MarketSaw has a set of nice scans from Empire‘s Avatar feature, and it’s the first really good look at how well the Avatar’s integrate the facial features of their human counterparts.
On another note, Jon Pace reminds us that Roger Ebert was there for Avatar Day, and he was “underwhelmed”:
Cameron does, however, make the mistake common in recent action pictures, of cutting the action so quickly its placement in time and space is unclear. Much of the footage of Sully fighting the creatures is so close to the front of the picture and so rapidly cut that we never visually understand quite where Sully is in relationship to the position of the monster seemingly prepared to overwhelm him.
The flying reptiles present another challenge. How do you depict creatures that large (say, 25 feet long) that flap their wings quickly enough to fly? Cameron doesn’t. They flap their wings far too slowly, and not particularly believably or smoothly; The effect reminded me of the flying horses in Ray Harryhausen’s “Clash of the Titans” (1981).
Zoe Saldana’s Avatar after the cut.
I think I’ve seen that nose before, on a ’72 Thunderbird.
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