How's this for a bit of pressure: Though the film isn't even done yet, James Cameron's Avatar is already being counted on to spark the next evolution in cinema.  And I don't just mean that in a people are saying 'Hey, this could be kind of different' sort of way. No, the suits in Hollywood are really counting on this to change the game. And they've already spent nearly a quarter of a billion dollars to be sure that it does.

Here's the thing. Way back in the early days of film, everything was done in black and white and in a 4:3 screen ratio, just like our old TV sets. Know why it changed? Because of the aforementioned TV sets popping up everywhere. Once people could get the theater experience in their homes, it got a whole lot harder for Hollywood to get people to pay for tickets to the theater. Sound familiar? Nowadays, with a wide screen TV, a decent home stereo and a Blu-ray player, it's possible to have a better-than-theater experience at home; seriously, a good Blu-ray disc can look significantly better than the theatrical projection of a 35mm print once that print has been played a few times and picked up a bit of dirt and damage. So, once again, theater attendance is on the decline. Throw in a rampant piracy problem and all of a sudden things aren't looking so good in Hollywood.  And Avatar is what they're counting on to answer both issues.

More than just a typical 3D film - though the 3D technology is front and center - Avatar is designed to give audiences an experience that can only be had in the theater. It's also an experience that, conveniently enough, is resistant to cam-job bootlegging. The 3D cameras that have made the recent wave of 3D pictures possible? Yeah, James Cameron spent the last several years basically creating that technology from the ground up. Nobody in the world knows it better than he does and he's about to exploit it in ways nobody else has ever tried. If it works, the movie experience changes forever, or so the thinking goes. If it doesn't, then the 3D craze disappears as Hollywood tries to figure out other options.

It's a lot of weight to dump on one man and one film, but Cameron's pretty used to it at this stage of his career, having consistently pushed the technology of film to new levels with every successive project. And the response to what bits of Avatar have been seen so far generally suggest that it's up to the task.  Though I met one journalist yesterday who saw the footage at Comic-Con and thought it was just okay - "it felt too CG," was his main complaint - there are hordes out there who are positively ecstatic. I've heard the experience described as experiencing someone else's memory, which could be pretty damn cool... depending on the memory. We won't really know whether all the hype and anticipation is justified until the week before Christmas, when the film releases, but Hollywood is banking large on the Canadian guy who directed Piranha 2 to rebuild the industry from within. Go Canada.