I'm super-excited for two films this Fall: Sherlock Holmes, because I love Robert Downey, and Avatar, because Sam Worthington is HOT. After I saw him in Terminator: Salvation (which I apparently liked more than most people), I went back and watched as many of Worthington's old Australian movies and TV shows that I found find. The guy is not new to acting. He's been in a lot. And you know what? He's a fantastic actor. Seriously, the man has range. He made me cry in Somersault (you should definitely see that movie, by the way...it also stars Abbie Cornish and she's wonderful in it).
In anticipation of "Avatar Day" this Friday, August 21st, when Fox will screen 15 minutes of the movie for free (more details below), I've decided to pull together everything we know about Avatar, James Cameron's first motion picture since Titanic blew onto the scene 10 years ago.
The plot of the movie is a formula we've seen before, but that's OK.
On the distant moon Pandora, a reluctant hero embarks on a journey of redemption, discovery and unexpected love — as he leads a heroic battle to save a civilization.
The story’s protagonist, Jake Sully, is an ex-Marine who was wounded and paralyzed from the waist down in combat on Earth. In order to participate in the Avatar program, which will give him a healthy body, Jake agrees to travel to Pandora, a lush rainforest environment filled with incredible life forms – some beautiful, many terrifying. Pandora is also the home to the Na’vi, a humanoid race that lives at what we consider to be a primate level, but they are actually much more evolved than humans. Ten feet tall and blue skinned, the Na’vi live harmoniously within their unspoiled world. But as humans encroach on Pandora in search of valuable minerals, the Na’vi’s very existence is threatened – and their warrior abilities unleashed.
Jake has unwittingly been recruited to become part of this encroachment. Since humans are unable to breathe the air on Pandora, they have created genetically-bred human-Na’vi hybrids known as Avatars. The Avatars are living, breathing bodies in the real world, controlled by a human driver through a technology that links the driver’s mind to the Avatar body. On Pandora, through his Avatar body, Jake can be whole once again. Moreover, he falls in love with a young Na’vi woman, Neytiri, whose beauty is matched by her ferocity in battle.
As Jake slides deeper into becoming one of her clan, he finds himself caught between the military-industrial forces of Earth, and the Na’vi – forcing him to choose sides in an epic battle that will decide the fate of an entire world.
The film also stars Zoe Saldana (as Neytiri), Sigourney Weaver (as human botanist and leader of the Avatar program Dr. Grace Augustine), Michelle Rodriguez (as retired Marine Trudy Chacon), Giovanni Ribisi (as Parker Selfridge), and Stephen Lang (as Marine Corps Colonel Quaritch) among others.
The story goes that James Cameron wrote an outline for this movie mover 14 years ago, but couldn't bring the movie to life until recently, as the technology hadn't been created to film the movie as he envisioned. In fact, he eventually built special cameras to film this 3-D extravaganza.
That's right....the film is meant to be viewed entirely in 3-D (although it will also be showed in 2-D as well). They say it's going to change the industry. The special effects are supposed to be incredible. The Na'vi are supposed to be amazingly life-like.
The film has been shrouded in secrecy for a long time. Only 3 official images of the characters have been released (see all photos below). We have a poster with a close-up of Worthington's character, another poster with a show of Saldana's Neytiri and last week Fox released a photo of Worthington in front of a tank that holds his personal Avatar. We've also seen photos of Cameron and Worthington on set.
No trailers exist yet, but a teaser trailer is supposed to be posted on August 20th (check out Apple's trailer page). Cameron has, however, shown two separate previews of the movie....one in Amsterdam in mid-summer, and one at Comic Con at the end of July. Several people have posted a summary of the footage from Comic Con. One person described the planet Pandora as:
Imagine the ocean floor if it would exist above the sea line and you’re close. It’s very much dense jungle, but the alien flora is very reminiscent of anemones. Also like the deep sea lifeforms many of the fauna have their own luminescence.
I won't spoil those who don't want to be spoiled, but AICN has posted a full summary of the preview. Click here to read it, if you're interested. In the interest of full disclosure (since not everyone has been blown away by what they saw), Cinematical.com has posted some quotes from various people who viewed the preview, along with links to their full reviews. In all honesty, I believe this movie will live up to its potential, but I don't know if Cameron should have talked about it like the second coming of Christ, as that will build it up to unbelievable expectations that may disappoint some people.
All of this brings me to Cameron and Fox's newest publicity tactic: "Avatar Day". At Comic Con, Cameron annouced that Fox was going to preview 15 minutes of footage from the movie, free of charge, on Friday, August 21st. Tickets are available through the official movie website, beginning at 12:00 p.m PST today (August 17th). The preview will be held in IMAX theatres in Canada and the U.S. I'm going to try to get tickets, so if I can go see the preview I will post my thoughts about it this weekend.
UPDATE: The Avatar site servers crashed spectacularly this afternoon, preventing most people from getting free tickets. It's now 10:00 p.m. EST and the site has been back up for a few hours. I apparently secured my tickets a little while ago, although I haven't gotten an email confirmation yet (the official Avatar twitter page says the confirmation emails could take a few hours to arrive). So go try to secure your tickets. Despite the utter frustration of today's site crashing, I think this bodes well for the movie. Because by the time December 18 arrives, we'll all have forgotten our hatred of Fox and their IT department (well....probably).
