Stills: Avatar

Today is 'Avatar' Day. One of the most expensive films of all time, the James Cameron-directed 3-D spectacle is eagerly awaited by audiences worldwide. We begin the celebrations with these stills from the movie that boasts of path-breaking computer graphics, produced at a whopping cost of $310 million by 20th Century Fox and its financing partners Dune Entertainment and Ingenious Film Partners. (Photo Credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

'Avatar' tells the story of Jake Sully, a former Marine confined to a wheelchair. But despite his broken body, Jake is still a warrior at heart. In this still Neytiri (Zoë Saldana) and Jake (Sam Worthington) make final preparations for an epic battle that will decide the fate of an entire world. (Photo Credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

Jake is recruited to travel light years to the human outpost on Pandora, where a corporate consortium is mining a rare mineral that is the key to solving Earth's energy crisis. Zoë Saldana is Neytiri, a fearless and beautiful warrior, and a member of Pandora's royal clan of Na'vi. (Photo Credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

Because Pandora's atmosphere is toxic, the mining corporation has created the Avatar Program, in which human "drivers" have their consciousness linked to an avatar, a remotely-controlled biological body that can survive in the lethal air. A scene from Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation 'Avatar.' (Photo Credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

These avatars are genetically engineered hybrids of human DNA mixed with DNA from the natives of Pandora... the Na'vi. As an epic battle approaches, Jake (Sam Worthington, left), Grace (Sigourney Weaver), Trudy (Michelle Rodriguez) and Norm (Joel David Moore) plan their next move. (Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

Reborn in his avatar form, Jake can walk again. This shot features Sigourney Weaver playing Dr. Grace Augustine, a scientist who works with Sam Worthington's Jake Sully. (Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

Jake is given a mission to infiltrate the Na'vi, who have become a major obstacle to mining the precious ore. A scene from Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation 'Avatar.' (Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

But a beautiful Na'vi female, Neytiri, saves Jake's life, and this changes everything. Stephen Lang as Col. Quaritch with Sam Worthington as Jake Sully in a scene from 'Avatar'. (Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

Jake is taken in by her clan, and learns to become one of them, which involves many tests and adventures. A shot of the movie's villain, Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), flying a battleship known as the Dragon. (Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

As Jake's relationship with his reluctant teacher Neytiri deepens, he learns to respect the Na'vi way and finally takes his place among them. Zoë Saldana as Neytiri. (Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

Soon Jake will face the ultimate test as he leads them in an epic battle that will decide the fate of an entire world. Sam Worthington as Jake Sully. (Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

Zoe Saldana star as Neytiri in scene from James Cameron sci-fi thriller 'Avatar'. "A fully believable, flesh-and-blood (albeit not human flesh and blood) romance is the beating heart of "Avatar." Cameron has never made a movie just to show off visual pyrotechnics: Every bit of technology in "Avatar" serves the greater purpose of a deeply felt love story." (The Hollywood Reporter) (Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

A scene from the Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation 'Avatar.' "It's been twelve years since 'Titanic', but the King of the World has returned with a flawed but fantastic tour de force that, taken on its merits as a film, especially in two dimensions, warrants four stars. However, if you can wrap a pair of 3D glasses round your peepers, this becomes a transcendent, full-on five-star experience that's the closest we'll ever come to setting foot on a strange new world. Just don't leave it so long next time, eh, Jim?" (Empire) (Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

Sam Worthington as Jake Sully in 'Avatar'. "Once again, [Cameron] has silenced the doubters by simply delivering an extraordinary film. There is still at least one man in Hollywood who knows how to spend $250 million, or was it $300 million, wisely." (Chicago Sun-Times) (Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

Jake (Sam Worthington) gets his first look at his avatar -- a human-alien hybrid bred from Jake's own DNA. This is, simply put, one of the most beautiful movies you'll ever see. (Premiere) (Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

Sam Worthington as Jake Sully in 'Avatar'. "A quantum leap in movie magic; watching it, I began to understand how people in 1933 must have felt when they saw 'King Kong'." (Chicago Reader) (Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

A scene from James Cameron sci-fi thriller 'Avatar'. "Avatar's shock and awe demand to be seen. You've never experienced anything like it, and neither has anyone else." (Los Angeles Times) (Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

Zoe Saldana star as Neytiri in scene from James Cameron sci-fi thriller 'Avatar'. "Glorious and goofy and blissfully deranged." (The New York Times)(Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

Sam Worthington as Jake Sully in 'Avatar'. "Avatar is entertainment of the highest order. It's the best movie of 2009." (ReelViews) (Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

An 'Avatar' banner. "Much of the time, though, you're transfixed by the beauty of a spectacle that seems all of a piece. Special effects have been abolished, in effect, since the whole thing is so special." (Wall Street Journal) (Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

Jake (Sam Worthington, left) and Quaritch (Stephen Lang) get a virtual look a massive, gnarled and ancient willow tree that is the Na'vi epicenter and an extension of their lifeblood. "Is it or is it not stupendously friggin' rad? And the answer is yes. For most of the first hour, a good portion of the second, and even many of the 40 minutes left after that, Avatar is stupendously friggin' rad." (Slate) (Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

Zoë Saldana is Neytiri, a fearless and beautiful warrior, and a member of Pandora's royal clan of Na'vi. "The movie's story may be a little trite, and the big battle at the end between ugly mechanical force and the gorgeous natural world goes on forever, but what a show Cameron puts on! The continuity of dynamized space that he has achieved with 3-D gloriously supports his trippy belief that all living things are one." (The New Yorker) (Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

Chopper pilot Trudy Chacon (Michelle Rodriguez) helps the Na'vi in their epic battle against the forces determined to destroy Pandora. "Embrace the movie -- surely the most vivid and persuasive creation of a fantasy world ever seen in the history of moving pictures -- as a total sensory, sensuous, sensual experience." (Time) (Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

A scene from the Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation 'Avatar.' "Avatar is all-enveloping and transporting, with Cameron & Co.'s years of R&D paying off with a film that, as his work has done before, raises the technical bar and throws down a challenge for the many other filmmakers toiling in the sci-fi/fantasy realm." (Variety)(Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

A scene from the Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation 'Avatar.' "It's thrilling and lovely and sad and explosive in all the right ways, and it needs to be seen – on the big screen, in 3-D – to be believed." (Austin Chronicle) (Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation) (Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

A shot of the movie's villain, Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), flying a battleship known as the Dragon. "An entertainment to be not just seen but absorbed on a molecular level; it's as close to a full-body experience as we'll get until they invent the holo-suits. Cameron aims for sheer wonderment, and he delivers." (Boston Globe)(Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

Stephen Lang as Col. Quaritch in 'Avatar'. "Avatar delivers. Combining beyond-state-of-the-art moviemaking with a tried-and-true storyline and a gamer-geek sensibility - not to mention a love angle, an otherworldly bestiary, and an arsenal of 22d-century weaponry - the movie quite simply rocks." (Philadelphia Inquirer) (Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

Sam Worthington as Jake Sully and Zoë Saldana as Neytiri in James Cameron sci-fi thriller Avatar. "Rarely less than absorbing and never boring over its nearly three-hour length." (New York Post) (Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

Zoe Saldana star as Neytiri in scene from James Cameron sci-fi thriller 'Avatar'. "Tone-deaf but thunderously exciting." (Rolling Stone) (Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

A scene from the Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation 'Avatar.' "If I never felt entirely transported by Avatar, it's probably because the story thudded just as often as the imagery soared. But Pandora is still a good place to park yourself for three hours." (Christian Science Monitor) (Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

A Na'vi warrior races into battle on a Thanator, a fearsome panther-like creature native to Pandora. "By presenting Avatar in 3-D, Cameron is staking his claim and building a fence around his own precious resource, making it unobtainable on any but his own terms to increasingly emboldened and technologically savvy natives." (Washington Post) (Photo credit: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)