"Avatar" revamped movie watching experience

In less than twenty days, Hollywood 3D blockbuster "Avatar" has grossed around one-billion US dollars in global theatres. Many audience members have acknowledged that by employing a new generation of special effects, the film has set a benchmark in filmmaking history.

In seventeen days of screenings, "Avatar" has hauled in around 350-million US at North American box offices, with a daily gross of around 20-million. So far, its global box office earnings ranks the film fourth after "Titanic," "Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King," and the third installment of "Pirates of the Caribbean."

The general consensus is that the film is more impressive on a technical level than as a piece of storytelling. But "Avatar" reaffirms James Cameron's singular gift for imaginative, absorbing filmmaking.

In a 2009 profile in The New Yorker, Cameron claimed that the digital elements of "Avatar" are believable enough that the audience will be unable to tell reality from computer animation.

The film's such an engrossing experience that many Hollywood directors have use the term "pre- and post -Avatar" to mark film history.

Still of Avatar