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Official Avatar movie poster
James Cameron was the self professed ‘King of the World’ back in the late 90’s when his love-it-or-hate-it epic, Titanic, bagged 11 Oscars and a box off near to a billion dollars. Then he went near enough off radar for over a decade. Not that he didn’t make any films. Those who were lucky enough to catch his under IMAX features Ghosts of the Abyss and Aliens of the Deep were treated to beautiful, moving and sometimes shocking tales about diving to the Titanic and underwater sealife, respectively.
“When is he coming back to Hollywood?” a lot of Cameron fans asked, and three long years ago an answer echoed out of cyberspace. James Cameron was working on a new film! With Sigourney Weaver (who reprised her role as Ripley in Cameron’s action blockbuster Alien sequel, Aliens)! Entirely in 3-D! The internet, and the downstairs of quite a few fanboys, exploded. Stories of alien world adventures, new languages, action, romance weaved in and out of rumour mills, but here we are three years later and James Cameron’s first cinematic, mainstream, release since Titanic is hitting theatres worldwide on December 18th 2009. Soon Avatar will be here.
Back pedal a few weeks to San Diego ComiCon in July 2009 where 6,000 fans, many of whom camped outside the viewing hall from the night before, went totally nuts at the Avatar panel when they were shown 25 minutes of the film in glorious 3-D. The general consensus being that it will blow your mind, and then some. Fanboys/ Camronites/ J-Whores who couldn’t go to ComiCon, after the crying subsided, waited for the trailer (at least just a trailer!) to go online, and let them see what Pandora (the fictional planet Avatar’s story centres on) was like. Even the film’s premise was kept top-secret with most of the information being released saying only that “A band of humans are pitted in a battle against a distant planet's indigenous population”. Fanboys waited with baited breath.
Then on July 23rd 2009, 20th Century Fox released a press statement saying that August 21st 2009 is ‘Avatar Day’. That at a select number of 3-D equipped and IMAX theatres worldwide not only would the new Avatar trailer be screened, but 15 minutes of footage not shown at San Diego ComiCon ’09 and the trailer for the upcoming Avatar video game, all in 3-D, all for free!
Jake (Sam Worthingon) by a Navi, one of Pandora's indigionous beings
Lounges, bedrooms, offices and public transportation around the globe erupted in fanboy happy dances. Calendars were marked. Days off work were booked. Amidst the joy though people slowly noticed that minus the day, no details had been released. ‘Which theatres? What time? Which countries?’ echoed the voices and interweb messages. No one knew.
Now though, August 17th 2009, Fox have released the details to all those questions and those lucky enough to be near a selected area are going to be introduced to Pandora. What’s it going to be like? Is the hype justifiable? Will skulls have holes and goop where they were previously intact? All these questions and more will be answered when your Geek Culture examiner ventures to Pandora on Friday, with just a little bit of excitement!
Want to know more? Check out:
Official Avatar Movie website
On Facebook? Join the official group.
As always agree, disagree, just want to geek out? Contact me at lukethegeek@rocketmail.com.
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