Traditionally, August is something of a slow news month. Anything, however apparently inappropriate, seems to be used to fill in valuable airtime or column space during the holiday season. You might, for instance, have happened to hear yesterday morning Evan Davies interviewing august cricket commentator Henry Blofeld on the BBCโs flagship radio news programme Today about whether heโd prefer to commentate on the 100 metres at the World Athletics Championships. Today, it seems everyoneโs got in a palaver about Avatar, James Cameronโs 3D sci-fi epic of which 15 minutes was shown during a series of screenings rolled out at hundreds of cinemas round the world. Perhaps inevitably with this kind of blockbuster, itโs all about the numbers. Avatar is Cameronโs first film since Titanic, 12 years ago, which took $1.8 billion at the box office. He originally sketched the outline for Avatar in 1994 but held off making it until he thought technology was advanced enough. It has, apparently, cost $237 million. And, as those of us who saw it today at Londonโs IMAX were told by the head of the UK distributor 20th Century Fox, so far 2,000 people have seen the official trailer, released yesterday, online. Itโs perhaps irrelevant to wonder whether Avatar will be remotely good in any field other than the visual effects. Having learned from Hawks, Hill, Carpenter and Corman that characters in certain types of genre films can be defined more effectively by their actions than by exposition, Cameronโs never exactly been one to get bogged down in character and dialogue. Which is why the first 90 minutes of Titanic, before the ship went down, was so woeful and why his best films โ the two Terminator movies and Aliens โ are action-driven adrenalin rushes. Indeed, based on the five sequences we saw from Avatar, it seems like Cameron is happy to recycle some of his own films, alongside a number of tropes and set-ups familiar from other sources. We open, for instance, with Stephen Langโs Marine corps colonel explaining to a platoon of grunts that theyโre about to embark on a tour of duty on a hostile alien planet, Pandora. โThink of Hell. You might want to go there for R&R after this,โ he snarls. Aliens..? Well, maybe. Avatarโs central character, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is a Marine, crippled during combat. Heโs given access by Sigourney Weaverโs scientist to an Avatar creature, part human and part Naโvi, one of the planetโs many colourful creatures. Now resembling nothing less than a greeny-blue Thundercat, Sully is sent to Pandora where he befriends his fellow Naโvi and love interest begins to take shape with one of their kind, Neytiri. Itโs possible Sully is part of a covert military operation: the planetโs atmosphere is poison to humans, but it seems that if successfully immersed in Avatar hybrids, Earthโs military could conquer Pandora. Anyway, thatโs yr plot. But, like I say, I suspect the story is really just an excuse for Cameron to unveil his latest, and admittedly deeply impressive, box of tricks. Of course, it looks fantastic. Thereโs one sequence on Pandora where Sully first experiences the planetโs landscape close-up โ a weird, lush, rainforest that looks like it should: totally alien. Gone, we can safely assume, are the days when George Lucas fudged it by getting Tunisia to double for Tatooine. Or worse: quarries near Dorking masquerading as Skaro in Doctor Who. Iโm reluctant to get carried away in the hype, but you do get a sense of Cameronโs incredible visual accomplishments here. And this, inevitably, is what Avatar will stand or fall on. Plenty has already been written about how the director helped pioneer โthe future cameraโ developed to capture the actors and integrate them into his virtual world; how the other great technological innovators of the modern cinema age, Spielberg, Lucas and Peter Jackson, were all invited down to check out Cameronโs posh new gadgets. If you find the idea of โthe future cameraโ slightly self-important, then certainly you wonโt fall for the talk of how Avatar is going to revolutionise cinema. Certainly, once all the bluster about the 3D technology is out of the way, thereโs the simple truth that only 320 cinemas out of 3,600 UK cinemas are digitally equipped, and so Avatar will also be released in creaky old-fashioned 2D come December 18. You can see the trailer here anyway.
Traditionally, August is something of a slow news month. Anything, however apparently inappropriate, seems to be used to fill in valuable airtime or column space during the holiday season. You might, for instance, have happened to hear yesterday morning Evan Davies interviewing august cricket commentator Henry Blofeld on the BBCโs flagship radio news programme Today about whether heโd prefer to commentate on the 100 metres at the World Athletics Championships. Today, it seems everyoneโs got in a palaver about Avatar, James Cameronโs 3D sci-fi epic of which 15 minutes was shown during a series of screenings rolled out at hundreds of cinemas round the world.
Perhaps inevitably with this kind of blockbuster, itโs all about the numbers. Avatar is Cameronโs first film since Titanic, 12 years ago, which took $1.8 billion at the box office. He originally sketched the outline for Avatar in 1994 but held off making it until he thought technology was advanced enough. It has, apparently, cost $237 million. And, as those of us who saw it today at Londonโs IMAX were told by the head of the UK distributor 20th Century Fox, so far 2,000 people have seen the official trailer, released yesterday, online.
Itโs perhaps irrelevant to wonder whether Avatar will be remotely good in any field other than the visual effects. Having learned from Hawks, Hill, Carpenter and Corman that characters in certain types of genre films can be defined more effectively by their actions than by exposition, Cameronโs never exactly been one to get bogged down in character and dialogue. Which is why the first 90 minutes of Titanic, before the ship went down, was so woeful and why his best films โ the two Terminator movies and Aliens โ are action-driven adrenalin rushes.
Indeed, based on the five sequences we saw from Avatar, it seems like Cameron is happy to recycle some of his own films, alongside a number of tropes and set-ups familiar from other sources. We open, for instance, with Stephen Langโs Marine corps colonel explaining to a platoon of grunts that theyโre about to embark on a tour of duty on a hostile alien planet, Pandora. โThink of Hell. You might want to go there for R&R after this,โ he snarls. Aliens..? Well, maybe.
Avatarโs central character, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is a Marine, crippled during combat. Heโs given access by Sigourney Weaverโs scientist to an Avatar creature, part human and part Naโvi, one of the planetโs many colourful creatures. Now resembling nothing less than a greeny-blue Thundercat, Sully is sent to Pandora where he befriends his fellow Naโvi and love interest begins to take shape with one of their kind, Neytiri. Itโs possible Sully is part of a covert military operation: the planetโs atmosphere is poison to humans, but it seems that if successfully immersed in Avatar hybrids, Earthโs military could conquer Pandora.
Anyway, thatโs yr plot. But, like I say, I suspect the story is really just an excuse for Cameron to unveil his latest, and admittedly deeply impressive, box of tricks. Of course, it looks fantastic. Thereโs one sequence on Pandora where Sully first experiences the planetโs landscape close-up โ a weird, lush, rainforest that looks like it should: totally alien. Gone, we can safely assume, are the days when George Lucas fudged it by getting Tunisia to double for Tatooine. Or worse: quarries near Dorking masquerading as Skaro in Doctor Who.
Iโm reluctant to get carried away in the hype, but you do get a sense of Cameronโs incredible visual accomplishments here. And this, inevitably, is what Avatar will stand or fall on. Plenty has already been written about how the director helped pioneer โthe future cameraโ developed to capture the actors and integrate them into his virtual world; how the other great technological innovators of the modern cinema age, Spielberg, Lucas and Peter Jackson, were all invited down to check out Cameronโs posh new gadgets. If you find the idea of โthe future cameraโ slightly self-important, then certainly you wonโt fall for the talk of how Avatar is going to revolutionise cinema. Certainly, once all the bluster about the 3D technology is out of the way, thereโs the simple truth that only 320 cinemas out of 3,600 UK cinemas are digitally equipped, and so Avatar will also be released in creaky old-fashioned 2D come December 18.
You can see the trailer here anyway.