James Cameron ’s Avatar is as unknown to most Americans as the distant planet Pandora , but among the people who ’ve obsessed about this space epic poem for a decade , there ’s talk of a backlash . And Avatar fans now have a moniker : Avatards .
We ’ve had a few conversation in the retiring few solar day with Comic Con - goers who pretend to be a tad disappointed with the footage that was screened on Thursday — but only because expectations were jack up so in high spirits . Blame Cameron , who ’s been saying for a year that his footage would overturn 3 - five hundred filmmaking , to the compass point where movies would be divided into Before Avatar and After Avatar . Or blame the Time Magazine reporter whosaw similar footage in March , and wrote :
I could n’t tell what was literal and what was animize — even knowing that the 9 - ft.-tall blue , mottled dude could n’t perchance be literal . The view were so startling and absorb that the come after morning , I had the odd sensation of desire to return there , as if Pandora were real .
Cameron was n’t surprised . One theory , he says , is that 3 - calciferol viewing “ is so close to a real experience that it actually touch off memory instauration in a way that 2 - cholecalciferol viewing does n’t . ” His own possibility is that stereoscopic viewing uses more neurons . That ’s possible . After watching all that 3 - D , I was a bit wipe out . I was also altogether amused .
The consensus among the hoi polloi who saw Thursday night ’s footage was that it was splendid and optic - pop — but they had no trouble telling the CG animation from realness , especially in the scene where unrecorded histrion are interacting with the CG animated avatars . And the 3 - viosterol did n’t seem to add all that much to the reckon experience . The footage was capital , but not quite photorealistic . At the same time , as my co-worker Lauren pose it to me , “ There was no eldritch valley . ”
The criticism boiled down to saying that the Avatar footage was better than the CG mass had seen in the past — but not the monolithic world - shattering change we ’d been promised .
Even the people we spill the beans to who professed to be allow down slightly by the Avatar footage prefaced their remarks with “ I ’m certain it ’ll be a great movie , but — ” or “ I still reckon it ’ll be a huge hit , but — ” So as backlashes go , this one is relatively mild — and probably level-headed , since the movie should be building bombilation this fall , and it ’s best to get any ballyhoo chastening out of the way this summer .
But still , there was a noticeable move to get people to downgrade their Avatar expectations after the footage was record . Over at Aintitcool , Quint wrote :
What I saw were glimpses at a fantastic bit of storytelling , a rich fantasy story , by a original of the artform , but the CGI creatures and characters are just that . They ’re amazingly executed , no uncertainty , but it ’s not like when you envision your first CG dinosaur and you tell , “ This is a game record changer ” to yourself .
CHUDwas even harsh :
It ’s not that Avatar was n’t a smash , it just was n’t the grand slam everyone expected . I ’ve talked to a telephone number of people – lover and hoi polloi in the industry – who were a little underwhelmed by the 24 minutes of footage . No one disliked it , but the weightiness of expectation kept the motion-picture show from really hold off . And that , frankly , is no excuse . You either walk out of San Diego with major buzz or you do n’t . Avatar may be walking out of San Diego with fourth place .
The word “ plug ” has been bandied about on some blogs and substance boards . For example , Latino Reviewwrote yesterday :
Despite the Avatar hype , most people I ’ve lecture to suppose Iron Man 2 is going to steal the show .
My favorite online Avatar discussion , though , come from the comment train of thought at Awards Daily , where everyone pretty much agrees the movie ’s been overhyped passably ( not visually , since we ’ve seen so little imaging up till now , but in some of Cameron ’s hyperbole . ) And they coin the term “ Avatards ” to key out the pic ’s unswerving supporters — with some citizenry happy identifying themselves by that title .
Writes one someone named Bambi :
I ’m an Avatard , but lets lower expectation here because overhype is always undoing . So far , I havent seen a undivided conception that is never - seen - before , story sounds rehashed and it seems that sophisticated three-D is the only thing that makes it a spectacle above anything else this year … I rememeber how excited net oddball were over The Watchmen trailer attached to TDK while it was obvious from crowds indifferent reaction that they didnt know what to make of it . We know how that one turned out . And dont get me started on “ bar is raised so in high spirits that there is no bar ” Joel Silver`s hoopla for Matrix : Reloaded and Revolutions ( plus Time rave of its footage ) and “ directors will give up when they see King Kong ” Philippa Boyens hype for King Kong ( plus obligatory Time rave ) .
As I enounce , as backlashes go , it ’s a fairly nonaged one . But what I really need to know is , where ’s my “ I ’m An Avatard ” T - shirt ? Or maybe a deoxythymidine monophosphate - shirt that say , “ Obligatory Time Rave . ”
AvatarComic - Con 2009James CameronMoviesSDCC
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