It has finally arrived. The first public look of James Cameron’s Avatar is here and it’s… interesting, I guess. Before I say any more, you can find it over at Apple (480p, 720p, 1080p). Anyway, my first impressions are that it looks like an E3 presentation of a launch title for the next-generation of video game consoles (ie. for the PlayStation 4). Despite what has amounted to years of hype and talk from Cameron about how people would believe what they were watching was real, that doesn’t pay off. It’s damned good, detailed CGI, but still obviously CGI. The creatures, including the Na’vi, are even somewhat cartoony. The environments look quite photo-real however. Perhaps the biggest disappointment is that the trailer itself is lackluster, with very little context to the images which are themselves glimpsed in very quick shots. It fails to build into the epic tease that they were going for. I don’t get any chills up my spine. I don’t feel anything at all by the end of it. That’s not to say I won’t be seeing the movie or anything, but after reportedly cutting tons of trailers and endless months of figuring out how to debut this, it’s not that great of a reveal.
Written and directed by James Cameron, Avatar tells the story of Jake (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic who has his consciousness transferred into the body of a Na’vi in order for him to be able to naturally interact with the species on their planet of Pandora, where humans are collecting valuable resources. Jake inevitably falls for one of the Na’vi, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), and must choose which side he stands on as war looms. Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi, CCH Pounder, Wes Studi, Dileep Rao and Joel Moore co-star.
Avatar will be released by Fox on December 18th.
