I barely slept last night. Not because I was out carousing, although I did sip a light beer and nibble taquitos with most of the New York film blogger community, but because I couldn’t get the multi-zillion dollar imagery of James Cameron’s Avatar out of my head.

Instead of sleeping, I replayed scenes in my mind: Jake Sully leaping from his Ikran onto the back of the mighty Leonopteryx, braving the Flux Vortex en route to the Hallelujah Mountains, bonding with the elders at the Tree of Souls, searching for the precious Unobtanium.

Am I poking fun, or am I being sincere?  Let's put it this way - the minute I got home I rewatched the Avatar trailer.  It was the closest I could get to revisiting Pandora.

There’s nothing more Hollywood than a triumph over adversity. On the screen there's a tribe of spry, blue environmentalists defeating a military industrial complex of clobberin’ resource gluttons. Behind the camera is a burdened filmmaker so driven by vision he pours the GDP of several third world nations (again!) into a work with a powerful story and dazzling effects.

You’d never think James Cameron is the guy to lead you into a warm hippie love fest, but damn it if I don’t want to grow a braid so I could plug it into every willowy tree and thumping, furious beast I can find.

James Cameron’s Avatar hums with the kind of perfection where even its faults are, somehow, okay.

I fretted earlier that the dialogue may have been too on the nose. Well, it is on the nose. It may be a blessing. There’s a lot of information coming at you and (heaven help me for saying this) perhaps nuance would only interfere with the ultimate message.  Avatar may have some lackluster dialogue, but it does not have a "bad script."  The story beats are solid and the lengthy running time soars by.

Avatar deals in big, basic themes. Journey. Identity. Justice. Sure, there’s no clever wordplay, but the sophistication exists in the vistas, the landscape, the staggering use of new technology.

Despite quaking with delight each time Princess Neytiri's footsteps caused the soil of Pandora to light up like an interstellar "Billie Jean" video, Avatar isn’t just a triumph for the octoshrooms and thanators. It is Col. Quatrich, so hardass he’ll race right out into the noxious air of Pandora if it means getting the job done. It is Jake Sully, growing frazzled and hirsute transferring between two existences. It is the Na’vi, a peaceful race that has no time for diplomats or scientists but oddly accepts a warrior.

I haven’t been this thunderstruck by a film since Star Trek, heck, since Lord of the Rings. But these were films based on pre-existing material. James Cameron’s Avatar, good ol’ Dances with Smurfs in Space itself, is a whole new world. Welcome to Pandora.