Seriously, go see this movie right now:

Jon Stewart had one of Avatar’s stars, Sigourney Weaver, on his show recently and told her that for months this film looked like it was going to be “a giant turd.” I was glad to see I wasn’t the only one who thought so.

When we had dinner with The Last Boy Scout and his family last weekend, I asked them if they were interested in seeing it. They quickly agreed that the film looked like a big stinky turd to them, too, and had no plans to see it. Everyone agreed—everything we’d seen of it smelled like bad cheese.

But, I’ve been a stalwart James Cameron fan since the first Terminator came out. At the time, it was playing at the $2 theater right around the corner from me. An old place with uncomfortable seats that ran movies that weren’t on the major screens anymore but hadn’t been pulled yet. Not like these days where, when a movie disappears from the multiplex, it’s completely gone till its DVD release two months later. I don’t know how many nights I saw it there, but I remember it played for a long time.

I even liked The Abyss, the Cameron film that none of the press for the new movie mentions. It made money but it also earned Cameron a very unflattering reputation as a taskmaster asshole. Hard to work for or with unless you, too, happened to walk on water. Or on that film, breathe underwater, as he repeatedly almost drowned cast members.

And because I didn’t stay to hear the music over the end credits, I even unabashedly loved Titanic. (We also fled before the saccharine bombast swelling up over Avatar’s end credits reached its crescendo.)

So it was only because Jim Cameron made this movie that I would even consider touching it with a ten-foot pole. A CGI fantasy film with fake-looking (but mostly naked and strangely hot, see inset) blue faerie people flitting about on repurposed dinosaurs? Why not throw in some unicorns, too?

But Cameron has never made a dud. He’s never made anything but excellent movies. And I’m a brand-loyalty kind of consumer.

Man am I glad I am. What a great flick! It feels a lot like Aliens and not just because Weaver starred in that one, too. The twist is this time, we’re the aliens who need to be driven out.

It’s a Jim Cameron film all the way, pastel-blue pixies and all. The plot structure at the beginning and end is straight from the Cameron (and Joseph Campbell) playbook and all the weird fantasy stuff in the middle isn’t anywhere near as off-putting as the 90-second clips on talk shows make them appear. The climactic battle sequences easily surpass similar set pieces from any film in the Lord of The Rings trilogy, the former standard-bearer for fantasy action/adventure filmmaking.

I also like Cameron’s use of (what look like American) Marines in this flick. Even though he employs them as The Bad Guys (doing the bidding of future-earth’s skeevy corporate masters), he still crafts characters that demand the audience’s respect. Even as I was rooting against the Marine commander in one of the film’s action set pieces, I was thinking, “Jesus, that guy’s a bad-ass!” instead of “Die, motherfucker, die!”

And his use of 3D is judicious, not promiscuous. Things don’t jump off the screen or get thrown at the camera just to remind you you’re watching a 3D movie, he actually uses the process and technology to more fully immerse the audience in this strange new world he has created from the ground up.

There are simply not enough superlatives to describe the experience of seeing Avatar in the theater, and in 3D. Once again, Cameron has employed bleeding-edge technology, most of which he designed and built himself, to tell a cautionary tale about the dangers of technology used irresponsibly.

I’ve seen Cameron out promoting this flick and he’s still a pompous asshole, even when he’s trying not to be. But in Avatar’s case, it’s the movie not that the man that I’m recommending. Trust me. If you sit this one out, you’ll regret it. Cameron has raised the bar again, way high. It’s gonna be a hard act to follow and I, for one, hope he can’t wait to get started trying.