Movies Review

The world got its first look at director James Cameron’s motion picture epic AVATAR.  In this unprecedented experience, the studio (Twentieth Century Fox) and Cameron debuted the film’s teaser trailer everywhere, while select cinemas and IMAX theaters will screen hand-picked scenes in 3-D, prepared by the renowned filmmaker.

 

We were one of the not so few who managed to catch the footage which was presented by Cameron (via a pre-recorded message). Very little was known about the film, to the point where we were still unclear prior to the screening as to whether it was going to be fully live-action or animation or a combination of the two… something which is still open to interpretation but I think we have more of a clue at least.

We know a little bit more now (certainly in terms of the tone and visual style) but other questions remain unanswered. Unlike last years Dark Knight previews, the footage here was from selected scenes rather than one full section as we saw last time out. TDK got the viewers excited by introducing the Joker and giving us the entire intro to the film, the Avatar footage was a collection of moments from throughout the story making it slightly confusing as opposed to satisfying. To be fair to Cameron, he did make it clear that the scenes were all from the first half of the film and contained no spoilers but i still wanted to find out more and felt a little under whelmed.

 

Another question is to how the film will work on IMAX. The footage we saw was indeed in glorious 3D, but it did not fill out the screen in the conventional manner. Thankfully it was not just resized either and i suspect that the final version will indeed be as we expect. It was a good idea to try and answer some of the questions in this global manner, although as with all films you cannot artificially create a long-lasting sense of excitement. These things tend to happen more organically with careful marketing and well placed promotion.

 

The audience at the BFI Imax screening i attended was a combination of Film Critics and members of the public. Again the anticipation and post-footage excitement seemed to be real but the long term word-of-mouth will not depend on this day alone. This is shaping up to be THE big film at years end (much in the mould of the Potter and LOTR franchises) and with the reported $250million budget it will need to be.

 

AVATAR takes us to a spectacular new world beyond our imagination, where a reluctant hero embarks on a journey of redemption and discovery as he leads an heroic battle to save a civilization.  The film was first conceived by Cameron 14 years ago, when the means to realize his vision did not yet exist. Now, after four years of actual production work, AVATAR delivers a fully immersive cinematic experience of a new kind, where the revolutionary technology invented to make the film disappears into the emotion of the characters and the sweep of the story.