James Cameron’s Avatar May Be 2009’s Sleeper Flick
Written By: James Lincoln     Posted On: December 22, 2008

Last week I picked the obvious top 3 movies of 2009, starting with ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince’ which has enough of a following to power a studio by itself. Then there’s ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ will easily pull in $80M opening weekend. Then we wrap it up with ‘Terminator Salvation’ starring Christian Bale as John Connor.

I didn’t think anything else being released in on 09’ could break into that group. But, today I actually started researching James Cameron’s CG fantasy flick, ‘Avatar’.

As it turns out, Cameron has been sitting on this one since the 90’s. According to Wikipedia, he wrote the treatment then decided that the technology available at the time wasn’t adequate enough to put out a product he would be happy with. But that was 90’s. Since then we’ve had the Matrix Trilogy, Final Fantasy, Transformers and many other films which pushed advancements in film technology, animation technology and the fusion of the two.

Avatar had a budget of nearly $300 million dollars (more than enough to start a tech-company) and is now in post production readying for its December 2009 release.

Okay, so we’ve established that Avatar had an uber-successful director/writer and a ginormous $300m budget but, what makes me think it might compete with the other more anticipated films mentioned above. Which are all riding the coattails of ridiculously successful predecessors? Duh, besides the new technology, it’s the story and the girls.

Let’s start with the story. In Cameron’s original script treatment of Avatar, a man tries to make his way as a miner by combining with an alien during an interplanetary war in which aliens can make themselves manifest by possessing human bodies.

The January 2007 press release described the film: "Avatar is also an emotional journey of redemption and revolution. It is the story of a wounded ex-marine, thrust unwillingly into an effort to settle and exploit an exotic planet rich in biodiversity, who eventually crosses over to lead the indigenous race in a battle for survival," and "We're creating an entire world, a complete ecosystem of phantasmagorical plants and creatures, and a native people with a rich culture and language."

Cameron tapped Sam Worthington, Zoë Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez, Stephen Lang as the films main cast. Most notably, Zoe will be riding the wave of the ‘Star Trek’ prequel, also being released in 2009, but not with anywhere near the buzz of my top 3.

And, then there is Michelle Rodriguez who’ll be playing a marine pilot in the flick. I don’t know if there’s anything better than a hot, animated chick in uniform.

Alright, I’m reaching. Maybe the casting could have been better. Most likely the visuals will be the real reason the film will do well.

Honestly, there is a huge section discussing the technology behind the visuals and technology on the films Wikipedia profile, far too much to try to squeeze into this article.

I will postpone pushing it into my top 3 until I see a few trailers and clips. But, what I will say is that the flick has the right ingredients to be either a party crasher or crash and burner (ala Water World).