James Cameron's Avatar

I'm sure there will be major emphasis on the SFX. Cameron is famous for creating new technologies to utilize in his films. Much like good ol' Lucas. The difference is Cameron can actually make more than 4 good flicks.

His films, however, have always centered around a great story. He understands how to use FX, unlike many today *cough* Michael Bay *cough*. So I wouldn't be too worried about him over-using SFX to get butts in seats. He's just not the kind of Director that has to. His body of work speaks for itself. Piranha Part Two: The Spawning excluded.

Avatar will be pretty cool.

-T_S_R

 

As I think, "Avatar", an upcoming 3-D science fiction epic film directed by James Cameron, will be one of his best creations. We all wait for it to be released on December 18, 2009. It will be extraodinary show film I hope!

 

The teaser trailer is out!

Can someone please do me a huge favour, and post a link to a downloadable version of the file? I am at work on night shift, and the work proxy filters out apple.com/trailers

Any hep would be hot!

 

The trailer opened strong and I have to admit I was kind of impressed, but sadly once it reached a certain point I lost all enthusiasm as the quality in imagery diminished greatly IMO. And sadly the trailer depends purely on its visuals.

 

Link. (About the only downloadable version available at the moment, that I'm aware of.)

Gotta agree, that CGI-beastie in the second half was straight out of Attack of the Clones. As someone else put it, you sort of get a "FernGully-plays-Halo" vibe from the second half, but I'll wait until I see the whole thing onscreen to decide for myself. "Handsome Gungans," another person said. Supposedly, the Na'vi scenes played much more effectively in the recent 3D screenings, but how this'll translate to your eventual flatscreen BD presentation...couldn't say.

From where I sit, it's not about the tools, but how you use them. If there is one director who has shown he knows how to use FX to serve story, it's James Cameron. There is no reason to expect anything other than one of the most visually-impressive movies ever put on film, just like almost everything else he has made, whether the narrative turns out to be utter crap or not. The film could still be amazing. It's just that when you announce that your new movie is the greatest thing in the world ever, expectations are going to be unrealistically high. I just hope Cameron hasn't spent all his time on the visuals when he could've been working on a good story.

Yet, as long as the film brings the scarred-Stephen Lang, I'm there opening night.

(That said, who else absolutely hates that "Papyrus"-font on the website and on the posters? Kinda underwhelming, for the supposedly-"epic" film experience they're trying to sell.)

 

BTW, the 1080p trailer makes it look A LOT better. Love these shots:

http://peecee.dk/uploads/082009/navi_trailer.jpg
http://peecee.dk/uploads/082009/navi_lab.jpg
http://peecee.dk/uploads/082009/navi_forest.jpg

Where they looked "cartoony" in the smaller, non-HD formats, they look pretty real to me here.

 

That third picture ... what is the physics of that planet?

How can large sections of land just ... float?

Is this more bordering on sci-fi/FANTASY?

 

I've already seen Dances With Wolves. I'll watch it again and imagine lame blue aliens instead.

All those years in production, and all Cameron can think of is pitting the evil U.S. Marines against the innocent mystical creatures. If I can get a free screening to this, I'll be cheering for the Marines.

 

Why do the marines need to go there in the first place? Are they going there to exploit the resources of the Navi?

Speculation: Jake is a paraplegic, and he mentally occupies the body of the host Navi (this is how I understand it so far). I wonder if when the marines go to the planet, if the 'in stasis whilst in Navi body' Jake goes along with the expiditionary force? If so, what would happen if Jake gets killed? Does the Navi host die also? Is this basically a form of 'possession'?

 

James Cameron: Really what this film ultimately does is hold a mirror to our own blighted history, where we have a culturally advanced civilization supplanting more ?primitive? civilizations. Some of these civilizations and cultures have a lot more wisdom than we?ve shown. We just have bigger guns. We have ships that can cross oceans, we have horses and armor. And this country we?re in now was taken from its indigenous owners. And it?s kind of owning up to our own human history.

Cameron's attack on the United States (I thought I saw a U.S. Marine logo in the trailer) and Western Civilization is pretty clear.

In the infinite wisdom of "The King of The World", I'm pretty sure we're not going to see any allegory of how advanced culture invented antibiotics and other medicines that stave off death and disease in those primitive utopias he so glibly references.

Because of technology, we can feed the world as we produce so much excess food.

We can send our forces anywhere in the world to deliver more humanitarian aid than any time in the history of the world.

The list goes on and on and on and on. However, in Cameron's world, it'd be better if we lived in mud huts, were preyed upon by disease ridden insects and animals, and lived with the constant threat of wondering where our next meal is coming from and whether we'll live to see another day cause, you know, those "primitives" clearly know what's better for all of us. (Somehow I don't think a mega-millionaire like Cameron would necessarily want to live like the primitives do, however.)

Many people here don't like to hear that stuff, and would prefer to feel guilty about living in an advanced civilization. So, go on and tell me how Americans and her European forefathers are evil. I've heard it all.

 

It definitely looks like a Cameron film, what with all the blue-gray steel and sleek futuristic machinery. As to the elongated elfin fantasy characters with cute wondering faces and muscular athletic bodies romping in bizarre jungles, I can only say "Hey, that looks neat-o!" until I see/know/understand more.

 

Previous works don't exactly count as precedence; filmmakers can change.

And I never said advanced civilizations wiping out/replacing natives is good. You say "essentially stealing a nation" and I don't know if you're referring to U.S. history, or other instances in history where that actually happened. If you believe that happened in the U.S., then our differences are pretty deep, and probably shouldn't be explored in this forum. I've discussed this at length with other members and provided historical research to defend my position. It's probably all in my history, so feel free to go back and look.

The films you site aren't exactly ringing endorsements of the military. And you conveniently leave out The Abyss, which is no friend to the military community. So, I don't think I'm "rrrreeeeally" reaching.

You read his quote I provided, and all you took from it is some circular logic "history repeating itself" stuff? I know atrocities were committed by all advancing civilizations -- that includes the "natives" who performed such acts on civilizations before them.

But if you read that quote and think Cameron isn't staging some sort of attack on the U.S. or Western Civilization as a whole, then you probably share his beliefs. Cameron's approach is heavy and cliched -- but that's no surprise. No matter how his sensibilities may have changed, he still seems to favor that hammy approach.

 

Um...wow. And you haven't even seen the film yet. No offense, but...overreact much? Holy crap.

You're pretty quick to take offense to one teaser trailer, and have no meaningful context yet in which to judge that one U.S. Marine Corps logo (if that's what it was), nor the actions of the soldiers in the movie. You don't have to get all oversensitive, avant-elitist, and butthurt over something that likely only exists in your head, something you're blowing way out of proportion.

 

Um ... wow. You read the Cameron quote, right? If you didn't get anything from that, then there's nothing I can say.

Your stupid, immature insults aside ... you have a point: Perhaps I am overreacting.

I am hypersensitive to the BS spouted by would-be erudites like Cameron. "Oh, we showed up with guns and horses and day one, started kickin' them out -- that's been our only goal, stealing from them. Gotta confront these scars, man. Gotta be HONEST with ourselves, we're all murderers just for being Americans, just for being alive."

Because, somehow I don't think Cameron was talking about Russians in Afghanistan or the Nazis in that quote.

 

Yeah...I can see that you're one of those intellectually-undernourished, overjingoistic, reactionary right-wing culture warriors who lives and dies by Glenn Beck's word, with a persecution complex as wide as the Grand Canyon that rivals Sarah Palin's. Someone who isn't evidently very widely-read. Someone who wraps himself up in the flag, and who loves to ask the world, "How can I be a martyr if you won't take me seriously?"

I suppose we all make up fables to explain political/historical outcomes we don't like. But this one seems particularly ridiculous and far-fetched. Social conservatives are beginning to descend into what Richard Hofstadter famously called "the paranoid style."

Climb down off that cross -- someone else needs the wood.

 

Who's the one "intellectually-undernourished"? You result to insults instead of engaging in a debate. Pathetic.

Talk about a reach. If you pointed that awesome perception at yourself, you'd see another navel-gazing leftist who deals in moral equivalence and has to deal with his self-loathing, white guilt every minute of the day.

Anyone who uses the word "jingo" and calls out someone's intellectual prowess is obviously a beta-male liberal. Go read some more Saul Alinsky's Rules For Radicals. You're ridicule tactics won't distract from the fact that you fear to engage people like me.

 

Wow, there are a lot of high-horses on the Internet, aren't there? I hear you can buy them cheap.

...This is evidently coming from someone whose grasp on logic, reality, and plain common sense is as firm as a baby's grip on a buttered anvil.

 

More insults. You can't help yourself, dude.

 

Yeah, guess not. The moonbats only come out at night, don't they?

Shine on, you crazy, crazy diamond.

 

I'll keep fighting that culture war -- you keep the Pink Floyd music coming.

 

Yeah, well...at least some of us in here actually read honest-to-God books every once in a while.

(Ones with print-runs of over 250 copies, I mean.)

By the way -- your editor at The New Frontiersman called. He has a few typesetting questions for you about that journal you dropped in their front door mailslot the other day.