You know who's really excited about this movie? Yiffstar.com and the furry fuckers. This movie just looks dumb. And the more I see of it the dumber it looks.

I have NO desire to see this movie. I won't go see it, either. This just reeks of an overly expensive vanity project to me.

Even though I wan't to see the movie, I still have a very bad feeling about this.

They should CGI the entire movie with Slave Leia's and it will be the #1 movie ever.

Am I the only one that has thought of this?

Waterworld Part 2....anyone?

I'm gonna head down to Fox today to see if they'll cut me a check. Apparently they just love GIVING AWAY MONEY.

If we can somehow get to James Cameron, purchase a copy of that Poul Anderson book and slap him twice around the face with it, then get Rosemary Harris (Aunt May) to say 'Shame on you', Avatar will be finished. For only then can we break the decade-long spell that is causing him to be crap.

It's like, some stills for the movie I'll admit are good, the above... is not one of them. Just looks like another Beowulf (which I'll admit had a few got shots too but other times... Hellllllo Shrek!!)

I wonder how long it will be until they start mass marketing this movie on tv? A month to go and some people who don't really look up net movie news etc. are like "Avatar? What's that? Ohhh you mean The Last Airbender trailer I saw in theatres not long ago, right?"

I think it's just funny that with all the hype, MANY MANY people have still not even HEARD of this movie yet! Blown too much money without leaving ANY for marketing, huh? (And I realize marketing is what is the REAL winner in sales!)

The more I think about it, making the whole thing a "secretive" hype, makes it worse. Does anyone really CARE that a whole 10 people got to watch 20 mins of exclusive footage, when they can hardly even see a trailer to decide if they want to see the movie or not??

And yet, I remember Star Trek teased like, last year (or was it the year before?) on a DVD to at least create SOMETHING. GEEZE people suck at marketing! Seriously, I want to BECOME a marketer just to show people how much they suck sometimes >_

Doesn't Hollywood understand the concept of trying to make a profit anymore?

Wait and see. Usually, every little cents spent on a Cameron movie is visible on screen.

Nobody outspends Cameron!

@ Bill - This just reeks of an overly expensive vanity project to me.

Thank you for so perfectly articulating my feelings. You are exactly right.

half a billion for blue people.

So Rob what's you're telling me is that this movie will be "FernGully 3: The Avatar" the final and most important chapter to the FernGully series?

FernGully: The Last Rainforest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FernGully:_The_Last_Rainforest)

FernGully 2: The Magical Rescue (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FernGully_2:_The_Magical_Rescue)

I can't wait. Sounds super awesome!

Move could easily suck...

..still, I feel obligated to say that everyone who posted was probably saying the exact same things during the Cameron hate-fest right before "Titanic" was released. He has a precedent and a really good track record. Anyone who can easily dismiss it as "dumb blue cat people" is setting up a possible home in their mouth. We'll have to wait and see if their foot ends up living there.

The only good we'll be getting out of this is the shit ton of FFF when this movie comes out. Years worth of material.

When I saw the trailer for this the first thing that came to mind was Starship Troopers. Is that good or bad?

Cinematic Diarrhea.

You then wipe your ass with $100 bills.

@Bryant

I'm not a Cameron fan-boy nor do I have a dislike for his movies. I will say that overall his movies are average to almost great. But he's made two movies that I do enjoy greatly (The Terminator and T2) and two other movies that are enjoyable at times (True Lies and Aliens). As for his other movies, well I do not care for them much. So when I see "Blue Furries" scampering around some planet I cannot help but wonder if this will be something awesome like T2, something almost close to being awesome like Aliens, or something I did not care for like Titanic or the Abyss.

A little bit of spin doctoring is taking place, the article said the production budget was in the neighborhood of 250 million. With penalites on Camerons take if he goes over a certain threshhold.

On a side note it looks like whether this movie is good or bad they have leveraged the technology to be sold off to other studios thus increasing profit.

The marketing has been very dismal so far.

I am hoping this is better 3D experience than Beowulf as the best part of that movie was seeing the studio logos in 3D the rest was all dookie.

For all the technical brilliance often displayed in the moving shots of the trailers, the story seems like one of the most generic plots I've come across. I'm sure Cameron is trying to make it something special, but every time I watch the trailer, all that sticks in my mind is the bland "emotionally stirring" music, the exposition-laced tirade about million-dollar rocks to a pouty Sigourney Weaver, and the horribly spoken dialogue of "You are not in Kansas anymore".

Maybe if this movie weren't being hyped high hell, it might still be enjoyable on its own merits despite the derivative story. But beyond that...it's not looking good...

Saw the 3-D theatrical trailer last week and it looked perfectly fine. I know it is the Way of the Nerd to nitpick and slam stuff after every few stills or temp frames are released, but maybe this time we can try not judging it until anyone has actually seen it? Cameron's not my favorite egomaniac, but I think Aliens and Terminator have earned him a little "wait and see" slack.

It's funny to read some of the comments, too. Some people complain about it being over-hyped. Some people claim about it not being marketed at all.

this movie seems as interesting as the ff:spirits within; looked amazing technically - but the boring average storyline killed it.

HA HA HA HA HA
Join the club with Micheal Bay Cameron. Blew a ton of money on a crap movie. At least TF has fans that will love the series no matter what, this loser has nothing to fall back on. This is gonna be an epic failure moment just ready to happen. XD not even baysplosions will save this movie from the poor house

Well Cameron invested a shit ton of his own money into this movie, so perhaps the other investors have a deal where if they make their money back, future profits go to him making his money back (fat chance on that ever happening).

Superman Returns cost something like $250 million when all the tallies came in, and that movie was still technically a bomb. That movie had a popular franchise character in the lead. Avatar is a new story with new characters, which is great considering the unoriginality of Hollywood, but it's not going to do them any favors when release time comes.

The one thing they have going for them now is the inflated price of tickets (Recently I went to a matinee of "Where the Wild Things Are" and it still cost nearly $9!!)coupled with the even higher cost of an IMAX ticket, which is even higher if it's in 3D. But considering the complete lack of IMAX across the country (there's only one theater in my homestate of Oregon) that's probably not going to be enough.

On the other hand, I must admit that I'm curious to see the most expensive movie ever. I mean, will you actually be able to tell that it's a ridiculously high budget movie? Or are all the extra expenditures on petty little details that no one will ever notice (i.e. china dishes that match what was on the Titanic, even though no one would ever know otherwise)? Will we be able to tell if all the money is worth it, or could the same movie be made (possibly better) for a fraction of the budget? We shall see.

If this movie doesn't save the economy, nothing will.

Titanic made a shitload of money because 13-17 year old girls went and saw it like 12 times each so they could watch Leo and dream that it was themselves that he was in love with and not Kate.

This movie will be the same. For people who fuck while wearing bear costumes. Since that's a very very tiny population....well...do the math.

As far as I can tell plot is crippled guy gets new, fake body to infiltrate the blue furries so we can steal their shit. Crippled guy gets Stockholm Syndrome while enjoying that he can walk again. Crippled guy warns blue furries. Crippled guy fights with blue furries. Blue furries win. Humans and blue furries learn to love and cuddle and share and we all learn a valuable lesson about diplomacy.

Sigourney Weaver plays the role that Paul Reiser played in the Aliens flicks.

Yawn.

Ho-Ly Shit.

Half a billion, and I don't know a single person or furry who has any interest in seeing it. HA

Maybe I'm getting old and people younger than me will dig "Avatar" for this very reason, but when I watched the Thai-subbed trailer Rob posted I thought to myself "ugh, too much!" As in, there was way too much going on.

Exploring an inhabited moon of Jupiter? Cool.

Genetic hybrid remote control bodies? Cool.

Riding some sort of winged alien life form? Possibly cool.

All on one movie? Too much! Take an interesting idea and incorporate it into an already compelling story. Don't just throw wizbang after wizbang at us. It would also help if said wizbangs didn't look like they came off of the cover of a Trapper-Keeper.

To steal someone else's writing, change a few words, and pass it off as my own (henceforth called "pulling a Cameron"):

You can spend $500 million on an exquisitely rendered 3-D model of a piece of shit, and all you've got is a picture of shit.

It seems as though in his claims that the technology to tell this story ten years ago did not exist, he has neglected to ask if this story was worth telling.

And as for the arguments to cut it some slack based on his track record, and we should see it before we complain about it, that is a logical fallacy. Since I would have to pay to see it, then the act of seeing it counts as support, regardless of the movie's quality. And that's before we factor in the FIFTEEN SKYWALKING DOLLARS it would take for me to see it. Maybe that's not such a big deal to you fancy pants with your "jobs" that come with "paychecks" but some of us just can't afford this sort of indulgence.

Two words: Heaven's Gate.

This seems like an awful lot of money for a video game that you can't play.

Eh, in Cameron's defense, people like you guys were complaining he will not live up to Ridley Scott's legacy with Alien when he made Aliens. Even the crew themselves had no faith in him cause to them he was making an action film. Then the movie came out and its considered one of the best sequels ever. Then he cast Arnold Scharzamehahmanahanemagger, who was considered a laughing stock in the film buisness, and made him a superstar. Then the Titanic example. Big ambitious movie that is still the highest grossing movie of all time.

TBH, i'm only a fan of Terminator 2. His other movies are okay or not that great to me. But given the track record, it's clear that unless you guys have seen the WHOLE film, you have no reason to smack talk. I have my reservations but i'm waiting 'till I see it before I call bang or bust.

A break down of the problems with the movie are very obvious, really. It's not that there are blue furries (which look like the bastard child of a human, a feline and a small disc of chemical that turns toilet water blue), but the very fact that normal people aren't going to be rushing into the theatres for this based on genre.

Granted, there are quite a few movie with pretty much no stories that make a bundle of money, BUT these people have obviously not been looking at the track records of Science Fiction movies in Hollywood the last while. Take a look through the records and you'll see the real issue: no Science Fiction movies, which I define as full on space based settings, have made it anywhere near the top of the Worldwide Movie Grosses chart. Not unless you have the name Star Wars in front of the movie at least.

Movie goers just do NOT like science fiction movies that much. True, it's going to have a $100m+ opening weekend, but if he's expecting a Titanic-like return on this, he's smoking some really tainted stuff. Titanic cost him $200m to make and he made $1.835b off it...however, there are reasons why there has been only three movies to hit a billion dollars after that. The entire movie going populace has changed.

The guy gets some credit for ballsiness. He's going to make a profit, but it's not going to be what he wants.

CChaos-

I'm pretty sure "Avatar" is a labor of love for Cameron. He's probably just happy that it's finally done and will be content to see it break even.

James will have to sell a lot of avatar stuff to even come close to making back some of the budget. for looks Like James has done water world 2 and the studieo that backed Avatar may when all is said and done will be doing some damage control and going what the heck were we thinking to let James spend five hundred million on that thing.

I might go see it just out of pity.

And yeah, I'm curious about how a truly well-made (or at least outrageously expensive) 3D epic might turn out.

I saw the 20 min. sneak peek in 3D. I thought it was interesting and the 3D impressed me, although admittedly, I haven't been to a 3D movie since they stopped using the red/blue glasses. I didn't feel like this was going to change the face of movie-making...it's just really cool CGI...but I'll go see it.

Honestly, I'm just happy Cameron is doing something again...something genre-esque. Is it a huge gamble post-Titanic? Oh yeah...but I applaud him for doing it and not making something safe.

Who can *not* smell the suck coming off this thing? It's going to take a bath and set the fledgling 3D revival back permanently in the bargain.

@Baltimoron

Oh, no question that it's a labour of love for him and something that he's been wanting to do for a while. I'm just saying that, while it might be his dream, it's not exactly going to revolutionize the industry as he's likely hoping.

I mean, if he's spending half a billion on it, he's probably expecting a billion dollar return, at the least. I'm just not seeing that much coming back.

I feel like JimmyZappa is the only one speaking with a lick of sense. There is so much of this pompous "this movie will is obviously bad/dumb/boring/over budget, ect." on this board. This would all make sense if Cameron hadn't made two "impossible" sequels (Aliens, T2) already. You people who are scoffing at the amount of money spent look foolish, because that's exactly what happened before and the dude made the top grossing film EVER and won an oscar. I'm not saying this makes Cameron or his movies good or worthwhile, but anyone who thinks it's impossible for him to be successful is ignoring the facts. Is it unlikely that "Avatar" will spend more money then any film before and have, at least, a healthy return at the box office? Yes. Has Cameron done it before? Yes.

230 000 000

In summary:
This movie is teh suck.
Give it a chance. You haven't seen it yet.
Cameron is teh hack.
Titanic? Terminator?
Suck-hack.
Blue furry suck. Suck it.
Sigh..

Agreed with Bryant.....We have only seen 5 minutes of a 2 1/2 hour movie....on our computer screens. The dude invented new technology for this movie that we havent even seen yet. The full experience awaits.Cameron has a pretty good track record and he is a solid script writer...I trust what he is doing. It does look a little wacky but im going to give it a fair shot....I think it will be something to see

Goobers!

Trailers and ads for this are the first i've seen this year (maybe in 2 or 3 years) that actually got my attention.

It actually looks to be something more than just another big bunch of glitzy sound and noise like every second film that's cranked out.

I'm thinking that unless the plot and acting absolutely reek, this thing is going to make a boatload of cash. (profit may be another matter)

Of course, i don't know why i would think there would be intelligent life forms on this site after having a look around.

Hmm, it does look cheesy, but then again many also thought an extravagent movie about a sunken ship that everyone knew would sink would be a silly idea... :) So far I have not seen a single JCam directed flick that has dissappointed so if this one does, it will be the first....

It has furries in it. That right there rules. Can't wait to see it.

All you doubters were just proven wrong
Avatar just passed $1 billion mark :P

LOL!

I just read through these posts. I was googling to see how much of his own money he ponied up to make this...

but reading these, especially in "hindsight", is just hilarious...

I wonder which one of you idiots went and saw this movie and are eating your words now, because it was a GREAT movie. And I'm talking about storyline and plot.

All the CGI stuff just made it that much more enjoyable...

Ya'll suck at rating a movie just off of a few promos...