Not wolves, cats. Cat people made sense because cats are built for hunting and surviving and acrobatics and there's so many different types of cat here on Planet Earth that it seems like something that evolution would try again on everywhere it can.
Shooting down the walls of heartache, bang bang!

I think a lot of the naysayers watching this movie underestimate the power of it and James Cameron as a storyteller.

Exactly! Only due to Camerons eye candy gives it 7/10. I sayed Pocahontas from day one

"Avamediocre" - Can you give us some more examples of the world's clumsiest word combos?
And have you ever noticed how Star Wars contains loads of ideas taken from Dune?
Or how just about every major modern movie and idea is inspired by other ideas? In most cases, you are just too young to have been aware of them.
Read this:
http://moongadget.com/origins/dune.html
The accusation that Avatar was somehow uniquely at fault because it took ideas from other movies, is one of the most witless and clueless arguments on the internet. And it is only ever made by people with a foetal level of knowledge about the history of cinema, and the endless connections and inspirations behind practically every major modern blockbuster.
If you want me to continue
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was heavily, heavily cloned from a film called "Gunga Din". To an incredible degree.
http://www.theraider.net/information/influences/gunga_din.php

Avatar is everything those movies were aspiring to be and more.
False.
Pocahontas
and
Dances With Wolves
are far better films than
Avamediocre
.

Avatar is everything those movies were aspiring to be and more. So, who cares?
Get off your soapbox while I play you a tune on the tiniest violin.

Except Pocahontas and DWW are actually, what's the word good. Avatar is one of the most mediocre films ever conceived.
Ok. So a copycat that does it well isn't a copycat? And can even be used as basis for further copycats of the same story? I disagree. I find it hilarious that so many who grew up on Poca/Ferngully seem to believe, or choose to believe, that they are somehow the originators of this fable.
Personally I thought DWW was an A-, Avatar a C+/B- and Pocahontas a PoS. I also disliked The Last Samurai and Ferngully, enjoyed A Man Called Horse and many older variations of the same storyline. Doesn't make any of em creative storywise.

Except
Pocahontas
and
DWW
are actually, what's the word
good
.
Avatar
is one of the most mediocre films ever conceived.

people who believe pocahontas, Ferngully, DWW etc were in any way creative or trailblazing, are delusional.
Just because those movies felt new to some people (of the right age-groups for them of course) doesn't make them the blueprints for any movie that follows the Monomyth or "Go Native" storyline since it has been around for eons in a gazillion different cultures.
Avatar sure is a copycat but it copied stories from several hundreds, even thousands, years old. As did the movies you mentioned, they are just as much copycats as Avatar is.

Well, it's not like it's wrong.

wow how original. that comparison has never been made before
I'm a Gunslinger. I deal in hard calibers.