Avatar (2009 film) 2

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.[76]
A number of innovative visual effects techniques were used during production. 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.[13][14] 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.[71]
Innovations include a new system for lighting massive areas like Pandora's jungle,[77] 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.[78] According to Cameron, the method allows the filmmakers to transfer 100% of the actors' physical performances to their digital counterparts.[79] Besides the performance capture data which were transferred directly to the computers, numerous reference cameras gave the digital artists multiple angles of each performance.[80] 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.[81]
The lead visual effects company was Weta Digital in Wellington, at one point employing 900 people to work on the film.[82] 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.[83] To render Avatar, Weta used a 930 m2 (10,000 sq ft) 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 2 of the animation software and managers, Pixar's RenderMan and Pixar's Alfred queue management system.[84][85][86][87] 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.[88][89] Creating the Na'vi characters and the virtual world of Pandora required over a petabyte of digital storage,[90] and each minute of the final footage for Avatar occupies 17.28 gigabytes of storage.[91] It would often take the computer several hours to render a single frame of the film.[92] 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.[93] Joe Letteri was the film's visual effects general supervisor.[94]

Music and soundtrack

Main article: Avatar: Music from the Motion Picture

James Horner – "Jake Enters His Avatar World"

Duration: 32 seconds.

0:32
listen to a clip from the score of the 2009 film Avatar.
Problems playing this file? See media help.
Composer James Horner scored the film, his third collaboration with Cameron after Aliens and Titanic.[95] Horner recorded parts of the score with a small chorus singing in the alien language Na'vi in March 2008.[96] He also worked with Wanda Bryant, an ethnomusicologist, to create a music culture for the alien race.[97] The first scoring sessions were planned to take place in early 2009.[98] 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 until 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."[99] 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.[69] 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.[100]

Themes and inspirations

Main article: Themes in Avatar
Avatar is primarily an action-adventure journey of self-discovery, in the context of imperialism, and deep ecology.[101] Cameron said his inspiration was "every single science fiction book I read as a kid" and that he wanted to update the style of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter series.[11] He 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.[102][103] He also cited Hayao Miyazaki's anime films such as Princess Mononoke as an influence on the ecosystem of Pandora.[103]
In 2012, Cameron filed a 45-page legal declaration that intended to "describe in great detail the genesis of the ideas, themes, storylines, and images that came to be Avatar."[104] In addition to historical events (such as European colonization of the Americas), his life experiences and several of his unproduced projects, Cameron drew connections between Avatar and his previous films. He cited his script and concept art for Xenogenesis, partially produced as a short film, as being the basis for many of the ideas and visual designs in Avatar. He stated that Avatar's "concepts of a world mind, intelligence within nature, the idea of projecting force or consciousness using an avatar, colonization of alien planets, greedy corporate interests backed up by military force, the story of a seemingly weaker group prevailing over a technologically superior force, and the good scientist were all established and recurrent themes" from his earlier films including Aliens, The Abyss, Rambo: First Blood Part II, The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. He specifically mentioned the "water tentacle" in The Abyss as an example of an "avatar" that "takes on the appearance of...an alien life form...in order to bridge the cultural gap and build trust."[105]
Cameron also cited a number of works by other creators as "reference points and sources of inspiration" for Avatar. These include two of his "favorite" films, 2001: A Space Odyssey, where mankind experiences an evolution after meeting alien life, and Lawrence of Arabia, where "an outsider...encounters and immerses into a foreign culture and then ultimately joins that group to fight other outsiders." Cameron said he became familiar with the concept of a human operating a "synthetic avatar" inside another world from George Henry Smith's short story "In the Imagicon" and Arthur C. Clarke's novel The City and the Stars. He said he learned of the term "avatar" by reading the cyberpunk novels Neuromancer by William Gibson and Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling. The idea of a "world mind" originated in the novel Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. Cameron mentioned several other films about people interacting with "indigenous cultures" as inspiring him, including Dances with Wolves, The Man Who Would Be King, The Mission, The Emerald Forest, Medicine Man, The Jungle Book and FernGully. He also cited as inspiration the John Carter and Tarzan stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs and other adventure stories by Rudyard Kipling and H. Rider Haggard.[105]
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."[10] Cameron also cited the Japanese cyberpunk manga and anime Ghost in the Shell, in terms of how humans can remotely control, and transfer their personalities into, alien bodies.[106][107]
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.[101]
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".[101] Also he said, "I just like blue. It's a good color ... plus, there's a connection to the Hindu deities,[108] which I like conceptually."[109] 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.[101]
For the love story between characters Jake and Neytiri, Cameron applied a star-crossed love theme, which he said was in the tradition of Romeo and Juliet.[105] He acknowledged its similarity to the pairing of Jack and Rose from his film Titanic. An interviewer stated: "Both couples come from radically different cultures that are contemptuous of their relationship and are forced to choose sides between the competing communities."[110] Cameron described Neytiri as his "Pocahontas", saying that his plotline followed the historical story of a "white outsider [who] falls in love with the chief's daughter, who becomes his guide to the tribe and to their special bond with nature."[105] Cameron 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.[111] Although Cameron felt Jake and Neytiri do not fall in love right away, their portrayers (Worthington and Saldana) felt the characters did. Cameron said the two actors "had a great chemistry" during filming.[110]
Pandora's floating "Hallelujah Mountains" were inspired in part by the Chinese Huangshan mountains (pictured).[112]Zhangjiajie National Forest Park
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."[113] According to production designer Dylan Cole, the fictional floating rocks were inspired by Huangshan (also known as Yellow Mountain), Guilin, Zhangjiajie, among others around the world.[113] Cameron had noted the influence of the Chinese peaks on the design of the floating mountains.[114]
To create the interiors of the human mining colony on Pandora, production designers visited the Noble Clyde Boudreaux[115] 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.[116]
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".[117]
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."[118] He said in later interviews, "... I think it's very patriotic to question a system that needs to be corralled ..."[119] and, "The film is definitely not anti-American."[120] 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".[118]

Marketing

Promotions

Cameron promoting the film at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con
The first photo of the film was released on August 14, 2009,[121] and Empire released exclusive images from the film in its October issue.[122] 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[123] in Dolby 3D.[124] Weaver and Cameron appeared at additional panels to promote the film, speaking on the 23rd[125] and 24th[126][127] respectively. James Cameron announced at the Comic-Con Avatar Panel that August 21 will be 'Avatar Day'. On this day, the trailer was released in all theatrical formats. The official game trailer and toy line of the film were also unveiled on this day.[128]
The 129-second trailer was released online on August 20, 2009.[129] The new 210-second trailer was premiered in theaters on October 23, 2009, then soon after premiered online on Yahoo! on October 29, 2009, to positive reviews.[130][131] An extended version in IMAX 3D received overwhelmingly positive reviews.[129] The Hollywood Reporter said that audience expectations were colored by "the [same] establishment skepticism that preceded Titanic" and suggested the showing reflected the desire for original storytelling.[132] 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.[133] 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.[134] 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.[135]
The Coca-Cola Company collaborated with 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.[136] The film was heavily promoted in an episode of the Fox 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.[137] A week prior to the American release, Zoe Saldana promoted the film on Adult Swim, when she was interviewed by an animated Space Ghost.[138] 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.[139]

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.[140] 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.[141] The Art of Avatar 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.[142] 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.[143]
In a 2009 interview, Cameron said that he planned to write a novel version of Avatar after the film was released.[144] 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".[145] In August 2013, it was announced that Cameron hired Steven Gould to pen four standalone novels to expand the Avatar universe.[146]

Video game

Main articles: Avatar: The Game and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
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 in the film.[147] Avatar: The Game was released on December 1, 2009,[148] for most home video game consoles (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, Nintendo DS, iPhone) and Microsoft Windows, and December 8 for PlayStation Portable. A second game, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, was under development as of 2021.

Action figures and postage stamps

Mattel Toys announced in December 2009 that it would be introducing a line of Avatar action figures.[149][150] 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 exclusive to each specific action figure.[149] A series of toys representing six different characters from the film were also distributed globally in McDonald's Happy Meals.[151]
In December 2009, France Post released a special limited edition stamp based on Avatar, coinciding with the film's worldwide release.[152]

Releases

Theatrical

Initial screening

Avatar premiered in London on December 10, 2009, and was released theatrically worldwide from December 16 to 18.[153] The film was originally set for release on May 22, 2009, during filming[154] but was pushed back to allow more post-production time (the last shots were delivered in November)[77] and give more time for theaters worldwide to install 3D projectors.[155] 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.[156][157] However, a 3D 2.39:1 extract was approved for use with constant-image-height screens (i.e., screens that increase in width to display 2.39:1 films).[158] During a 3D preview showing in Germany on December 16, the movie's DRM "protection" system malfunctioned, and some copies delivered weren't watched at all in the theaters. The problems were fixed in time for the public premiere.[159]
Avatar was released in a total of 3,457 theaters in the US, of which 2,032 theaters showed it in 3D. In total, 90% of all advance ticket sales for Avatar were for 3D screenings.[160]
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).[161][162] 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.[163] 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 theaters in the US, and about 70 international.[164] 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".[20]

Post-original release

In July 2010, Cameron confirmed that there would be an extended theatrical rerelease of the film on August 27, 2010, exclusively in 3D theaters and IMAX 3D.[165] Avatar: Special Edition includes an additional nine minutes of footage, all of which is CG,[166] including an extension of the sex scene[167] and various other scenes that were cut from the original theatrical film.[166] This extended re-release resulted in the film's run time approaching the then-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.[168] 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.[5] The film was later re-released in China in March 2021, allowing it to surpass Avengers: Endgame to become the highest-grossing film of all time.[24]
Avatar was rereleased in theaters on September 23, 2022, by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures for a limited two-week engagement, with the film being remastered in 4K high-dynamic range, with select scenes at a high frame rate of 48 fps.[169] The reissue was prior to the December 2022 premiere of its sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water.[170] Prior to this, Cameron previously teased a re-release of the film back in 2017 when promoting the Dolby Cinema re-release of Titanic, stating that there were plans in the works to remaster the film with Dolby Vision and re-release it in Dolby Cinema.[171]