Cameron's Avatar Trailer Posted

graviplana was one of several people to submit that Avatar, James Cameron's 3D Sci-Fi epic has released a trailer to whet your appetite. There's a lot of very cool visual elements in there but no indication of any actual story. Here's hoping there is one.

Comments

Whet

[mmkkbb]

The correct word is "whet." To whet your appetite is to sharpen it, just as you would a knife with a whetstone. Wetting one's whistle refers to slaking or quenching thirst, but is entirely unrelated.

Re:Whet

[jo_ham]

Adding to that, the summary contains 45 words and three sentences, contains one typo and one misspelling. Surely the submission approval process is not so strained that three sentences is too much to proof read?

In before "you must be new here".

Re: Whet

[Black Parrot]

The correct word is "whet."

Maybe it's a deliberately bad trailer, designed to dampen people's appetites.

Re:doesnt work?

[TheSHAD0W]

BitTorrent download

Only a little

[meerling]

Watching the trailer you can get a little bit of info about whats going on.

Humans go to another planet, looks like a jungle planet.
They create "avatars" that are either clones, simulacrum, or repurposed native bodies.
One of the humans (the main character) who is brainmapped into an avatar, is a paraplegic in his human body.
The avatars are sent on an exploration or diplomacy mission.
(It obviously wasn't infiltration because they were wearing human clothes and carrying human gear.)

There's some fighting with some dino like things, possibly with the natives as well, although I didn't see any shots showing actual combat with natives, just strung together combat scenes that implied combat with the natives.

Oh, and the main character falls for a native female.

I'm sure somebody paying more attention to it can pick out other tidbits of info, but yeah, it was kinda sparse on data. It's not like the trailers/ads for 6th sense where you can identify all major plot points including the so called twist ending... (so bloody obvious he's one of the dead...)

An actual story? Why ruin it with that?

[wiredog]

GI Joe did just fine without any actual story.

Direct download links

[vivekg]

480p, 720p, 1080p Enjoy!

no: "dances with wolves" in space

[circletimessquare]

cameron even says so himself:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2009/08/james-cameron-the-new-trek-rocks-but-transformers-is-gimcrackery.html

GB: There's also maybe some heritage linking it to "Dances With Wolves," considering your story here of a battered military man who finds something pure in an endangered tribal culture.

JC: Yes, exactly, it is very much like that. You see the same theme in "At Play in the Fields of the Lord" and also "The Emerald Forest," which maybe thematically isn't that connected but it did have that clash of civilizations or of cultures. That was another reference point for me. There was some beautiful stuff in that film. I just gathered all this stuff in and then you look at it through the lens of science fiction and it comes out looking very different but is still recognizable in a universal story way. It's almost comfortable for the audience - "I know what kind of tale this is." They're not just sitting there scratching their heads, they're enjoying it and being taken along. And we still have turns and surprises in it, too, things you don't see coming. But the idea that you feel like you are in a classic story, a story that could have been shaped by Rudyard Kipling or Edgar Rice Burroughs.

GB: Or Joseph Conrad...?

JC: Yes, exactly. And I think returning to classic tales is a powerful thing. Look, right now is a special time because we can basically do anything we imagine. I mean you have to work hard at it, and you've got to have the technique and you have to be willing to throw money at the problem. Sometimes you have to be a little bold and go out on a limb. But if you can imagine it, you can do it. That's why we're seeing this renaissance of visual imagination. It's just a growth. Films look better now than they've ever looked. Sometimes they get a little lost in it though. I'll go to a "Transformers" film for the fun of seeing the spectacle but, personally, my soul craves a little more story, a little more meat on the bone and characters and that sort of thing. Look, I think it's about finding a balance between story and all of this gimmickry. I think I veer toward classicism, being solidly rooted in the classic stuff. I mean really old-school science fiction. This is a movie I would have loved to have seen when I was a 14-year-old kid in 1968.

avatar looks amazing though, a must see

the bit with the blue guys riding flying dragons reminded me a bit of "the dragonriders of pern" too

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonriders_of_Pern

now someone should make THAT into a movie

A few problems with it

[Jim Hall]

Yes, the CGI is stunning - for most of the trailer, it's hard to believe it's not live action. They have made a huge leap across the uncanny valley, and successfully.

But I have a few problems with it, just like most CGI movies these days:

The robots don't move right. It doesn't "feel" like a robot to me. James Cameron was the guy behind Aliens, and he seems to have forgotten that one of the reasons that was such a believable movie (despite taking place in the future, on an alien planet, fighting aliens with two mouths) was the use of "today" tech. So I would have expected Cameron to make Avatar's robots more like the military robots we envision today. I'm sure 1000 years from now, robots will move identically to a human (as in the movie) but I'd still prefer movie robots today to move more like real robots we have today.

Predators shouldn't announce their presence. There's a scene in the trailer where a dino-thing jumps out of the bushes, roars, and runs after people. I see this all the time in action movies where some large animal is about to attack the hero: the predator rises from the bushes (or from behind whatever), bellows, then rushes to attack. But in that split-second, our hero is able to throw himself behind cover, narrowly avoiding being eaten. Ever watch actual predator/prey wildlife - even a house cat pouncing on a mouse. Predators just don't announce their attacks - they just pounce. If you stop to roar, your prey gets away, and you go hungry.

That said, I'll probably still go see this when it comes out.

Re:Story?

[rhathar]

Dammit, formatting. Sorry about clicking 'submit' a little too fast:

The story's protagonist, Jake Sully, is a former 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 humans would consider to be a primitive level, but are actually much more evolutionarily advanced than humans. Ten feet tall, with tails and sparkling blue skin, 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 â" 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.

Re:Story?

[stoolpigeon]

There was not a single thing in that summary not clearly portrayed in the trailer. The trailer is not devoid of story - it completely gives away the entire plot. They only thing they don't show is the ending but it is very unlikely it wont end with things working out for the 'good' guys. But the paralysis - the transfer to another body - the love interest - the combat against invading earth forces - it's all there. This is a very typical anti-development, pro-nature type film that hollywood has been cranking out for some time.

I'm looking forward to seeing it - but not for the plot.

Re:Story?

[matang]

i read somewhere james cameron said it was dances with wolves but with aliens. it's what came to my mind when i read the synopsis (dude infiltrates a foreign and somewhat hostile group, falls in love, becomes one of them, is forced to decide whether to betray his former life).

Re:The Last Airbender

[stoolpigeon]

I would be much more excited to see more animated episodes to continue the story. My family is pretty stoked about the live action film - but I don't really see the point. I like the animated version and am unsure how live action could do as well, let alone surpass what already has been done.

I was able to buy all the tv episodes on dvd recently and have enjoyed watching the shows again. The story and characters are strong enough that it holds up well to multiple viewings.

Re:CG-wise? Disappointed. Storyline-wise? We'll se

[stoolpigeon]

Weren't the humans in Final Fantasy the Spirits Within CGI? Wouldn't that make this film 8 years late in being the first?

Re:Story?

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems rather similar to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_me_joe which was originally published in 1957. All the elements are there: cripple who telepathically controls a foreign species due to hostile environment, who then loses his grip on who he is. It's a great story but I hope it gets credit as the "seed" for this movie.

then prepare to have your mind explode:

[circletimessquare]

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/42087

lol

Re:Story?

[Capt James McCarthy]

Here's the thing I hate about sci-fi plots. Humans have the ability to fly half way across the galaxy, can engineer biological hybrids, can link those hybrids to a humans mind, but the simple act of reconnecting a spinal cord back together in order to cure paralysis is still beyond their reach?

I guess Health Care Reform didn't work in this sci-fi.

Oh my! Cameron is going to change the world again.

[Fantastic Lad]

Having read the (now scrubbed from the web after having floated around for several years) full script treatment penned by Cameron, I can assure you that it's a very solid story.

It IS formula, but then so was Titanic, (and Dances with Wolves for that matter). But Cameron knows how to work a formula impeccably. And the guy has actually gone and found a New Cool technology, which if used effectively and spun right, (think Jurassic Park), can help significantly in the promotion of a film.

The buzz is that the 3D has got the techs in Hollywood really excited about going to work every day.

People are going to see this film in droves and they are going to be blown away by it. I feel safe in predicting that.

Avatar, however, isn't going to be bigger than Titanic in terms of sales. I'll go ahead and predict that as well. --Why not? Because he isn't tapping the same doomed-romance nerve which is crack-cocaine to the average 15 year-old girl.

The casting of Titanic was both cynical and brilliant: Casting the almost beautiful Kate Winslet as the female lead was a sly maneuver which allowed the female audience to fantasize over the notion that even plane-Jane girls like themselves could have their very own Leonardo Decaprio. --And that his character should conveniently die at the end of the film so that he wouldn't put his lover through years of poverty, while in the same action giving her a bitter-sweet memory to polish and secretly wax pathetic over for years and years. . , well, that's just orgasmic! The girl-buttons deep inside girl-machines are placed in some really odd ways, but Cameron found 'em all and pushed every last one he could reach.

Avatar is going to be really cool, but it's not going to press nearly so many girl-buttons. (Though, images of blue amazon elf maidens I suspect will become popular in comic book shops). And who knows? My own understanding of girl-buttons is admittedly rudimentary. Maybe Cameron's onto something that I'm not anticipating. It IS a love story, after all, and maybe that's enough to make the teen girls watch it half a dozen times as they did with Titanic. My guess, however, is that classical material riches, classic questions of marrying for love or for money, combined with the bad boy thing. . , well I suspect this will always out-rank sci-fi mojo amongst the teen girl set.

In any case, this film looks very much like I pictured it from Cameron's prose, with one exception; I thought most of the fauna of Pandora was going to be glowing like a school of lamprey fish, but I guess the screen tests of that just didn't touch the right emotional nerves in viewers. The Audience is human, after all and Cameron knows his human psychology. I'm glad he's a sci-fi film maker and not a propaganda man like Goebbels!

-FL