It's been 12 long years since James Cameron's last narrative feature film -- a little flick called 'Titanic' -- sailed to $1 billion at the domestic box office and made its director the self-proclaimed "king of the world!" And for almost that entire time, Cameron has been working on 'Avatar,' an immensely ambitious sci-fi epic whose cutting-edge use of 3-D, performance-capture and CGI technology is supposed to revolutionize filmmaking AND film viewing as we know it.

Does the trailer live up to the hype? Has Cameron single-handedly changed the face of film and rocked your world to the core in one fell swoop? Watch the trailer after the jump and tell us what you think. It's been 12 long years since James Cameron's last narrative feature film -- a little flick called 'Titanic' -- sailed to $1 billion at the domestic box office and made its director the self-proclaimed "king of the world!" And for almost that entire time, Cameron has been working on 'Avatar,' an immensely ambitious sci-fi epic whose cutting-edge use of 3-D, performance-capture and CGI technology is supposed to revolutionize filmmaking AND film viewing as we know it.

Amid much ballyhoo, the first trailer for 'Avatar' has finally debuted online, offering fans their first glimpse at the movie, which opens Dec. 18 and stars Sam Worthington ('Terminator Salvation') as a paraplegic Marine sent to the remote planet of Pandora to establish a human settlement. Once there, he takes over the body of one of the planet's indigenous, reptilian, blue-skinned Na'vi inhabitants (it becomes his avatar, or virtual stand-in), falls in love with the half-naked Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), joins the Na'vi in their battle against mankind and, basically, causes viewers' jaws to drop.

Does the trailer live up to the hype? Has Cameron single-handedly changed the face of film and rocked your world to the core in one fell swoop? While it's hard to tell on a 2-D computer screen, Cameron and co. screened 16 minutes of 3-D footage in select IMAX theaters across the country last Friday (aka 'Avatar' Day) -- tickets for the screenings were given away for free online at the film's official Web site, and demand was so high that the site crashed and thousands were left empty-handed -- and the mostly positive response suggests that the director just might have succeeded. Sadly, that video has yet to turn up online ... so you'll just have to watch the trailer below and tell us what you think.