Cameron unveils Avatar footage at Comic-Con

Posted on July 27, 2009
Filed Under Actresses, Directors, News

Today I’m going to give you a little update on James Cameron’s latest project. Well, to call it his latest is making it sound like something new to Cameron but as many of you know, that is not the case… “Avatar” has been Cameron’s main project for some time now. This movie blog, and every other website out there posting about movies, have been trying to keep you updated with the latest about this brilliant man, and this mega-project since 2006. The movie received its release date early 2007 but before that there had been a lot of talk about the mysterious film project that would unite Cameron and Sigourney Weaver again.

Anyway, Cameron began began making the rounds with “Avatar” footage in June at Cinema Expo, followed by a five-hour mini-conference to woo exhibitors earlier in July at Grauman’s Chinese. But the truest test of his film’s hype would be fulfilling his promise to show 20 minutes of footage to the fans that deified him after films like “Terminator,” “Terminator 2,” “Aliens” and “Titanic.”

Cameron fans have come to expect a certain standard. When the director takes his time to develop something groundbreaking, his audience has been richly rewarded. However, there’s never been this much anticipation and mystery surrounding one of Cameron’s projects. Avatar is possibly his largest achievement yet (according to his fans anyway) – even before it has been released…

Variety reports that after VERY short speech from Cameron (he came to the podium to ask, “Are you ready to go to Pandora?“), what ensued was 20-25 minutes of a sci-fi fever dream. Employing what appears to be a mix of CGI, performance capture and green screen, the footage should continue to stir very positive buzz.

For the fans, the footage was the equivalent of a cinematic second coming.  Cameron gave a shout-out to Peter Jackson, claiming the technological mastery behind Gollum in “Lord of the Rings” was one of his cues to make “Avatar.”

At the end, Cameron announced that on August 21, he would take over a number of IMAX and 3D theaters to show the public 15 minutes of “Avatar” as a way to compensate those who couldn’t be at the conference.

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