Avatar |
Theatrical
release poster |
Directed by |
James Cameron |
Produced by |
|
Written by |
James Cameron |
Starring |
|
Music by |
James Horner |
Cinematography |
Mauro Fiore |
Editing by |
|
Studio |
|
Distributed by |
20th Century Fox |
Release date(s) |
- December 10, 2009
(London premiere)
- December 18, 2009
(United States)
|
Running time |
162 minutes[1]
171 minutes (re-release)[2] |
Country |
United States |
Language |
English |
Budget |
$237 million[3]
$9 million+ (re-release)[2] |
Box
office |
$2,782,275,172[4][5] |
Avatar is a 2009 American[6][7]
epic
science fiction film written and directed by
James Cameron, and starring
Sam Worthington,
Zoe Saldana,
Stephen Lang,
Michelle Rodriguez,
Joel David Moore,
Giovanni Ribisi and
Sigourney Weaver. The film is set in the mid-22nd century, when
humans are mining a precious mineral called
unobtanium on
Pandora, a lush
habitable moon of a
gas
giant in the
Alpha Centauri star system.[8][9][10]
The expansion of the mining colony threatens the continued existence of
a local tribe of
Na'vi—a
humanoid species indigenous to Pandora. The film's title refers to a
genetically engineered Na'vi body with the mind of a remotely
located human, and is used to interact with the natives of Pandora.[11]
Development of Avatar began in 1994, when Cameron wrote an
80-page treatment for the film.[12][13]
Filming was supposed to take place after the completion of Cameron's
1997 film
Titanic, for a planned release in 1999,[14]
but according to Cameron, the necessary technology was not yet available
to achieve his vision of the film.[15]
Work on
the language of the film's
extraterrestrial beings began in summer 2005, and Cameron began
developing the screenplay and
fictional universe in early 2006.[16][17]
Avatar was officially budgeted at $237 million.[3]
Other estimates put the cost between $280 million and $310 million for
production and at $150 million for promotion.[18][19][20]
The film made extensive use of cutting edge
motion capture filming techniques,[21]
and was released for traditional viewing,
3D
viewing (using the
RealD 3D,
Dolby
3D,
XpanD 3D, and
IMAX 3D formats), and for "4D"
experiences in select South Korean theaters.[22]
The
stereoscopic filmmaking was touted as a breakthrough in cinematic
technology.[23]
Avatar premiered in London on December 10,
2009, and was internationally released on December
16 and in the United States and Canada on
December 18, to positive critical reviews and commercial success.[24][25][26]
During its theatrical run, the film broke several box office records and
became the
highest-grossing film of all time, as well as in the
United States and Canada,[27]
surpassing Titanic, which had held those records for twelve
years.[28]
It also became the first film to gross more than $2
billion.[29]
Avatar was nominated for nine
Academy Awards, including
Best Picture and
Best Director,[30]
and won three, for
Best Cinematography,
Best Visual Effects and
Best Art Direction. The film's home media release went on to break
opening sales records and became the top-selling
Blu-ray of all time. Following the film's success, Cameron signed
with
20th Century Fox to produce two sequels, making Avatar the
first of a planned trilogy.[31]
Plot
By 2154, humans have severely depleted
Earth's
natural resources. The Resources Development Administration (RDA) mines
for a valuable mineral—unobtanium—on
Pandora, a densely forested
habitable moon orbiting the
gas
giant Polyphemus in the
Alpha Centauri star system.[10]
Pandora, whose atmosphere is poisonous to humans, is inhabited by the
Na'vi, 10-foot tall (3.0 m), blue-skinned,
sapient humanoids[32]
who live in harmony with nature and worship a
mother goddess called Eywa.
To explore Pandora's
biosphere, scientists use Na'vi-human hybrids called "avatars",
operated by genetically matched humans; Jake Sully (Sam
Worthington), a
paraplegic former
marine, replaces his deceased twin brother as an operator of one.
Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney
Weaver), head of the Avatar Program, considers Sully an inadequate
replacement and assigns him as a bodyguard. While protecting the avatars
of Grace and scientist Norm Spellman (Joel
David Moore) as they collect biological data, Jake's avatar is
attacked by a
thanator and flees into the forest, where he is rescued by Neytiri (Zoe
Saldana), a female Na'vi. Witnessing an auspicious portent, she
takes him to her clan, whereupon Neytiri's mother Mo'at (C.
C. H. Pounder), the clan's spiritual leader, orders her daughter to
initiate Jake into their society.
Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen
Lang), head of RDA's
private security force, promises Jake that the company will restore
his legs if he gathers
intelligence about the Na'vi and the clan's gathering place, a giant
arboreal called Hometree,[33]
on grounds that it stands above the richest deposit of unobtanium in the
area. When Grace learns of this, she transfers herself, Jake, and Norm
to an
outpost. Over three months, Jake grows to sympathize with the
natives. After Jake is initiated into the tribe, he and Neytiri choose
each other as mates, and soon afterward, Jake reveals his change of
allegiance when he attempts to disable a
bulldozer that threatens to destroy a sacred Na'vi site. When
Quaritch shows a video recording of Jake's attack on the bulldozer to
Administrator Parker Selfridge (Giovanni
Ribisi),[34]
and another in which Jake admits that the Na'vi will never abandon
Hometree, Selfridge orders Hometree destroyed.
Despite Grace's argument that destroying Hometree could damage the
biological neural network native to Pandora, Selfridge gives Jake
and Grace one final chance to convince the Na'vi to evacuate before
commencing the attack. While trying to warn the Na'vi, Jake confesses to
being a spy and the Na'vi take him and Grace captive. Seeing this,
Quaritch's men destroy Hometree, killing Neytiri's father (the clan
chief) and many others. Mo'at frees Jake and Grace, but they are
detached from their avatars and imprisoned by Quaritch's forces. Pilot
Trudy Chacón (Michelle
Rodriguez), disgusted by Quaritch's brutality, carries them to
Grace's outpost, but during the escape, Quaritch fires at them, hitting
Grace.
To regain the Na'vi's trust, Jake connects his mind to that of Toruk,
a dragon-like
predator feared and honoured by the Na'vi. Jake finds the refugees at
the sacred
Tree of Souls and pleads with Mo'at to heal Grace. The clan attempts
to transfer Grace from her human body into her avatar with the aid of
the Tree of Souls, but she dies before the process can complete.
Supported by the new chief Tsu'tey (Laz
Alonso), who acts as Jake's translator, Jake speaks to unite the
clan and tells them to gather all of the clans to battle against the
RDA. Noticing the impending gathering, Quaritch organizes a
pre-emptive strike against the Tree of Souls, believing that its
destruction will demoralize the natives. On the eve of battle, Jake
prays to Eywa, via a neural connection to the Tree of Souls, to
intercede on behalf of the Na'vi.
During the subsequent battle, the Na'vi suffer heavy casualties,
including Tsu'tey and Trudy; but are rescued when
Pandoran wildlife unexpectedly join the attack and overwhelm the
humans, which Neytiri interprets as Eywa's answer to Jake's prayer. Jake
destroys a makeshift bomber before it can reach the Tree of Souls;
Quaritch escapes from the crashing bomber, wearing an
AMP suit
and breaks open the avatar link unit containing Jake's human body,
exposing it to Pandora's poisonous atmosphere. Quaritch then prepares to
slit the throat of Jake's avatar, but Neytiri kills Quaritch and saves
Jake from suffocation.
With the exceptions of Jake, Norm, Max and a few other scientists,
all humans are expelled from Pandora and sent back to Earth, after which
Jake is transferred permanently into his avatar with the aid of the Tree
of Souls.
Cast
- Humans
-
Sam Worthington as Jake Sully, a
disabled former Marine who becomes part of the Avatar Program
after his twin brother is killed. His military background helps the
Na'vi warriors relate to him. Cameron cast the Australian actor
after a worldwide search for promising young actors, preferring
relative unknowns to keep the budget down.[35]
Worthington, who was living in his car at the time,[36]
auditioned twice early in development,[37]
and he has signed on for possible sequels.[38]
Cameron felt that because Worthington had not done a major film, he
would give the character "a quality that is really real". Cameron
said he "has that quality of being a guy you'd want to have a beer
with, and he ultimately becomes a leader who transforms the world".[39]
-
Stephen Lang as Colonel Miles Quaritch, the head of the mining
operation's security detail. Fiercely loyal to his military code, he
has a profound disregard for Pandora's inhabitants that is evident
in both his actions and his language. Lang had unsuccessfully
auditioned for a role in Cameron's
Aliens (1986), but the director remembered Lang and sought
him for Avatar.[40]
Michael Biehn, who was in Aliens, read the script
and watched some of the 3-D footage with Cameron,[41]
but was ultimately not cast in the role.
-
Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Grace Augustine, an
exobiologist and head of the Avatar Program. She mentors Sully
and is an advocate of peaceful relations with the Na'vi, having set
up a school to teach them English.[42]
-
Michelle Rodriguez as Trudy Chacón, a combat pilot assigned to
support the Avatar Program who is sympathetic to the Na'vi. Cameron
had wanted to work with Rodriguez since seeing her in
Girlfight.[40]
-
Giovanni Ribisi as Parker Selfridge, the corporate administrator
for the RDA mining operation.[43]
While he is at first willing to destroy the Na'vi civilization to
preserve the company's
bottom line, he is reluctant to authorize the attacks on the
Na'vi, doing so only after Quaritch persuades him that it is
necessary, and the attacks will be humane. When the attacks are
broadcast to the base, Selfridge displays discomfort at the
violence.
-
Joel David Moore as Dr. Norm Spellman, a xenoanthropologist[44]
who studies plant and animal life as part of the Avatar Program.[45]
He arrives on Pandora at the same time as Sully and operates an
avatar. Although he is expected to lead the diplomatic contact with
the Na'vi, it turns out that Jake has the personality better suited
to win the natives' respect.
-
Dileep Rao as Dr. Max Patel, a scientist who works in the Avatar
Program and comes to support Jake's rebellion against the RDA.[46]
- Na'vi
-
Zoe Saldana as Neytiri, the daughter of the leader of the
Omaticaya (the Na'vi clan central to the story). She is attracted to
Jake because of his bravery, though frustrated with him for what she
sees as his naiveté and stupidity. She serves as Jake's love
interest.[47]
The character, like all the Na'vi, was created using
performance capture, and its visual aspect is entirely computer
generated.[48]
Saldana has also signed on for potential sequels.[49]
-
C. C. H. Pounder as Mo'at, the Omaticaya's spiritual leader,
Neytiri's mother, and consort to clan leader Eytukan.[50]
-
Wes Studi as Eytukan, the Omaticaya's clan leader, Neytiri's
father, and Mo'at's mate.
-
Laz Alonso as Tsu'tey, the finest warrior of the Omaticaya. He
is heir to the chieftainship of the tribe. At the beginning of the
film's story, he is
betrothed to Neytiri.
Production
Origins
In 1994,[13]
director James Cameron wrote an 80-page
treatment for Avatar, drawing inspiration from "every single
science fiction book" he had read in his childhood as well as from
adventure novels by
Edgar Rice Burroughs and
H. Rider Haggard.[12]
In August 1996, Cameron announced that after
completing
Titanic, he would film Avatar, which would make use of
synthetic, or
computer-generated, actors.[15]
The project would cost $100 million and involve at least six actors in
leading roles "who appear to be real but do not exist in the physical
world".[51]
Visual effects house
Digital Domain, with whom Cameron has a partnership, joined the
project, which was supposed to begin production in the summer of 1997
for a 1999 release.[14]
However, Cameron felt that the technology had not caught up with the
story and vision that he intended to tell. He decided to concentrate on
making documentaries and refining the technology for the next few years.
It was revealed in a
Bloomberg BusinessWeek cover story that 20th Century Fox had
fronted $10 million to Cameron to film a proof-of-concept clip for
Avatar, which he showed to Fox executives in
October 2005.[52]
In February 2006, Cameron revealed that his film Project 880
was "a retooled version of Avatar", a film that he had tried to
make years earlier,[53]
citing the technological advances in the creation of the
computer-generated characters
Gollum,
King Kong, and
Davy Jones.[12]
Cameron had chosen Avatar over his project
Battle Angel after completing a five-day camera test in the
previous year.[54]
Development
From January to April 2006, Cameron worked on the script and
developed a culture for the film's aliens, the Na'vi. Their
language was created by Dr.
Paul Frommer, a linguist at
USC.[12]
The Na'vi language has a lexicon of about 1000 words, with some 30 added
by Cameron. The tongue's
phonemes
include
ejective consonants (such as the "kx" in "skxawng") that are found
in the
Amharic language of
Ethiopia, and the initial "ng" that Cameron may have taken from New
Zealand
Māori.[17]
Actress Sigourney Weaver and the film's
set designers met with Jodie S. Holt, professor of
plant physiology at
University of California, Riverside, to learn about the methods used
by
botanists to study and sample plants, and to discuss ways to explain
the communication between Pandora's
organisms depicted in the film.[55]
From 2005 to 2007, Cameron worked with a handful of designers,
including famed fantasy illustrator
Wayne Barlowe and renowned concept artist
Jordu Schell, to shape the design of the Na'vi with paintings and
physical sculptures when Cameron felt that 3-D brush renderings were not
capturing his vision,[56]
often working together in the kitchen of Cameron's
Malibu home.[57]
In July 2006, Cameron announced that he
would film Avatar for a mid 2008 release and planned to begin
principal photography with an established cast by
February 2007.
The following August, the visual effects studio
Weta Digital signed on to help Cameron produce Avatar.[59]
Stan Winston, who had collaborated with Cameron in the past, joined
Avatar to help with the film's designs.[60]
Production design for the film took several years. The film had two
different production designers, and two separate art departments, one of
which focused on the
flora and
fauna of
Pandora, and another that created human machines and human factors.[61]
In September 2006, Cameron was announced to
be using his own
Reality Camera System to film in 3-D. The system would use two
high-definition cameras in a single camera body to create depth
perception.[62]
Fox was wavering because of its painful experience with cost overruns
and delays on Cameron's previous picture, Titanic, even though
Cameron rewrote Avatar's script to combine several characters
together and offered to cut his fee in case the film flopped.[52]
Cameron installed a traffic light with the amber signal lit outside of
co-producer
Jon Landau's office to represent the film's uncertain future.[52]
In mid-2006, Fox told Cameron "in no uncertain terms that they were
passing on this film," so he began shopping it around to other studios,
and showed his proof-of-concept to
Dick
Cook (then chairman of the
Walt Disney Studios).[52]
However, when
Disney attempted to take over, Fox exercised its
right of first refusal.[52]
In October 2006, Fox finally agreed to
commit to making Avatar after Ingenious Media agreed to back the
film, which reduced Fox's financial exposure to less than half of the
film's official $237 million budget.[52]
After Fox accepted Avatar, one skeptical Fox executive shook his
head and told Cameron and Landau, "I don't know if we're crazier for
letting you do this, or if you're crazier for thinking you can do
this ..."[63]
In December 2006, Cameron described Avatar as "a futuristic
tale set on a planet 200 years hence ... an old-fashioned jungle
adventure with an environmental conscience [that] aspires to a mythic
level of storytelling".[65]
The January 2007 press release described the
film as "an emotional journey of redemption and revolution" and said the
story is of "a wounded former Marine, thrust unwillingly into an effort
to settle and exploit an exotic planet rich in
biodiversity, who eventually crosses over to lead the indigenous
race in a battle for survival". The story would be of an entire world
complete with an ecosystem of
phantasmagorical plants and creatures, and native people with a rich
culture and language.[49]
Estimates put the cost of the film at about $280–310 million to
produce and an estimated $150 million for marketing, noting that about
$30 million in
tax
credits will lessen the financial impact on the studio and its
financiers.[18][19][20]
A studio spokesperson said that the budget was "$237 million, with
$150 million for promotion, end of story."[3]
Themes and
inspirations
Avatar is primarily an action-adventure journey of
self-discovery, in the context of
imperialism and
deep ecology.[66]
Cameron said his inspiration was "every single science fiction book I
read as a kid", and that he was particularly striving to update the
style of
Edgar Rice Burroughs's
John Carter series and the deep jungles of Pandora were
visualized from Disney's 37th animated film,
Tarzan.[37]
The director has acknowledged that Avatar shares themes with the
films
At Play in the Fields of the Lord,
The Emerald Forest, and
Princess Mononoke, which feature clashes between cultures and
civilizations, and with
Dances With Wolves, where a battered soldier finds himself drawn
to the culture he was initially fighting against.[67][68]
In a 2007 interview with
Time magazine, Cameron was asked about the meaning of the term
Avatar,
to which he replied, "It's an incarnation of one of the
Hindu gods taking a flesh form. In this film what that means is that
the human technology in the future is capable of injecting a human's
intelligence into a remotely located body, a biological body."[11]
Jake's avatar and Neytiri. One of the inspirations for the
look of the Na'vi came from a dream that Cameron's mother
had told him about.
[66]
The look of the Na'vi—the humanoids indigenous to Pandora—was
inspired by a dream that Cameron's mother had, long before he started
work on Avatar. In her dream, she saw a blue-skinned woman 12
feet (4 m) tall, which he thought was "kind
of a cool image".[66]
Also he said, "I just like blue. It's a good color ... plus, there's a
connection to the Hindu deities,[69]
which I like conceptually."[70]
He included similar creatures in his first screenplay (written in 1976
or 1977), which featured a planet with a native population of "gorgeous"
tall blue aliens. The Na'vi were based on them.[66]
For the love story between characters Jake and Neytiri, Cameron
applied a
star-crossed love theme, and acknowledged its similarity to the
pairing of Jack and Rose from his film Titanic. Both couples come
from radically different cultures that are contemptuous of their
relationship and are forced to choose sides between the competing
communities.[71]
He felt that whether or not the Jake and Neytiri love story would be
perceived as believable partially hinged on the physical attractiveness
of Neytiri's alien appearance, which was developed by considering her
appeal to the all-male crew of artists.[72]
Though Cameron felt Jake and Neytiri do not fall in love right away,
their portrayers (Worthington
and
Saldana) felt the characters do. Cameron said the two actors "had a
great chemistry" during filming.[71]
Pandora's floating "Hallelujah Mountains" were inspired in
part by the Chinese
Huang Shan mountains (pictured).
[73]
For the film's floating "Hallelujah Mountains", the designers drew
inspiration from "many different types of mountains, but mainly the
karst limestone formations in China."[74]
According to production designer Dylan Cole, the fictional floating
rocks were inspired by
Mount Huang (also known as Huangshan),
Guilin,
Zhangjiajie, among others around the world.[74]
Director Cameron had noted the influence of the Chinese peaks on the
design of the floating mountains.[75]
To create the interiors of the human mining colony on Pandora,
production designers visited the
Noble Clyde Boudreaux[76]
oil platform in the
Gulf of Mexico during June 2007. They
photographed, measured and filmed every aspect of the platform, which
was later replicated on-screen with photorealistic
CGI during post-production.[77]
Cameron said that he wanted to make "something that has this spoonful
of sugar of all the action and the adventure and all that" but also have
a conscience "that maybe in the enjoying of it makes you think a little
bit about the way you interact with nature and your fellow man". He
added that "the Na'vi represent something that is our higher selves, or
our aspirational selves, what we would like to think we are" and that
even though there are good humans within the film, the humans "represent
what we know to be the parts of ourselves that are trashing our world
and maybe condemning ourselves to a grim future".[78]
Cameron acknowledges that Avatar implicitly criticizes the
United States' role in the
Iraq
War and the impersonal nature of
mechanized warfare in general. In reference to the use of the term
shock and awe in the film, Cameron said, "We know what it feels
like to launch the missiles. We don't know what it feels like for them
to land on our home soil, not in America."[79]
He said in later interviews, "... I think it's very patriotic to
question a system that needs to be corralled ..."[80]
and, "The film is definitely not anti-American."[81]
A scene in the film portrays the violent destruction of the towering
Na'vi Hometree, which collapses in flames after a missile attack,
coating the landscape with ash and floating embers. Asked about the
scene's resemblance to the
September 11 attacks on the
World Trade Center, Cameron said he had been "surprised at how much
it did look like September 11".[79]
Filming
Principal photography for Avatar began in
April 2007 in Los Angeles and
Wellington, New Zealand. Cameron described the film as a hybrid with
a full live-action shoot in combination with computer-generated
characters and live environments. "Ideally at the end of the day the
audience has no idea which they're looking at," Cameron said. The
director indicated that he had already worked four months on
nonprincipal scenes for the film.[82]
The live action was shot with a modified version of the proprietary
digital 3-D
Fusion Camera System, developed by Cameron and Vince Pace.[83]
In January 2007, Fox had announced that
3-D filming for Avatar would be done at 24 frames per second
despite Cameron's strong opinion that a 3-D film requires higher
frame rate to make
strobing less noticeable.[84]
According to Cameron, the film is composed of 60% computer-generated
elements and 40% live action, as well as traditional
miniatures.[85]
Motion-capture photography lasted 31 days at the
Hughes Aircraft stage in
Playa Vista in Los Angeles.[54][86]
Live action photography began in October 2007
at Stone Street Studios in Wellington, New Zealand, and was scheduled to
last 31 days.[87]
More than a thousand people worked on the production.[86]
In preparation of the filming sequences, all of the actors underwent
professional training specific to their characters such as archery,
horseback riding, firearm use, and hand-to-hand combat. They received
language and dialect training in the Na'vi language created for the
film.[88]
Before shooting the film, Cameron also sent the cast to the
Hawaiian tropical rainforests[89]
to get a feel for a rainforest setting before shooting on the
soundstage.[88]
During filming, Cameron made use of his
virtual camera system, a new way of directing motion-capture
filmmaking. The system shows the actors' virtual counterparts in their
digital surroundings in real time, allowing the director to adjust and
direct scenes just as if shooting live action. According to Cameron,
"It's like a big, powerful
game engine. If I want to fly through space, or change my
perspective, I can. I can turn the whole scene into a living miniature
and go through it on a 50 to 1 scale."[90]
Using conventional techniques, the complete virtual world cannot be seen
until the motion-capture of the actors is complete. Cameron said this
process does not diminish the value or importance of acting. On the
contrary, because there is no need for repeated camera and lighting
setups, costume fittings and make-up touch-ups, scenes do not need to be
interrupted repeatedly.[91]
Cameron described the system as a "form of pure creation where if you
want to move a tree or a mountain or the sky or change the time of day,
you have complete control over the elements".[92]
Cameron gave fellow directors
Steven Spielberg and
Peter Jackson a chance to test the new technology.[65]
Spielberg said, "I like to think of it as digital makeup, not augmented
animation ... Motion capture brings the director back to a kind of
intimacy that actors and directors only know when they're working in
live theater."[91]
Spielberg and
George Lucas were also able to visit the set to watch Cameron direct
with the equipment.[93]
To film the shots where CGI interacts with live action, a unique
camera referred to as a "simulcam" was used, a merger of the 3-D fusion
camera and the virtual camera systems. While filming live action in real
time with the simulcam, the CGI images captured with the virtual camera
or designed from scratch, are superimposed over the live action images
as in
augmented reality and shown on a small monitor, making it possible
for the director to instruct the actors how to relate to the virtual
material in the scene.[88]
Visual effects
Cameron pioneered a specially designed camera built into a
6-inch boom that allowed the facial expressions of the
actors to be captured and digitally recorded for the
animators to use later.
[94]
A number of innovative
visual effects techniques were used in the production of Avatar.
According to Cameron, work on the film had been delayed since the 1990s
to allow the techniques to reach the necessary degree of advancement to
adequately portray his vision of the film.[14][15]
The director planned to make use of photorealistic computer-generated
characters, created using new
motion-capture animation technologies he had been developing in the
14 months leading up to December 2006.[90]
Innovations include a new system for lighting massive areas like
Pandora's jungle,[95]
a
motion-capture stage or "volume" six times larger than any
previously used, and an improved method of capturing facial expressions,
enabling full
performance capture. To achieve the face capturing, actors wore
individually made
skull caps fitted with a tiny camera positioned in front of the
actors' faces; the information collected about their facial expressions
and eyes is then transmitted to computers.[96]
According to Cameron, the method allows the filmmakers to transfer 100%
of the actors' physical performances to their digital counterparts.[97]
Besides the performance capture data which were transferred directly to
the computers, numerous reference cameras gave the digital artists
multiple angles of each performance.[98]
A technically challenging scene was near the end of the film when the
computer-generated Neytiri held the live action Jake in human form, and
attention was given to the details of the shadows and reflected light
between them.[99]
The lead visual effects company was
Weta Digital in
Wellington, New Zealand, at one point employing 900 people to work
on the film.[100]
Because of the huge amount of data which needed to be stored, cataloged
and available for everybody involved, even on the other side of the
world, a new
cloud computing and
Digital Asset Management (DAM) system named Gaia was created by
Microsoft especially for Avatar, which allowed the crews to keep
track of and coordinate all stages in the digital processing.[101]
To render Avatar, Weta used a 10,000 sq ft (930 m2)
server farm making use of 4,000
Hewlett-Packard servers with 35,000 processor cores with 104
terabytes of RAM and three petabytes of
network area storage running
Ubuntu
Linux,
Grid Engine cluster manager, and Pixar's
Alfred
queue management system.[102]
[103][104][105]
The
render farm occupies the 193rd to 197th spots in the
TOP500
list of the world's most powerful
supercomputers. A new texturing and paint software system, called
Mari, was developed by The Foundry in cooperation with Weta.[106][107]
Creating the Na'vi characters and the virtual world of Pandora required
over a
petabyte of digital storage,[108]
and each minute of the final footage for Avatar occupies 17.28
gigabytes of storage.[109]
To help finish preparing the special effects sequences on time, a number
of other companies were brought on board, including
Industrial Light & Magic, which worked alongside Weta Digital to
create the battle sequences. ILM was responsible for the visual effects
for many of the film's specialized vehicles and devised a new way to
make CGI explosions.[110]
Joe Letteri was the film's visual effects general supervisor.[111]
Music and
soundtrack
Composer
James Horner scored the film, his third collaboration with Cameron
after
Aliens and
Titanic.[112]
Horner recorded parts of the score with a small chorus singing in the
alien language Na'vi in March 2008.[113]
He also worked with Wanda Bryant, an
ethnomusicologist, to create a music culture for the alien race.[114]
The first scoring sessions were planned to take place in spring 2009.[115]
During production, Horner promised Cameron that he would not work on any
other project except for Avatar and reportedly worked on the
score from four in the morning till ten at night throughout the process.
He stated in an interview, "Avatar has been the most difficult
film I have worked on and the biggest job I have undertaken."[116]
Horner composed the score as two different scores merged into one. He
first created a score that reflected the Na'vi way of sound and then
combined it with a separate "traditional" score to drive the film.[88]
British singer
Leona Lewis was chosen to sing the theme song for the film, called "I
See You". An accompanying music video, directed by
Jake
Nava, premiered December 15, 2009, on
MySpace.[117]
Marketing
Promotions
The first photo of the film was released on
August 14, 2009,[118]
and
Empire magazine released exclusive images from the film in its
October issue.[119]
Cameron, producer
Jon Landau,
Zoe Saldana,
Stephen Lang, and
Sigourney Weaver appeared at a panel, moderated by
Tom Rothman, at the 2009
San Diego Comic-Con on July 23.
Twenty-five minutes of footage was screened[120]
in
Dolby 3D.[121]
Weaver and Cameron appeared at additional panels to promote the film,
speaking on the 23rd[122]
and 24th[123]
respectively. James Cameron announced at the Comic-Con Avatar Panel that
August 21 will be 'Avatar Day'. On this day
the trailer for the film was released in all theatrical formats. The
official game trailer and toy line of the film were also unveiled on
this day.[124]
The 129-second trailer was released online on
August 20, 2009.[125]
The new 210-second trailer was premiered in theatres on
October 23, 2009, then soon after premiered
online on Yahoo! on October 29, 2009, to
positive reviews.[126][127]
An extended version in
IMAX 3D received overwhelmingly positive reviews.[125]
The Hollywood Reporter said that audience expectations were
coloured by "the [same] establishment skepticism that preceded
Titanic" and suggested the showing reflected the desire for original
storytelling.[128]
The teaser has been among the most viewed trailers in the history of
film marketing, reaching the first place of all trailers viewed on
Apple.com with 4 million views.[129]
On October 30, to celebrate the opening of the first 3-D cinema in
Vietnam, Fox allowed Megastar Cinema to screen exclusive 16 minutes of
Avatar to a number of press.[130]
The three-and-a-half-minute trailer of the film premiered live on
November 1, 2009, during a
Dallas Cowboys football game at
Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on the Diamond Vision screen,
one of the world's largest video displays, and to TV audiences viewing
the game on
Fox.
It is said to be the largest live motion picture trailer viewing in
history.[131]
The Coca-Cola Company collaborated with Twentieth Century Fox to
launch a worldwide marketing campaign to promote the film. The highlight
of the campaign was the website AVTR.com. Specially marked bottles and
cans of
Coca-Cola Zero, when held in front of a webcam, enabled users to
interact with the website's 3-D features using augmented reality (AR)
technology.[132]
The film was heavily promoted in an episode of the
Fox Network series
Bones in the episode "The Gamer In The Grease" (Season 5,
Episode 9). Avatar star
Joel David Moore has a recurring role on the program, and is seen in
the episode anxiously awaiting the release of the film.[133]
A week prior to the American release, Zoe Saldana promoted the film on
Adult Swim when she was interviewed by an animated
Space Ghost.[134]
McDonald's had a promotion mentioned in television commercials in
Europe called "Avatarize yourself", which encouraged people to go to the
website set up by
Oddcast, and use a photograph of themselves to change into a Na'vi.[135]
Books
Avatar: A Confidential Report on the Biological and Social History
of Pandora, a 224-page book in the form of a field guide to the
film's fictional setting of the planet of Pandora, was released by
Harper Entertainment on November 24,
2009.[136]
It is presented as a compilation of data collected by the humans about
Pandora and the life on it, written by Maria Wilhelm and Dirk Mathison.
HarperFestival also released Wilhelm's 48-page James Cameron's
Avatar: The Reusable Scrapbook for children.[137]
The Art of Avatar: James Cameron's Epic Adventure was released
on November 30, 2009, by
Abrams Books. The book features detailed production artwork from the
film, including production sketches, illustrations by Lisa Fitzpatrick,
and film stills. Producer
Jon Landau wrote the foreword, Cameron wrote the epilogue, and
director
Peter Jackson wrote the preface.[138]
In October 2010, Abrams Books also released
The Making of Avatar, a 272-page book that detailed the film's
production process and contains over 500 color photographs and
illustrations.[139]
In a 2009 interview, Cameron said that he planned to write a novel
version of Avatar after the film was released.[140]
In February 2010, producer Jon Landau stated
that Cameron plans a prequel novel for Avatar that will "lead up
to telling the story of the movie, but it would go into much more depth
about all the stories that we didn't have time to deal with", saying
that "Jim wants to write a novel that is a big, epic story that fills in
a lot of things".[141]
Video games
Cameron chose
Ubisoft Montreal to create an Avatar game for the film in
2007. The filmmakers and game developers collaborated heavily, and
Cameron decided to include some of Ubisoft's vehicle and creature
designs into the film.[142]
James Cameron's Avatar: The Game was released on
December 1, 2009,[143]
for most home video game consoles (PS3,
Xbox
360, Wii,
Nintendo DS,
iPhone),
Microsoft Windows and December 8 for
PSP.
Action figures and postage stamps
Mattel Toys announced in December 2009 that it would be introducing
a line of Avatar action figures.[144][145]
Each action figure will be made with a 3-D web tag, called an i-TAG,
that consumers can scan using a
web cam, revealing unique on-screen content that is special to each
specific action figure.[144]
A series of toys representing six different characters from the film
were also distributed in
McDonald's
Happy Meals in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China,
Colombia, the United States and
Venezuela.[146]
In December 2009,
France Post released a special limited edition stamp based on
Avatar, coinciding with the film's worldwide release.[147]
Release
Initial screening
Avatar premiered in London on December 10,
2009, and was released theatrically worldwide from
December 16 to 18.[148]
The film was originally set for release on May 22,
2009, during filming,[149]
but was pushed back to allow more post-production time (the last shots
were delivered in November),[95]
and to give more time for theatres worldwide to install 3D projectors.[150]
Cameron stated that the film's
aspect ratio would be 1.78:1 for 3D screenings and that a 2.39:1
image would be extracted for 2D screenings.[151]
However, a 3D 2.39:1 extract was approved for use with
constant-image-height screens (i.e. screens which increase in width to
display 2.39:1 films).[152]
During a 3D preview showing in Germany on December
16, the movie's
DRM 'protection' system failed, and some copies delivered could not
be watched at all in the theaters. The problems were fixed in time for
the public premiere, however.[153]
Avatar was released in a total of 3,457 theatres in the US, of
which 2,032 theatres ran it in 3D. In total 90% of all advance ticket
sales for Avatar were for 3D screenings.[154]
Internationally, Avatar opened on a total of 14,604 screens in
106 territories, of which 3,671 were showing the film in 3D (producing
56% of the first weekend gross).[155][156]
The film was simultaneously presented in
IMAX 3D format, opening in 178 theaters in the United States on
December 18. The international IMAX release
included 58 theaters beginning on December 16,
and 25 more theaters were to be added in the coming weeks.[157]
The IMAX release was the company's widest to date, a total of 261
theaters worldwide. The previous IMAX record opening was
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which opened in 161 IMAX
theatres in the US, and about 70 international.[158]
20th Century Fox Korea adapted and later released Avatar in
4D
version, which included "moving seats, smells of explosives,
sprinkling water, laser lights and wind".[22]
Box office
General
Avatar released internationally in more than 14,000 screens.[159]
Avatar earned $3,537,000 from midnight screenings
domestically (United States and Canada), with the initial 3D release
limited to 2,200 screens.[160]
The film earned $26,752,099 on its opening day, and $77,025,481 over its
opening weekend, making it the second largest December opening ever
behind
I Am Legend,[4][25]
the largest domestic opening weekend for a film not based on a franchise
(topping
The Incredibles), the highest opening weekend for a film
entirely in 3D (breaking
Up's record),[161]
the highest opening weekend for an environmentalist film (breaking
The Day After Tomorrow's
record),[162]
and the 40th largest opening weekend in North America,[4]
despite
a blizzard which blanketed the
East Coast of the United States and reportedly hurt its opening
weekend results.[18][25][26]
The film also set an IMAX opening weekend record, with 178 theaters
generating approximately $9.5 million, 12% of the film's $77 million (at
the time) North American gross on less than 3% of the screens.[157]
International markets generating opening weekend tallies of at least
$10 million were Russia ($19.7 million), France ($17.4 million), the UK
($13.8 million), Germany ($13.3 million), South Korea ($11.7 million),
Australia ($11.5 million) and Spain ($11.0 million).[163]
Avatar's worldwide gross was US$241.6 million after five days,
the ninth largest opening-weekend gross of all time, and the largest for
a non-franchise, non-sequel and original film.[164]
58 international IMAX screens generated an estimated $4.1 million during
the opening weekend.[157]
Revenues in the film's second weekend decreased by only 1.8% in
domestic markets, marking a rare occurrence,[165]
earning $75,617,183, to remain in first place at the box office[166]
and recording the biggest second weekend of all time[167]
(since surpassed by
Marvel's The Avengers).[168]
The film experienced another marginal decrease in revenue in its third
weekend, dropping 9.4% to $68,490,688 domestically, remaining in first
place at the box office,[169]
to set a third-weekend record.[170]
Avatar crossed the $1 billion
mark on the 19th day of its international release, making it the first
film to reach this mark in only 19 days[171]
(a record now matched by both
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 in 2011 and
Marvel's The Avengers in 2012).[172]
It became the fifth film gross more than $1 billion worldwide, and the
only film of
2009 to do so.[173]
In its fourth weekend, Avatar continued to lead the box office
domestically, setting a new all-time fourth-weekend record of
$50,306,217,[174]
and becoming the highest-grossing 2009 release in the United States.[175]
In the film's fifth weekend, it set the
Martin Luther King Day four-day weekend record, grossing
$54,401,446,[176]
and set a fifth-weekend record with a take of $42,785,612.[177]
It held to the top spot to set the sixth and seventh weekend records
earning $34,944,081[178]
and $31,280,029[179]
respectively. It was (and still is) the fastest film to gross $600
million domestically, on its 47th day in theatres.[180]
On January 31, it became the first film
to earn over $2 billion worldwide,[181]
and it became the first film to gross over $700
million in North America, on February 27,
after 72 days of release.[182]
It remained in the number one spot at the domestic box office for seven
consecutive weeks—the most consecutive No. 1 weekends since Titanic
spent 15 weekends at No. 1 in 1997–'98[183]—and
also spent 11 consecutive weekends at the top of the box office outside
the United States and Canada, breaking the record of 9 consecutive
weekends set by
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.[184]
By the end of its first theatrical release Avatar had grossed
$749,766,139 in the U.S. and Canada, and $1,999,298,189
in other territories, for a worldwide total of $2,749,064,328.[4]
Including the revenue from a
re-release of Avatar featuring extended footage, Avatar
grossed $760,507,625 in the U.S. and Canada, and $2,021,767,547 in other
territories for a worldwide total of $2,782,275,172[4][5]
with 72.7% of its total worldwide gross in international markets.[4][5]
Avatar has set a number of box office records during its release:
on January 25, 2010, it surpassed
Titanic's worldwide gross to become the
highest-grossing film of all time worldwide 41 days after its
international release,[185][186][187]
just two days after taking the foreign box office record,[188]
and on February 2, 47 days after its
domestic release, Avatar surpassed Titanic to become the
highest-grossing film of all time in Canada and the United States.[189]
It became the highest-grossing film of all time in at least 30 other
countries[190][191][192][193][194][195]
and is the first film to earn over $2 billion in foreign box office
receipts.[28]
IMAX ticket sales account for $228 million of its worldwide gross,[196]
more than double the previous record.[197]
Box Office Mojo estimates that after adjusting for the rise in
average ticket prices, Avatar would be the 14th-highest-grossing
film of all time in North America.[198]
Box Office Mojo also observes that the higher ticket prices for 3D and
IMAX screenings have had a significant impact on Avatar's gross;
it estimated, on April 21, 2010, that
Avatar had sold approximately 75 million
tickets in North American theatres, more than any other film since
1999's
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.[199]
On a worldwide basis, Avatar ranks third after adjusting for
inflation, behind
Gone with the Wind and Titanic,[200]
although some reports place it ahead of Titanic.[201]
Commercial
analysis
Before its release, various film critics and
fan communities predicted the film would be a
significant disappointment at the box office, in line with
predictions made for Cameron's previous blockbuster Titanic.[202][203][204]
This criticism ranged from Avatar's film budget, to its concept
and use of 3-D "blue cat people".[202][203]
Slate magazine's Daniel Engber complimented the 3D effects, but
criticized them for reminding him of certain CGI characters from the
Star
Wars prequel films and for having the "uncanny
valley" effect.[205]
The New York Times noted that 20th Century Fox executives had
decided to release
Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel alongside Avatar,
calling it a "secret weapon" to cover any unforeseeable losses at the
box-office.[206]
"I think if everybody was embracing the film before the
fact, the film could never live up to that expectation ...
Have them go with some sense of wanting to find the answer."
—James Cameron on criticism of
Avatar before its release.
[203]
Box office analysts, on the other hand, estimated that the film would
be a box office success.[207][202]
"The holy grail of 3-D has finally arrived," said an analyst for
Exhibitor Relations. "This is why all these 3-D venues were built: for
Avatar. This is the one. The behemoth."[207]
The "cautionary estimate" was that Avatar would bring in around
$60 million in its opening weekend. Others guessed higher.[207][208]
There were also analysts who believed that the film's
three-dimensionality would help its box office performance, given that
recent 3D films had been successful.[202]
Cameron said he felt the pressure of the predictions, but that
pressure is good for film-makers. "It makes us think about our audiences
and what the audience wants," he stated. "We owe them a good time. We
owe them a piece of good entertainment."[203]
Although he felt Avatar would appeal to everyone and that the
film could not afford to have a target
demographic,[203]
he especially wanted hard-core science-fiction fans to see it: "If I can
just get 'em in the damn theater, the film will act on them in the way
it's supposed to, in terms of taking them on an amazing journey and
giving them this rich emotional experience."[209]
Cameron was aware of the sentiment that Avatar would need
significant "repeat business" just to make up for its budget and achieve
box office success, and believed Avatar could inspire the same
"sharing" reaction as Titanic. He said that the film worked
because, "When people have an experience that's very powerful in the
movie theatre, they want to go share it. They want to grab their friend
and bring them, so that they can enjoy it. They want to be the person to
bring them the news that this is something worth having in their life."[203]
After the film's release and unusually strong box office performance
over its first two weeks, it was debated as the one film capable of
surpassing Titanic's worldwide gross, and its continued strength
perplexed box office analysts.[210]
Other films in recent years had been cited as contenders for surpassing
Titanic, such as 2008's
The Dark Knight,[211]
but Avatar was considered the first film with a genuine chance to
do so, and its numbers being aided by higher ticket prices for 3D
screenings[210]
did not fully explain its success to box office analysts. "Most films
are considered to be healthy if they manage anything less than a 50%
drop from their first weekend to their second. Dipping just 11% from the
first to the third is unheard of," relayed Paul Dergarabedian, president
of box-office analysis for Hollywood.com. "This is just unprecedented,"
he said. "I had to do a double take. I thought it was a miscalculation."[165]
Analysts predicted second place for the film's worldwide gross, but most
were uncertain about it surpassing Titanic because "Today's films
flame out much faster than they did when Titanic was released."[165]
Brandon Gray, president of Box Office Mojo, believed in the film's
chances of becoming the highest-grossing film of all time, though he
also believed it was too early to surmise because it had only played
during the holidays. He said, "While Avatar may beat Titanic's
revenue record, it will be tough, and the film is unlikely to surpass
Titanic in attendance. Ticket prices were about $3 cheaper in the
late 1990s."[165]
Cameron said he did not think it was realistic to "try to topple
Titanic off its perch" because it "just struck some kind of chord"
and there had been other good films in recent years.[212]
He changed his prediction by mid-January. "It's gonna happen. It's just
a matter of time," he said.[213]
"You've got to compete head on with these other epic works
of fantasy and fiction, the
Tolkiens and the
Star Wars and the
Star Treks. People want a persistent alternate reality
to invest themselves in and they want the detail that makes
it rich and worth their time. They want to live somewhere
else. Like
Pandora."
—James Cameron on the success of
Avatar[214]
Though analysts have been unable to agree that Avatar's
success is attributable to one primary factor, several explanations have
been advanced. First, January is historically "the dumping ground for
the year's weakest films", and this also applied to 2010.[215]
Cameron himself said he decided to open the film in December so that it
would have less competition from then to January.[203]
Titanic capitalized on the same January predictability, and
earned most of its gross in 1998.[215]
Additionally, Avatar established itself as a "must-see" event.
Gray said, "At this point, people who are going to see Avatar are
going to see Avatar and would even if the slate was strong."[215]
Marketing the film as a "novelty factor" also helped. Fox positioned the
film as a cinematic event that should be seen in the theatres. "It's
really hard to sell the idea that you can have the same experience at
home," stated David Mumpower, an analyst at BoxOfficeProphets.com.[215]
The "Oscar
buzz" surrounding the film and international viewings helped.
"Two-thirds of Titanic's haul was earned overseas, and Avatar
[tracked] similarly ...Avatar opened in 106 markets globally and
was No. 1 in all of them", and the markets "such as Russia, where
Titanic saw modest receipts in 1997 and 1998, are white-hot today"
with "more screens and moviegoers" than before.[215]
According to
Variety, films in 3D accumulated $1.3 billion in 2009, "a
threefold increase over 2008 and more than 10% of the total 2009
box-office gross". The increased ticket price – an average of $2 to $3
per ticket in most markets – helped the film.[215]
Likewise, Entertainment Weekly attributed the film's success to
3D glasses, but also to its "astronomic
word-of-mouth". Not only do some theaters charge up to $18.50 for
IMAX tickets, but "the buzz" created by the new technology was the
possible cause for sold-out screenings.[216]
Gray said Avatar having no basis in previously established
material makes its performance remarkable and even more impressive. "The
movie might be derivative of many movies in its story and themes," he
said, "but it had no direct antecedent like the other top-grossing
films: Titanic (historical events), the Star Wars movies
(an established film franchise), or The Lord of the Rings
(literature). It was a tougher sell ..."[215]
Critical reception
- See also:
Themes in Avatar for more reviews
The film received mostly positive reviews. Review aggregator
Rotten Tomatoes reports that 83% of 286 professional critics have
given the film a positive review, with a rating average of 7.4 out of
10.[217]
Among Rotten Tomatoes' top critics, who are popular and notable critics
from the top newspapers, websites, television and radio programs,[218]
the film holds an overall approval rating of 93%, based on a total of 41
reviews.[219]
The site's consensus is that "It might be more impressive on a technical
level than as a piece of storytelling, but Avatar reaffirms James
Cameron's singular gift for imaginative, absorbing filmmaking."[217]
On
Metacritic, which assigns a
weighted mean rating out of 100 reviews from film critics, the film
has a "universal acclaim" rating score of 83 based on 35 reviews.[220]
CinemaScore polls conducted during the opening weekend revealed the
average grade cinemagoers gave Avatar was A on an A+ to F scale.
Every demographic surveyed was reported to give this rating. These polls
also indicated that the main draw of the film was its use of
3D.[221]
Roger Ebert of the
Chicago Sun-Times called the film "extraordinary" and gave it
four stars out of four. "Watching Avatar, I felt sort of the same
as when I saw
Star Wars in 1977", he said. Like Star Wars and
The Lord of the Rings, the film "employs a new generation of
special effects. "Avatar" is not simply a sensational entertainment,
although it is that. It's a technical breakthrough. It has a flat-out
Green and anti-war message".[222]
A. O. Scott of
At The Movies also compared his viewing of the film to the first
time he viewed Star Wars, and added that although "the script is
a little bit ... obvious," it was "part of what made it work".[223]
Todd McCarthy of
Variety praised the film. "The King of the World sets his sights
on creating another world entirely in Avatar, and it's very much
a place worth visiting."[224]
Kirk Honeycutt of
The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a positive review. "The
screen is alive with more action and the soundtrack pops with more
robust music than any dozen sci-fi shoot-'em-ups you care to mention" he
stated.[225]
Rolling Stone film critic
Peter Travers awarded Avatar three and a half out of four
stars and wrote in his print review, "It extends the possibilities of
what movies can do. Cameron's talent may just be as big as his dreams."[226]
Richard Corliss of Time magazine thought that the film was,
"the most vivid and convincing creation of a fantasy world ever seen in
the history of moving pictures."[227]
Kenneth Turan of the
Los Angeles Times felt the film has "powerful" visual
accomplishments but "flat dialogue" and "obvious characterization".[228]
James Berardinelli, film critic for
ReelViews, praised the film and its story, giving it four out of
four stars; he wrote, "In 3-D, it's immersive—but the traditional film
elements—story, character, editing, theme, emotional resonance, etc.—are
presented with sufficient expertise to make even the 2-D version an
engrossing 2½-hour experience."[229]
Avatar's underlying social and political themes attracted
attention.
Armond White of the
New York Press wrote that Cameron used villainous American
characters to misrepresent facets of
militarism, capitalism, and
imperialism.[230][231]
Evo Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, praised the film
for its "profound show of resistance to capitalism and the struggle for
the defense of nature".[232]
Russell D. Moore in
The Christian Post concluded that propaganda exists in the film
and stated, "If you can get a theater full of people in
Kentucky to stand and applaud the defeat of their country in war,
then you've got some amazing special effects."[233]
Some commentators sympathetic to
anarcho-primitivism have even praised the film as a manifesto for
their cause.[234][235]
Adam Cohen of The New York Times was more positive about the
film, calling its
anti-imperialist message "a 22nd-century version of the
American colonists vs. the British,
India vs. the Raj, or Latin America vs.
United Fruit".[236]
Ross Douthat of The New York Times opined that the film is
"Cameron's long
apologia for
pantheism ... Hollywood's religion of choice for a generation now",[237]
while Saritha Prabhu of
The Tennessean called the film a misportrayal of pantheism and
Eastern spirituality in general,[238]
and Maxim Osipov of
The Hindustan Times, on the contrary, commended the film's
message for its overall consistency with the teachings of Hinduism in
the
Bhagavad Gita.[239]
Annalee Newitz of
io9 concluded
that Avatar is another film that has the recurring "fantasy about
race" whereby "some white guy" becomes the "most awesome" member of a
non-white culture.[240]
Michael Phillips of the
Chicago Tribune called Avatar "the season's ideological
Rorschach blot",[241]
while
Miranda Devine of
The Sydney Morning Herald felt that, "It is impossible to watch
Avatar without being banged over the head with the director's
ideological hammer."[242]
Critics and audiences have cited similarities with other films,
literature or media, with several accounts concluding the matter as
simple "borrowing" and others claiming outright plagiarism.
Ty Burr
of the
Boston Globe called it "the same movie" as
Dances with Wolves.[243]
Like Dances with Wolves, Avatar has been characterized as
being a "white savior" movie, in which a "backwards" native people is
impotent without the leadership of a member of the invading white
culture.[244]
Parallels to the concept and use of an avatar are in
Poul Anderson's 1957 short story
Call Me Joe, in which a paralyzed man uses his mind remotely to
control an alien body.[245][246]
Cinema audiences in Russia have noted that Avatar has elements in
common with the 1960s
Noon Universe novels by
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, which are set in the 22nd century on a
forested world called Pandora with a sentient indigenous species called
the Nave.[247]
Various reviews have compared Avatar to the films
FernGully: The Last Rainforest,[248][249]
Pocahontas[250]
and
The Last Samurai.[251]
NPR's
Morning Edition has compared the film to a montage of
tropes, with one commentator stating that Avatar was made by
mixing a bunch of film scripts in a blender.[252]
Some sources noted similarities to the artwork of
Roger Dean, which featured
fantastic images of floating rock formations and dragons.[253][254]
Similarities have been found between Avatar and
Ursula Le Guin's novel
The Word for World is Forest, with
Gary Westfahl writing for
Locus Online that "... the science fiction story that most closely
resembles Avatar has to be Ursula K. Le Guin's novella "The Word for
World Is Forest" (1972), another epic about a benevolent race of alien
beings who happily inhabit dense forests while living in harmony with
nature until they are attacked and slaughtered by invading human
soldiers who believe that the only good
gook is a
dead gook."[255]
Avatar received compliments from filmmakers, with
Steven Spielberg praising it as "the most evocative and amazing
science-fiction movie since Star Wars" and others calling it
"audacious and awe inspiring", "master class", and "brilliant". On the
other hand,
Duncan Jones said: "It's not in my top three James Cameron
films. ... [A]t what point in the film did you have any doubt what was
going to happen next?".[256]
Time ranked Avatar number 3 in their list of "The 10
Greatest Movies of the Millennium (Thus Far)"[257]
also earning it a spot on the magazine's
All-TIME 100 list,[258]
and IGN
listed Avatar as number 22 on their list of the top 25 Sci-Fi
movies of all time.[259]
Accolades
Avatar won the
82nd Academy Awards for
Best Art Direction,
Best Cinematography and
Best Visual Effects, and was nominated for a total of nine,
including
Best Picture and
Best Director.[30]
Avatar also won the
67th Golden Globe Awards for
Best Motion Picture – Drama and
Best Director, and was nominated for two others.[260]
At the
36th Saturn Awards, Avatar won all ten awards it was
nominated for:
Best Science Fiction Film,
Best Actor,
Best Actress,
Best Supporting Actor,
Best Supporting Actress,
Best Director,
Best Writing,
Best Music, Best Production Design and
Best Special Effects.
The
New York Film Critics Online honored the film with its Best Picture
award.[261]
The film also won the
Critics' Choice Awards of the
Broadcast Film Critics Association for Best Action Film and several
technical categories, out of nine nominations.[262]
It won two of the St. Louis Film Critics awards: Best Visual Effects and
Most Original, Innovative or Creative Film.[263]
The film also won the
British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for
Production Design and Special Visual Effects, and was nominated for
seven others, including Best Film and Director.[264]
The film has received numerous other major awards, nominations and
honors.
Extended theatrical re-release
In July 2010, Cameron confirmed that there would be an extended
theatrical re-release of the film on August 27,
2010, exclusively in 3D theaters and IMAX 3D.[265]
Avatar: Special Edition includes an additional nine minutes of
footage, all of which is
CG,[266]
including an extension of the sex scene[267]
and various other scenes that were cut from the original theatrical
film.[266]
This extended re-release resulted in the film's run time approaching the
current IMAX platter maximum of 170 minutes, thereby leaving less time
for the end credits. Cameron stated that the nine minutes of added
scenes cost more than $1 million a minute to
produce and finish.[2]
During its 12-week re-release, Avatar: Special Edition grossed an
additional $10.74 million in North America and $22.46 million overseas
for a worldwide total of $33.2 million.[4]
Home media
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released the film on DVD and
Blu-ray in the US on April 22, 2010[268]
and in the UK on April 26.[269]
The US release was not on a Tuesday as is the norm, but was done to
coincide with
Earth
Day.[270]
The first DVD and Blu-ray release does not contain any supplemental
features other than the theatrical film and the disc menu in favor of
and to make space for optimal picture and sound. The release also
preserves the film's native 1.78:1 (16:9)
format as Cameron felt that was the best format to watch the film.[271]
The Blu-ray disc contains
DRM (BD+
5) which some Blu-ray players might not support without a
firmware update.[272][273]
Avatar set a first-day launch record in the U.S. for Blu-ray
sales at 1.5 million units sold, breaking the record previously held by
The Dark Knight (600,000 units sold). First-day DVD and Blu-ray
sales combined were over 4 million units sold.[274]
In its first four days of release, sales of Avatar on Blu-ray
reached 2.7 million in the United States and Canada – overtaking The
Dark Knight to become the best ever selling Blu-ray release in the
region.[275][276]
The release later broke the Blu-ray sales record in the UK the following
week.[277]
In its first three weeks of release, the film sold a total of
19.7 million DVD and Blu-ray discs combined,
a new record for sales in that period.[278]
As of July 18, 2012, DVD sales (not
including Blu-ray) totaled over 10.5 million
units sold with $190,806,055 million in
revenue.[279]
The Avatar Three-Disc Extended Collector's Edition on DVD and
Blu-ray was released on November 16, 2010.
Three different versions of the film are present on the discs: the
original theatrical cut, the special edition cut, and a collector's
extended cut[280]
(with the DVD set spreading them on two discs, but the Blu-ray set
presenting them on a single disc). The collector's extended cut contains
6 more minutes of footage, thus making it 16 minutes longer than the
original theatrical cut. Cameron mentioned, "you can sit down, and in a
continuous screening of the film, watch it with the Earth opening". He
stated the "Earth opening" is an additional 4½
minutes of scenes that were in the film for much of its production but
were ultimately cut before the film's theatrical release.[281]
The release also includes an additional 45 minutes of deleted scenes and
other extras.[280]
Cameron initially stated that Avatar would be released in 3D
around November 2010, but the studio issued
a correction: "3-D is in the conceptual stage and Avatar will not
be out on 3D Blu-ray in November."[282]
In May 2010, Fox stated that the 3D version
would be released some time in 2011.[278]
It was later revealed that Fox had given
Panasonic an exclusive license for the 3D Blu-ray version and only
with the purchase of a Panasonic
3DTV. The length of Panasonic's exclusivity period is stated to last
until February 2012.[283]
On October 2010, Cameron stated that the
standalone 3D Blu-ray would be the final version of the film's home
release and that it was, "maybe one, two years out".[284]
On August 13, 2012, Cameron announced on Facebook that Avatar would be
released globally on Blu-ray 3D.[285]
On Christmas Eve 2010, Avatar had its 3D television world
premiere on
Sky.[286][287][288]
The Blu-ray 3D version was finally released on October 16 2012.[289]
Sequels
In 2006, Cameron stated that if Avatar were successful, he
hoped to make two sequels to the film.[290]
In 2010, he said the film's widespread success confirmed that he will.[291]
The prospect of sequels was something he planned from the start, going
so far as to include certain scenes in the film for future story
followups.[290][292]
In August 2010, Cameron stated that his
plans are to shoot both sequels in the planned trilogy
back-to-back. He also mentioned, "what I'm working on primarily is
the novel" and "presumably, once the novel is nailed down, work will
begin in earnest on getting the sequel going."[293]
Cameron stated that they are going to widen the universe while
exploring other moons of
Polyphemus.[282]
The first sequel will focus on the ocean of Pandora but will also
feature more of the rainforest from the original movie.[294]
Later in 2010, Cameron announced his intention to capture footage for
this sequel at the bottom of the
Mariana Trench using a deepwater submersible.[295]
In December 2011, Cameron revealed that he is writing second and third
films together, but that he is just starting to design the ocean
ecosystem of Pandora and the other worlds to be included in story. The
storyline, although continuing the environmental theme of the first
film, will not be "strident", as the film will concentrate on
entertainment.[296]
The sequels will continue to follow the characters of Jake and
Neytiri.[297]
Cameron implied that the humans would return as the antagonists of the
story. "I expect that those nasty humans didn't go away forever," he
said.[298]
Sam Worthington and
Zoe Saldana have signed on to reprise their roles in future sequels.[292]
In February 2010, Cameron confirmed that
Sigourney Weaver, who played Dr. Grace Augustine, will also be
appearing in Avatar 2, stating that "no one ever dies in science
fiction."[299]
The sequels, to be produced by Cameron's own
Lightstorm Entertainment in partnership with
20th Century Fox, were originally scheduled to be released in
December 2014 and
December 2015.[31]
In January 2012, producer Jon Landau stated that Avatar 2 is
"four years away" and is scheduled to be released in 2016.[300][301]
During the 2011 CinemaCon in Las Vegas, James Cameron stated his
intention to film the two Avatar sequels at a
higher frame rate than the industry standard 24 frames per second,
in order to add a heightened sense of reality.[302]
In May 2012, Cameron said that "[he was] making Avatar 2,
Avatar 3, maybe Avatar 4".[303]
In June 2012, actress Sigourney Weaver revealed that the three sequels
were shooting simultaneously, and that she was not sure how long
shooting for the movies was expected to take.[304]
In early September, 2012, Cameron told MTV he had a concept for a fourth
movie. It would be a
prequel,
set 35 years before the events of the first film, that deals with the
early colonisation of Pandora.[305]
That same month, while promoting the 3D Blu-ray release of Titanic,
he stated that the scripts for the second and third Avatar parts
are still being written, with both being "separate stories that have an
overall arc inclusive of the first film", and the second having a clear
conclusion instead of a
cliffhanger to the third film. Cameron expects to start
pre-production on January 2013 and release Avatar 2 in 2015.[306]