James Cameron's AVATAR

It shouldn't really be news that James Cameron is making a bid-budget effect movie, but it is. Why? Because it's been nine years since he's made a mainstream Hollywood film (a little indy flick called TITANIC, or something), and because of the news rumors floating around. Granted, they could just be rumors, but its being said that Jimmy's next flick, titled AVATAR, will be shot 100% Digitally (Think POLAR EXPRESS), and have a budget of $315 million. That's dollars people, not euros, not pesos. Just to clarify, that would be $90 million more than the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN sequels (they're reportedly $450 million together), and more than 50% bigger than KING KONG, SUPERMAN RETURNS, and TITANIC (the indy, remember?).

To me, that's fucking crazy.

First of all, why does a movie need to cost that much? Haven't films budgeted in the $200 million range, TITANIC AND PIRATES aside, generally disappointed? I don't know how much of a factor Cameron's name will be when this one comes out. The guy hasn't made a movie in ten years. TITANIC made its money for the most part because the constitution was temporarily amended so that every teenage girl was to see the movie for Leo DiCaprio, and it worked. I understand the whole 'well it won 11 Oscars' argument too. A film that size (the biggest ever, before or since), will get those kind of props if its anywhere in the neighborhood of being halfway decent. The same went for GONE WITH THE WIND in 1939 and THE LORD OF THE RINGS just a few moons ago (THE RETURN OF THE KING, TITANIC, and GONE WITH THE WIND share the record for number of Oscars won for a single film, which is 11, once again). But honestly, everything went right for that movie. Leo. The effects. The release date. That damn song by Celine Deon. Everything. Cameron was coming off of TRUE LIES, one of the biggest hits of 1994, and TERMINATOR 2, which was the movie of 1991. Basically what I'm saying is, if Cameron's getting a ridiculously excessive budget because some schmuck producer thinks he can duplicate that-little-boat-movie's success, they need to have a wake-up punch to the face. Or watch WATERWORLD.

Second, this movie has to be ridiculous amounts of awesome to be completely fake, but not animated, and not come off as cheesy. The more I think of it and catch it on the movie channels, the more THE POLAR EXPRESS creeps me out. If you want a movie to look that real, then why not actually make it, hold on, this is a concept....

REAL!!!???

Money aside, I'm sure it'll be good. Cameron knows how to make movies, especially action movies and/or ones with big budgets and/or an epic feel. This has a little bit, or I guess a lot of, each.

That's all I guess. Here's the source link if anyone could possibly want to read more on this:

http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=23742