Avatar Footage Screened, Minds Are Blown

While in the general public we haven't yet seen a stitch of Avatar footage, over in Amsterdam, movie theater owners and other industry bigwigs were treated to 24 minutes of footage introduced by Cameron himself. Those who were there have been submitting reactions all over the web; the 3D nuts at Market Saw had a tipster writing "This movie will change the industry," while THR, hamstrung by an embargo, could only write "From the sustained applause at the conclusion of the presentation, suffice to say Fox didn't hurt itself at the event."

Coming Soon had a report from a tipster who was a self-confessed 3D skeptic, and as someone who isn't under embargo and hasn't obsessively followed Avatar for years, this tipster provides the most coherent description of the scenes that were shown. SPOILERS, OBVIOUSLY, though you won't find most of them here. The tipster starts off questioning the value of the 3D, even complaining about how uncomfortable the glasses are, but then "It's the third scene where my heart begins to pound like crazy." That's the first introduction to the movie's main, all-CGI characters, and the tipster is dumbstruck: "I thought--just like you guys--that I've seen it all with Gollum, or The Hulk, but Cameron has done it again."

I really recommend Coming Soon's writeup if you don't mind spoilers, since it's the first time I've actually understood what the Na'vi are, or even what the movie is actually about. But if you want more more more Avatar, Market Saw also has some pictures from the after party, where images from the film (or at least inspired by the film) were projected onto the walls. When Cameron talks about Avatar looking like nothing you've ever seen before, these photos might be a clue about what he means.

I don't really want to get into what I think about all this until I've actually seen something myself-- rumor has it that Comic Con will be the place for that. All I can tell now is that Cameron is still the master showman, and a movie from him, even 11 years after Titanic, is still a guaranteed event. Regardless of how Avatar turns out, it feels good to have him back.