James Cameron introduces Avatar footage with characteristic humble subtlety:
“The future’s so bright I gotta wear shades!” James Cameron cried Tuesday as he strode onto a stage — with his 3-D glasses on — to unveil the first publicly shown clips from his $300 million 3-D sci-fi actioner “Avatar.”
“Three years ago, I stood up here and said the 3-D renaissance is coming,” Cameron said. “And from what we’ve seen in the business, we can now say it has arrived.”
The big reveal took place at Amsterdam’s Cinema Expo, with an entourage including actors Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldana and Stephen Lang, pic producer Jon Landau, Fox film chairman Jim Gianopulos and Roger Friedman. THR was there too:
In introducing the 24-minute assemblage, Cameron said much of it came from the first third of the film but that there were also glimpses from unfinished portions of later battle scenes involving warring sides clashing over control of the fantasy world Pandora.
The filmmaker also said the action gets nonstop in the latter portions of the film, which throughout is populated by strange life-forms in a world of unprecedentedly rich fantasy elements…
Cameron encouraged theater owners to add 3-D capability as quickly as possible. But acknowledging “Avatar” will have to play in a mix of conventional and extra-dimensional venues due to insufficient number of 3-D auditoriums, he added, “I just want to say that I think ‘Avatar’ is going to play great in 3-D, 2-D, any ‘D.’ ”
Fox forbids any further details, but we’re told there was “sustained applause.”