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I'd not heard much about Avatar before, only that it was supposed to revolutionize cinema as we know it and would use 3D techonology beyond anything done before. I have to say I was rather sceptical of this, I've always thought of 3D as a gimmick for which to see an orange fly at your face or a bunch of M&M's in space, not really adding to the immersion of the film itself. Now i can honestly say though, I've been proven wrong.
The preview started off with a short recording of James Cameron telling us how lucky we are to see this preview and that we were some of the first in the world to see this and he was curtious enough to let us know there were no major spoilers.
The actual preview started off showing the inside of a military base, a guy in a wheelchair is entering what looks like a dining room and tough looking army guy (you can tell he's tough cus he's got scars on his face! :O ) is briefing a bunch of people in this room about how some of them are goining to die on the planet below them (I guess we're already supposed to know they're in space?). It was this opening that really shows that the 3D is something special here, there were a set of tables and as they were all in shot, you could see each person and object in the room was layered. Not obviously sticking out but subtley showing depth to the world that you were viewing.
The next scene was still inside the (what i assumed to be) space station, the guy in the wheelchair is getting into a pod of some sort, Sigourney Weaver is being some sort of scientist doctor person and his helping him in. She refers to him as Jake so I'll happily assume thats his name. He gets in, and then some amazing 3D CGI happens involving their future space computer screens (taken directly from minority report I might add) and he finds that he is now in contoll of a really tall blue alien thing with a tail and huge eyes. he runs off happy that he can now walk and the scene ends. He's going to be in this alien's body for the rest of the film.
Now we find these guys are in a jungle on the planet, Jake is facing off what can only be described as a rhino crossed with a hammerhead shark. The rhinoshark is acting all angry at him, and they charge at each other. Rhinoshark stops and gives up but Jake finds that this is because a black sabertooth tiger is right behind him. So the black sabertooth chases him through the woods and I imagine this gets him seperated from his team as the scene then ends and goes to the next one. This one really showed off the 3D stuff so well. Like in the previous scenes, everything was layered and had a sense of depth but it felt more pronouced as there were so many little details in the jungle. Leaves, flys, grains of dust, everything was on a different plane. It wasn't gimmicky shit flying at me, it was little things just here and there drawing me in even more.
It's now night time and Jake is trying to survive an attack by these dog like animals and isn't doing very well when out of nowhere, he is saved by a blue alien woman who is quite clearly a native of the planet. This scene again shows of more if the subtltey to the 3D effects with more wildlife and everything glowing because it's night time and thats what alien animals do at night...
Now we see him, the woman and two other aliens scaling a clifftop to find some flying dinosaur like creatures with antennea. They get to a small open area where a lot of these animals are resting and Jake begins to shoo them away. Most leave but one holds it's ground, it's this one that Jake jumps onto the back of. It starts to try shaking him off but fails in a rather exiting process, Jake eventually manages to pin it and then he grabs his long pony tail (I hadn't noticed his hair was like that until this bit) and somehow it fuses with the antennae of the animal and it is now tamed and he begins flying around the cliffs with it. This scene showed more of the gimmicky stuff that I don't like the animal was roaring and bareing it's teeth while poking out of the screen. However, there was some really good stuff with the waterfalls, each drop of water was at a different depth so it looked amazing.
After this there was a flash of some split second clips and the the title card. All in all, it was an astounding preview. As stated earlier, i'm not really a fan of 3D but this movie NEEDS to be seen in 3D, all the effects and angles are so geard towards it, the teaser trailer thats currently online does this movie absolutley no justice you HAVE to see this film to believe how good it is. While the story seems cliche, and the effects not so good in 2D, I honestly feel that this movie is going to be remembered as a classic for what it showed in terms of what 3D can be used for.
