Let me preface this by saying I can't give the movie a rating as I haven't seen the whole thing.

Okay, don't get me wrong here, I love James Cameron. I've loved his movies since I saw Terminator and Aliens when I was a kid. The man is a movie god, so when I heard he was finally back at work after taking a 10 year hiatus, my interest was certainly piqued. Then I started hearing word about the work he was doing on Avatar, and that it was going to be in 3-D no less. Words were being thrown around like "brilliant" and "revolutionary", basically what I expected to hear (I mean, if a guy like Cameron takes a decade to make a film, you damn well better hear words like that). But, then I read an early report stating that the effects work and 3-D photography was going to "change cinema forever", that Avatar was going to be a "landmark of film history."  I immediately started salivating. Of course, when someone makes such a bold statement as that, you have to take it with a grain of salt, but I was sold- this was gong to be the next big thing.

In fact, I was so interested to check out what this supposedly game-changing movie was all about that I actually made the pilgrimage down to San Diego for the 2009 Comic-Con... Most. Ridiculous. Experience. Ever.

I love dorky conventions as much as the next guy, and have been known to attend Fangoria Con and (gasp!) a Star Trek convention or two in my time, but Comic-Con was an absolute madhouse. We're talking the largest amount of people I've ever seen in one place at one time... and most of them were dressed up like their favorite action figures. Talk about surreal. It also didn't help that there was a big panel about New Moon featuring key cast members right at the height of Twilight fever. So get this, you've got an armada of nerdy dudes camping out at the convention hall for Avatar, right next to a sea of emo tweens waiting in line to dry hump Robert Pattinson. Talk about culture clash... okay not really, but you get the idea- there was feuding. All weekend, I heard complaint after complaint from comic fanboy about the insurgence of tween girls, one particular instance even had to be rebuked by writer/director/self-professed Star Wars junkie Kevin Smith. Smith had to lecture the fanboys that the girls were a good thing for them, that they'd grow up to be young women with an appreciation for dorkdom, and that sooner or later, that would mean that the fanboys might actually get laid. Might. And so the complaints ceased. But that's neither here nor there, I came to talk about Avatar...

So, it comes time to see this crazy footage and catch a glimpse of this legendary Cameron fellow, and lo and behold, I'm not on the press list. Well, after a quick freak-out and some shameless begging, I got in. There were were about 6,000 people inside the giant convention hall, and 10,000 eager fans waiting outside- literally a sea of people. Impressive to say the least. So I sat down close to the front (and by close, I mean about 30 rows back) and waited. Soon, Cameron took the stage and there was a rumble in the audience as the spotlight followed him. It was like watching Elvis emerge at a concert- people were freaking out. So there comes this silver-haired man, and I should have felt really awestruck, but I wasn't. He was so far away, and his image was so cartoonishly large on the screen above him that it just felt like I was watching a DVD extra feature. Then he started talking, and while the energy in the room was positively electrifying, I had flashbacks to Mr. Cameron's Oscar acceptance speech from Titanic. I guess it depends on who you are, but I'll just say I didn't care for the "I'm the king of the world!" opener. Well, okay, let's see the footage.

I put my clunky 3-D glasses and waited to be blown away... and, well, I wasn't. Maybe it was the setup in the convention hall not being a proper movie-theater, or maybe it was because i wasn't exactly close to the screen, but the live-action 3-D footage looked, well, like a 3-D movie. It cool-looking, no doubt, but it wasn't any more or less immersive than anything I'd seen before. It was still flattened planes moving around and coming out at you, still typically stereoscopic, not more lifelike. I quickly got over the idea that this was going to be revolutionary 3-D and decided to hold out making up my mind until all was said and done. Then came the CG parts, with the big goofy blue aliens, running around in a world that looks like an episode of Undersea Kingdom. It looked fantastic... for CGI. As much ballyhoo I'd heard about how wonderful the visual effects were, how lifelike the character animation was, I thought it still just looked like CGI. It didn't strike me as being revolutionary or game-changing. It just was. It's fantastic work, no doubt, very realistic, but not at all what I had been told to expect, and that rather disappointed me.

All in all, it was engaging enough to want to see it, but not exciting enough to make me want to be first in line. Star Wars fanatics will definitely get their rocks off, but it remains to be seen if Avatar will be a good movie as well. Looking at Cameron's track record, I think it's a safe bet that it will be, and will be entertaining as hell, but I'm going to recommend you don't get your hopes up. It's probably not going to be the be-all-end-all when it comes to cinema. And if it is, I'll eat my shoe after I see it in theaters this winter.