Cameron is the director that bought us Aliens, the second movie in the Alien quadrilogy, and considered by name critics to be the best. Add to that the first two Terminator movies, and the enourmous commercial success of late 90s Winslet/Decaprio vehicle Titanic, and you have a master of big budget, visual extravaganzas.
Avatar is his first venture into directing since Titanic, with a whopping budget of $200 million dollars, and the prospect of it being shown in 3D in some theatres. The movie will make use of a modern version of motion capture techniques similar to those used by Robert Zemekis in The Polar Express, and the director, who originally wrote an 80 page script for the film back in 1994, has insisted he had to wait until now for the technology available to be true to his artistic vision. As well as being visually stunning, and full of action, Cameron, will be exploring themes of the kind that made his previous movies such a special combination of action and thought-provoking sci-fi. From what you can see in the trailer, the movie can be viewed as a metaphor for American Imperialism, and a comment on man's greed and the current climate crisis, as humans seek to mine a planet with precious mineral resources, intending to infiltrate and kill the native population who stand in their way, as he explained earlier this year at Comic Con 2009, "the humans in the film, even though there are some good ones salted in, represent what we know to be the parts of ourselves that are trashing our world and maybe condemning ourselves to a grim future.". It's also refreshing to have a central character in Australian Sam Worthington (last seen in Terminator Salvation), who is wheelchair bound, playing a marine called Jake Sully who has been wounded in combat on Earth. While this all sounds great, and the trailer looks good, let's hope it's a triumph of moviemaking, and not a hilarious big budget turkey in the vein of Battlefield Earth or The Postman.
Official Avatar Movie
