By now you've seen the posters, the trailers, the fast food meal deals...make no mistake about it, the Avatar promotional machine is revving ahead in high gear...with a nitrous oxide boost! The hype is rapidly inflating expectations faster than any film could ever hope to meet, ready to burst at the seams like William Shatner's physique.

But will Avatar explode in a cinematic orgy, or deflate like a week-old birthday balloon?

I'm as big a Cameron fan as the next geekfreak, and if anybody is going to pull off something this enormously preposterous, he will. But something is gnawing in the back of my head—there seems to be too much riding on this one film. It is the first major 3-D release that is supposed to kick off a stereoscopic revolution; the first to use a new immersive mo-cap shooting process; features a daunting volume of special effects shots (over 3000!) to transport us to the world of Pandora; boasts an astronomical budget — one of the highest in movie history — and is the first film in over a decade from the Oscar-winning director of some of the biggest moneymaking blockbusters of all time, including the biggest grossing movie of all time, 1997's Titanic.

With such high expectations, has Cameron finally bit off more than he can chew? I've made no secret of the fact that I'm dubious about the enduring viability of 3-D. Until the inconvenience of having to wear glasses is addressed, it will never be anything more than a gimmick, in my opinion. It's simply too annoying. The novelty of the extra dimension may convince me to pay the premium over a regular screening, but it will never convince me to see a movie I would not ordinarily see in 2-D.

It is also a well-known fact that Cameron is a tech-head and revels in pioneering new innovations, and Avatar is no different. With so much of the story taking place on a CG-rendered alien planet, he devised a process by which filmmakers can shoot live actors using a virtual camera while previewing a real-time render of the surrounding virtual environment. A remarkable achievement it is, but it won't necessarily make for a good film, and in the hands of lesser talent, it most certainly wouldn't. It is a new tool and nothing more. What remains to be seen is how Cameron utilizes this tool to tell his story.

Cameron has always set a high bar for special effects. His demanding and uncompromising standards for absolute realism is legendary in the film industry. A first look at the film's trailer reveals some stunning shots, but it all looks a little too glossy...a little too "pretty". Unconvincingly so, perhaps. Yet, I hesitate to be too harsh on Avatar for this reason, for ultimately the movie's dramatic success will not be judged on the quality of the animation. There have been films with lesser special effects that have gone on to forge a place in cinematic history. CG is a supporting player, and nothing more.

As we all know, a bigger budget does not necessarily a good film make; certainly a lesson that Hollywood seems doomed to relearn time and again. That isn't to say it won't make any money, but at such numbers, the film must make an astronomical profit to break even. Although the film's true final budget will be known only to those in the production, it is safe to say that it is well above what was spent on Cameron's last outing as a director. Still, Titanic went on to gross nearly $2B worldwide, making it the highest grossing film of all time, doubtless a big part of the reason why 20th Century Fox is willing to gamble on Avatar's stratospheric cost.

But can it match Titanic's success? Can Cameron make lightning strike twice? On the one hand, the director's track record is the envy of many of his Hollywood peers. He has yet to make a film that didn't generate lucre. Although some may not have been the blockbuster profit-makers that the studios would have liked (i.e. The Abyss), they were respectable earners, nonetheless. Even as Titanic's budget ballooned to $200M, who knew it would recoup all that and more? Unthinkable...and, ironically, unsinkable.

Which brings us back to the real deciding factor—the story itself, because once you strip it all down, that's what is going to make or break it. The technology alone won't do it, because in a few years all this innovation will be obsolete and it's the characters and narrative that people will ultimately remember. I, like everybody else, am hoping for the best, but so far early reports do nothing but praise Avatar's technical innovation, not the story. That's what concerns me—if Avatar is going to try to capture my imagination, it had better do so in spite of the technology...not because of it.

Avatar opens conventional 3-D theaters and IMAX 3-D on December 18.