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Dubya was right about human/animal hybrids!
I can't go on youtube here at work but last night Web Soup had an awesome parody of the Avatar trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5LyXiFUSbI" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Ebert wasn't impressed with the preview footage.

Hitler hates it.

It's worth casting your mind back to 1984, when folks predicted that Runaway, directed by Michael Crichton, was going to be the biggest sci-fi movie of the year.

Instead, Runaway was trumped, critically and commercially, by a low-budget film from an upcoming young director -- James Cameron's The Terminator.

This year history may well repeat itself. Certainly District 9 seems fresher and more cynical than Cameron's 'Delgo and Pocahontas Dance with ThunderSmurfs in Ferngully'!

Caged Horse wrote:It's worth casting your mind back to 1984, when folks predicted that Runaway, directed by Michael Crichton, was going to be the biggest sci-fi movie of the year.

Instead, Runaway was trumped, critically and commercially, by a low-budget film from an upcoming young director -- James Cameron's The Terminator.

This year history may well repeat itself. Certainly District 9 seems fresher and more cynical than Cameron's 'Delgo and Pocahontas Dance with ThunderSmurfs in Ferngully'!

Well, yeah. District 9 aspires to be a social commentary about racism, while Avatar aspires to be an escapist adventure film suitable for all ages. Of course Blomkamp's film is more cynical. Moreover, when did cynicism levels become a gauge of quality?

Fresher? Definitely. Avatar is a big, big production, and such films don't tend to take huge chances with storytelling.

At this stage, I'm thinking that Titanic might be a more accurate comparison than The Terminator. Like that film, Avatar is massively over-budget (the figures being thrown around by Fox are blatantly untrue), and since the release of the trailer, there has been widespread negative buzz and predictions of impending box-office doom.
I think soon after this is released the Titanic effect will kick in and this will become very, very big. Reports from the 15 minute preview screenings have been overwhelmingly positive, even from those who were extremely unimpressed by the trailer. Whether or not it's actually a good film remains to be seen and is largely irrelevant; people were generally very impressed by the technical virtuosity and 'rollercoaster' like experience offered in the preview. When this film gets released, I have a feeling that the word of mouth effect is going to be unprecedented.
Avatar's second weekend performance is going to be very interesting to see.

Cde. wrote:Reports from the 15 minute preview screenings have been overwhelmingly positive, even from those who were extremely unimpressed by the trailer.

Uh

Please don't imply that Avatar is going to surpass Titanic at the box office..!

That's a prediction of Mark Steynian magnitude (December 2003: "The Iraqi insurgency will peter out after 6 weeks").

domino harvey wrote:

Cde. wrote:Reports from the 15 minute preview screenings have been overwhelmingly positive, even from those who were extremely unimpressed by the trailer.

Uh

It's true. Even Ebert's column noted that he watched it twice, and both screenings concluded with applause.
Avatar may be terrible as a film (and judging by what people are saying about the dialogue and narrative, it's a strong possibility) but the reports about the '3D experience', and the quality and detail of the CG world have been extremely positive.

I don't think this is going to surpass Titanic (and I feel it will be a long time before that record is beaten), but I think we're going to see a similar case of negative buzz being turned around and the film becoming a word of mouth fueled phenomenon.

If I wanted to see something in 3D that would be terrible as a film, I could just go on living the 3D experience of my life. At least that doesn't have any creepy cat people in it.

swo17 wrote:If I wanted to see something in 3D that would be terrible as a film, I could just go on living the 3D experience of my life. At least that doesn't have any creepy cat people in it.

Yes, but the advantage Avatar has over real life is that you can't smell it.

swo17 wrote:If I wanted to see something in 3D that would be terrible as a film, I could just go on living the 3D experience of my life. At least that doesn't have any creepy cat people in it.

Or you could see THE Final Destination this weekend.

Trailer 2

If you have difficulty with the location blocker try the HD versions.

New official site

Just as awful as the first trailer. Cameron's always had a tin ear for dialogue but "You're not in Kansas anymore, you're in Pandora," is a new low. And no IMAX 3D screen in the world is going to make those blue creatures look anything but laughable.

Now Cameron is taking heat for the plot's similarity to Poul Anderson's Call Me Joe.

The recent New Yorker profile was a hoot.

I think it looks fun. I'm expecting a lot of broad-strokes storytelling and terrible dialogue, but that's always been the way of Cameron, and it's pretty much commonplace in mass market cinema these days. Still, for all it's goofiness, this looks much more appealing to me than 10 Iron Mans.

The New Yorker article was pretty fantastic.

Polybius wrote:Now Cameron is taking heat for the plot's similarity to Poul Anderson's Call Me Joe.

While the concept of remote controlling an alien body to explore an otherwise inhabitable environment might seem really fresh and unique to most, it's an old idea in SF. The only reason to single out this particular story seems to be the paraplegia aspect.
Avatar is essentially a hodge-podge collection of story elements from a lot of sources and this is probably one of them, but I don't think the similarity with Call Me Joe is enough to call 'rip-off'.

Ebert speaks, validates increasingly frustrated fanboys.

And furries:

Roger Ebert wrote:And Cameron and his artists succeed at the difficult challenge of making Neytiri a blue-skinned giantess with golden eyes and a long, supple tail, and yet--I'll be damned. Sexy.

My friend got tickets to the Sydney preview last night; it was PHENOMENAL.

It is pretty phenomenal that your friend got tickets to a film

domino harvey wrote:It is pretty phenomenal that your friend got tickets to a film

The movie was phenomanl, but I was pretty impressed getting tickets; it was industry only, she's a projectionist.

Pandora represents not even a remote threat to Earth, but we nevertheless send in the military to attack and conquer them. Gung-ho Marines employ machine guns and pilot armored hover ships on bombing runs. You are free to find this an allegory about contemporary politics. Cameron obviously does.

It was largely unremarked upon at the time (at least in my recollection), but Aliens has a very skeptical view of the thoughtless nature of a lot of military combat training. All of that loud bluster melting away in the face of their initial attack against something they weren't remotely prepared to deal with.

domino harvey wrote:And furries

Well, *I've* been known to dabble in 'furry' and I still have no intention whatsoever of watching this. Pocahontas was such a misconceived and mendacious, heap big pile of buffalo dung, it signalled the beginning of the end for hand-drawn feature animation; why would I want to see it all over again even if it's been remade in CGI IMAX 3-D?

Judging by the reviews I may have to rethink the whole Heaven's Smurfs prediction. I do shamelessly love many of Cameron's films, I just wasn't sure the FX wouldn't sink this entire production. People seem to be impressed, however, and the more I see of Worthington and Saldana's characters (and Sigourney's avatar especially), the more impressed I am as well.