’ve gone home.

So you should see it. It’s too zeitgeisty to miss. You should also see it in 3D. There is a cheaper 2D version playing alongside the 3D version in many theaters, but you’ll be cheating yourself if you choose that one. The seamlessness of the 3D might end up being the most lasting legacy of this film. Where most 3D movies are really 2D movies with moments of 3D pop, Avatar brings it wall-to-wall. Nearly every scene is shot so that all the major elements are distinctly rendered. Very quickly the effect stops being a gimmick and starts making other movies look lazy.

I think you can safely skip the IMAX version, because Cameron didn’t shoot it with IMAX cameras.

One of the Yes albums in question