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.
Reader Comments (81)
Jay West at 7:26PM on Aug 24th 2009
re: reaction to "AVATAR Day" IMAX 3-D preview
What follows is not a scene by scene analysis... nor do I delve into too much detail or minutia about the 15 minutes worth of scenes shown of James Cameron's AVATAR on the one-day-only preview billed as "AVATAR Day" and shown in 3-D in select IMAX theaters on Friday, August 21st (so as to keep this as "spoiler free" as possible), rather, this reflects my general reaction in seeing the footage shown.
I'd like to preface this first by saying that when I saw the online teaser trailer the day before this, I really enjoyed seeing the highly stylized merging of sci-fi and fantasy designs and elements that were parlayed in the trailer -- and I was actually a bit in awe. My initial thoughts were that Cameron had delivered a very unique and exhilarating fantasy world filled with some spectacular imagery.
Yet , when I watched the IMAX 3-D preview, oddly enough -- I had a bit of a different reaction. Though given the ideal viewing experience of having the eight stories tall, immense canvas of the IMAX screen surrounded by 12000 watts of pure digital surround sound -- I found myself strangely "removed" in watching the scenes chosen for this exclusive preview. Indeed, it was a bit of an "uncanny valley" type of experience -- truly, I would not classify this as a live-action film whatsoever -- but rather, it is definitely more so an animated feature. Given the abundance of CGI animation -- it seems odd that Cameron then just didn't go ahead and make this a fully animated feature -- as Robert Zemeckis has been doing with movies such as THE POLAR EXPRESS (2004), BEOWULF (2007), and the upcoming A CHRISTMAS CAROL.
It was indeed clear that it's a visually immersive and majestic world that one enters into for the story of AVATAR -- the 3-D is multi-layered, and the scenery is vibrant and ornate; yet it all looked and felt very familiar (and artificial) at the same time -- there's a scene with the rounding up and debriefing of soldiers which occurs much in the same way that it did in Cameron's 1986 ALIENS (and "power-loader suits" are seen later that are also very similar to those seen in Cameron's ALIENS)... and then there's an expedition in a jungle whereas the group encounters ferocious, dinosaur-like creatures such as in the original (1933) and contemporary (2005) versions of KING KONG (not to mention the original THE LOST WORLD (1925) and the JURASSIC PARK sequel (1997) that shares the same name), then there's the quintessential breaking-in and taming of one's steed sequence -- done here with flying a winged alien creature the likes of which has been seen in the animated movies HEAVY METAL (1981) and FIRE AND ICE (1983) -- and there's even a FERNGULLY: THE LAST RAINFOREST like moment (as in 1992 animated feature) where the blue-skinned alien female Na'vi named Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) shows the Jake Sully character (Sam Worthington) the ways of nature on her planet -- which also echoes memories of Pocahontas showing John Smith the ways of "her land" in Disney's 1995 animated feature POCAHONTAS.
All of this ultimately is presented with imagery that conjures up memories of CGI creatures and worlds created by ILM for George Lucas' STAR WARS movies: ATTACK OF THE CLONES (2002) and REVENGE OF THE SITH (2005) -- in particular, the creatures from the CLONES arena battle could just as easily be inserted into AVATAR's world of Pandora, and vice versa -- and Pandora's lush, forest filled world could easily be swapped with the alien world of "Utapah" and the Wookies' home planet of "Kashyyyk" as seen in SITH.
Granted, these scenes represent just the tip of the "iceberg" (no pun intended), so it's a bit too early to have a final opinion until one has seen the entire film... and even Cameron himself appears at the beginning of the footage stating that he is only showing scenes in the preview that occur in the first part of the movie so as not to divulge too much -- yet nevertheless, from these carefully selected 15 minutes worth of scenes -- I wanted more.... and I wanted that WOW factor that would signify the incredible "watershed" of things to come... something fresh and remarkable to validate the incredible claims spun in the trumpeting-like PR announcements of this movie's "photorealistic" characters and environments that represented the next level of CGI -- where we would see incredible worlds, characters, and situations never before seen.
Instead, unfortunately, I felt I'd been privy to a tremendous hype campaign, rather than an engaging and unique cinematic experience.
Ultimately, this movie is being done a huge disservice by being billed as, and sold as, having "reinvented the wheel" in CGI -- that's setting an incredibly high and unachievable bar for it -- and the results simply do not reinforce those claims -- in fact, the scenes show commonplace (yet excellent) CGI that audiences have been used to seeing over the past many years.
One thing I've always admired about Cameron's sci-fi and special effects work -- such as in his first and second TERMINATOR films and ALIENS film -- was his never-ending ability to create scenes and moments of wonder from "matchsticks" and "cloth" so to speak. Cameron's technical prowess, gut instincts, and creative abilities have allowed him to turn the most raw of elements into technical marvels in the past -- tricking the eye with the simplest of materials at his disposal and fashioning them into iconic, cinematic moments and marvels -- yet still giving them "heart and soul" in the process. That type of auter-like cinematic craftsmanship felt sorely absent here.
I'm still certainly looking forward to seeing AVATAR -- but now that I have seen this 15 minutes of what to expect -- my expectations have definitely been lowered (but again, only because of the way that this movie has been hyped and "sold" to us for so long). Ultimately, I'm looking forward to seeing a highly stylized, sci-fi animated adventure movie during the holidays -- with the promise that Cameron has saved "the best for last" in revealing the full excitement and wonder of his opus when AVATAR hits theaters on December 18th.
- Jay West
editor/writer - www.alienexperience.com
Joan Newman at 12:59AM on Aug 26th 2009
It is refreshing to read a comment on-line that is well-written and interesting. I am sure that I want to see the movie, but even with the short trailer that I just saw, I thought that the movie was an animated film more than anything else. But how could we not go to see it?
Joan
funam at 10:46PM on Aug 25th 2009
Agreed.
I was pretty much thinking the same thing while I was watching the trailer. I haven't seen the 15 minute preview or really looked into it at all though.
Steve at 8:14PM on Aug 25th 2009
Not to jump to conclusions or anything, but they can fly across space and tap into this guys brain to link him to an avatar, but they can't fix his legs? what a depressing future. Am I missing something here? I guess I'll have to wait until the movie comes out before I really judge though. Looks interesting.
bestauthorever at 8:14PM on Aug 25th 2009
Could they wear any LESS clothing!?
Heather at 1:26AM on Aug 26th 2009
probably.
Leen at 12:20PM on Aug 26th 2009
Im happy for you but what did that have to do with the trailer....dur dur like
kenzie at 8:24PM on Aug 25th 2009
shut up
Sabrina at 9:03PM on Aug 25th 2009
I thought this was going to be like the series... Guess i was wrong...
alex at 12:11AM on Aug 26th 2009
I know what your thinking of. The movie for that is just called The Last Airbender by M.Night Shamalyan.
They had to drop the Avatar title because James Cameron already had it for his movie.
kenzie at 8:25PM on Aug 25th 2009
shut up
charlekalena@aol.com at 8:32PM on Aug 25th 2009
I love these films where we can imagine all these alien creatures and cant quite wrap our head around God.
mac at 8:45PM on Aug 25th 2009
that's because god isn't real either
donaldo at 8:53PM on Aug 25th 2009
LOL...which god?
Allen Morter at 9:20PM on Aug 25th 2009
Its because we did imagine god; we are creatures that have the capabilty to imagine an entity beyond our own physical limitations. The concept of god became long before and sciences had been developed to answer our questions about our world. So its logical that before any science was created, we create something that made everything that surrounds us if only to make more sense of our lives.
zach at 10:25PM on Aug 25th 2009
God is real and it's because everything that he is about is so simple yet complex is what gets everyone and wants to disprove the existence of God. We just can't comprehend that if we put faith and trust in his son Jesus Christ and strive to live like him, although impossible because sin is human nature, that we will live eternally. People just dont think it is that easy but it really is!!
Mike at 12:40AM on Aug 26th 2009
Have you ever thought that maybe god or 'gods' were aliens that created us? Can't wrap your head around that can you.
richard at 1:18AM on Aug 26th 2009
probably the same thing.
Bill at 8:32PM on Aug 25th 2009
How original cartoons, I still like Bugs Bunny better...
andrew at 9:02PM on Aug 25th 2009
okay, when i heard the buzz for this movie i was really looking forward to a trailer, i mean it's the guy who made the titanic. now that i have seen it i am depressed. it looks so stupid, it doesnt even look amusing. were all the GOOD CGI machines being used? the alien things look dumb, like cartoons.