Come Comic-Con time next year, you're likely to see a group of teenagers coated in sparkly blue paint, with big ears, yellow eyes, and platform shoes, speaking in the indigenous tongue of the Na'vi, hanging in front of the Convention Center.

And that's just what director James Cameron had in mind.

With Avatar, he's created an alternate universe for sci-fi types to geek out over—and he's sweated over every detail. The film, presented in eye-popping 3D, is, quite simply, a spectacle—it transports you to another world, with its own unique foliage (shimmering dandelions and Parthenon-sized trees) and animals (feathered rhinoceros; pterodactyl-style birds; wolf-like dogs with exposed skeletal structure). And he's created the aforementioned Na'vi—giant, strangely beautiful creatures, mostly peaceful, with their own elaborate language (Klingon anyone?) and customs.

Ah, if only Cameron had put as much effort into the dialogue as he did the planet Pandora. But then again, that's not really his thing, now is it?

Avatar focuses on a young Marine Jake Sully (dreamboat-y Sam Worthington), who's been injured in combat and is paralyzed from the waist down. He's recruited to be part of a secret military project that travels to Pandora to mine its precious natural resources. But because humans can't breath on Pandora—and because the Na'vi don't take too kindly to strangers—the military are forced to create Avatars—living, breathing Na'vi simulations, controlled remotely by the minds of their human counterparts.

Supervising the Avatar program is Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), who has a scientist's curiosity about the Na'vi and their habitat, but who is also committed to preserving their ways. But there's also a bombastic military leader (Stephen Lang, chomping on the scenery) and a smarmy government official (Giovanni Ribisi) who have no concerns about exploiting, and possibly killing, the Pandora natives if they deem it so necessary.

Putting Jake in a wheelchair was a brilliant touch. When Jake becomes his Na'vi Avatar, he can run, leap, climb—he's free. On his first mission to Pandora, he meets Neytini (Zoe Saldana) and, as she initiates him to the ways of the Pandora jungle, they fall in love. Now, Jake is forced to go against his own people to protect Neytini, her planet, and her family.

What can I really say about Avatar except, well, Cameron has done it again? We all heard about how over budget Avatarhad become—the price tag is rumored to be over $300 million, making it the most expensive movie of all time—and once again there was talk of Cameron's Folly. (I seem to remember a similar buzz about a little film I like to call Titanic.)

Avatar may not be Titanic—the romance was corny in that film, too, but the framing device with an aged Rose had a genuinely haunting quality—but it's a helluva lot of fun. It's a wild, exotic vacation that I, and I suspect many others, would be willing to pay for again.