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I'm working on my full Avatar review, and will hopefully have it up tomorrow. But as I go over my notes and thoughts on James Cameron's movie, I realize there are a lot of things to address that have little to do with the actual film itself.

Way back last summer, well before Avatar's release, Interweb geek-dom was already lining up on opposite sides of the Avatar line. Like a sort of religious war being fought via snarky or just plain profane comments, e-mails, and tweets, the sides seem to break down something like this: Based on trailers and early preview footage, you were required by Geek Law to feel one of two things about Avatar.

1) It was going to be The Greatest Movie Ever, one that would effectively blow all other cinematic memories right out the back of your brain, change the medium of film forever, and leave you gasping and flopping on the theater floor like a goldfish on the carpet, with what was left of your cerebral cortex melted into a heap of joyous fanboy Jell-O by the Return of the Master.

Or 2) It was going to be a ridiculously cliched video-game mishmash of Ferngully, Delgo, and Dances With Wolves as played out by giant Smurf elves with bows an arrows. (Officially codified into the pop culture zeitgeist, as so many things are, by South Park.)

As often happens when folks get themselves worked up, there was no middle ground allowed. If you said you thought Avatar looked interesting and was visually stunning, but the Na'vi looked cartoonish and you were worried the dialogue and story might be a bit clunky, you were instantly set upon as a Heretic Hater who dared defy the True Return of J.C.

All of this is understandable–the fanboy excitement over Cameron's Avatar doesn't have as much to do with the film itself (which is why I'm talking about it here, rather than in my review tomorrow) as it does with the simple human need to Have Something to Look Forward To. I was as guilty of this as anyone eight years ago when Fellowship of the Rings came out. It's fun to rev your motor up over some piece of upcoming cinematic fantasy–it's part of the joy of being a Film Geek.

But ironically, my big question a month ago was whether all this Film Geek quivering, salivating, pants-wetting anticipation for Avatar was crossing over into mainstream filmgoers. Most non-geek friends and family I asked about Avatar a month ago responded with some combination of "What is it? Is it based on a cartoon? Is it a video game? It looks kinda silly. What's it about?"

Well that concern can be put to rest, much to the relief of the 20th Century Fox marketing department. Fox premiered Avatar last week in London and also showed screenings to critics nationwide like Erika, James, and myself in advance of awards season voting. (The ploy worked perfectly in New York and LA, where the New York Film Critics Online chose it as their Best Picture and it was nominated for a Golden Globe.) Despite very strict embargoes, reviews began popping up everywhere and quickly the floodgates broke–and the majority of those reviews were positive. (The Fox review embargo was officially lifted this past Monday.)

This fall the media narrative on Avatar had been: Did Fox spend half a billion dollar on a massive flop? (Or was it "only" $400 million? Accounting estimates vary and in certain circles have become as heated as the fanboy arguments over the appearance of the Na'vi.)  And somewhere in the back of that question was the quiet refrain, "yes, but isn't that what everyone was asking about Titanic in the fall of '97 before it opened?" I think we can now all write the second half of the story even before Avatar's opening weekend box-office numbers come in Sunday afternoon.

In the past week, buoyed by those mostly positive, sometimes ecstatic reviews, the fanboy-and-girl world has reignited into anticipatory geek-gasms. Now that the film has been seen and praised by some, the question the Geek Inquisition is turning on its peers is "Were you a naysayer? Did you doubt? Did you not show sufficient enough faith this summer and fall? If so, to the rack, and heat up the irons!" And if you've actually seen Avatar, liking it is not enough. By the Law of Hype, you must say that everything we know about cinema has been changed forever or you are branded a heretic. Saying that it's a half-billion dollars worth of visually stunning action excitement with a ten-cent brain will get you tossed in the dungeon. Suggesting that it's two hours of very impressive shininess sprinkled over two hours and forty minutes of summer popcorn fluff will have you drawn and quartered.

All of this has those who have not yet seen Avatar looking ahead to Thursday night at midnight as if it's going to be some combination of the moon landing, Woodstock, and their wedding night… only in blue… and in 3-D CG. Which is fine–the Northern Hemisphere ancients created winter solstice celebrations intentionally to give people  festival events to cheer them up as the days get shorter, darker, and colder. If something big and pretty and shiny like Avatar gives us something to get geeked out on for a week or two this winter, then that's fine.

Nor would I worry about getting your expectations too high–like most religious experiences, Avatar will give you back just about whatever lofty dreams you have for it. If you go in expecting to have your vitreous humor boiled, your mind blown, and your chakras realigned then most likely your self-induced fervor will help Cameron's massive film do so. If you go in expecting a couple of hours of dazzling escapism and cool action, the film certainly delivers that on the spectacle level. If you go in expecting Cameron's usual ham-hearted, tin-headed, self-important level of cliches dipped in cheese, you'll certainly find plenty of that as well. Like the Oracle at Delphi or the Wizard of Oz, Avatar will most likely give you whatever you want to believe in.

Of course, after next week the big question is going to be, will Avatar win the Best Picture Oscar? For the record, I'm going to say yes. Not because it's a great film or the best film of the year, but much more to do with the fact that the Academy exists almost solely on revenue from the TV ceremony broadcast rights. And those TV broadcast ratings will go sky high if a big, popular, box-office crushing movie like Avatar is in there stomping all the competition to death, rather than some small indie film about kids living in the slums of Mumbai. (After all, that was the Academy's entire argument for expanding the Best Picture field to 10 instead of five films.)

As for Avatar the film, I'll get to that tomorrow in my full review. But suffice to say that just about everything both sides of the Geek Camps hoped for or feared is in there. (Not to be all whoo-hoo lookit me, but I don't feel I was wrong about much when I wrote my impressions back in August based on the 16 minutes of footage shown.) In the meantime, you might as well sit back, get in line, and enjoy the hype. The circus is coming to town. And it's blue. And 12 feet tall. And does funky stuff with its tail.

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