Avatar: PG-13: intense epic battle sequences and warfare, sensuality, language; 2:40; $ $ $ $

“Avatar” soars — literally — as the best-looking film of this or any other year. If only the well-worn plot, reminiscent of so many ancient Tarzan films and scores of narratives about evil intruders looking to plunder pristine lands, played as loudly and splendidly as its seamlessly special 3D effects.

This time, there are environmental reasons for the pillaging, but you’ll still be cheering for the good guys. That would be big blue Na’vi creatures, trying to save their gorgeous piece of the universe from our planet’s corporate/military goons.

Oscar-winning director James Cameron, who has been talking about his amazing technology for years, certainly put his studio’s $300-plus million where his mouth was in a 160-minute spectacle that constantly fills every corner of the screen and then some.

Yes, there are special glasses to be worn to take it all in, but they never become a nuisance and, it says here, will be forgotten by the time Cameron quickly introduces “the most hostile environment known to man” (even if its glorious year 2154 splendor never really lives down to those threatening words).

Various-sized flying and creepy crawlers dot the landscape of Pandora, home to the earth-centered Na’vi, though none really are more seriously villainous than businessman Carter Selfridge (nicely nasty Giovanni Ribisi) and crazed super soldier Miles Quaritch (cartoonish Stephen Lang). The terrible twosome heads an invasion expedition that also includes an experimental team led by a botanist (Sigourney Weaver), whose DNA work sparks the chance to mix and move around with the knowledgeable natives.

The latter advancement also permits Weaver’s good and strong-willed scientist, as well as disabled Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), to study the methods of their alien (read: more spiritual than us) pals. Alas, nobody counted on falling in love, and that’s precisely the head-over-heels direction that Princess Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and Sully, warriors both, take soon after setting eyes on one another.

The “Titanic”-like tryst lets just about anybody guess what happens along the rest of the lengthy way. However, nobody could possibly expect to witness the images that Cameron offers up, particularly his abundant action sequences in a rich and gaudy final act. Forget the story and simply behold.

Read more by John M. Urbancich at http://jmuvies.blogspot.com/