He’s the genius who brought us Terminator 1 & 2. He’s the sci-fi master behind Aliens, The Abyss & Total Recall…And he directed, wrote and produced the biggest film in Hollywood history…you know, that one about the ship and the ice berg. His visions are so grand and ambitious in scale that he only makes 1 or 2 films a decade. In 2009 Mr. Cameron is going to unleash Avatar upon the world. It’s a futuristic, sci-fi epic about a band of humans pitted in a battle against a distant planet’s indigenous population Sounds pretty cool huh? But it’s the cutting-edge, revolutionary technology that Cameron used to make this film that is going to be an industry game-changer.

(Cameron on the set of Avatar with star Sam Worthington)

Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen America’s rejuvenated kinship with 3-D movies. There was Beowulf a couple years ago, then this year we had My Bloody Valentine 3-D and Coraline. With original story ideas becoming more and more scarce and with the ever-increasing number of sequels and remakes, 3-D is a technology that filmmakers are utilizing to re-engage movie-going audiences.

Digital 3-D is blowing up and Hollywood’s directors and studios are jumping on the band-wagon. As Time Magazine reports, a dozen 3-D movies are slated to arrive this year, with dozens more in the works for 2010 and beyond. Not only is it affecting how movies are made, but it is inevitably going to affect how they are shown. Slowly, but surely, movie theaters are attempting to convert to digital projection, and Avatar could be the last push that theater owners need to completely convert to digital. Digital 3-D is crystal clear, engaging technology that’s going to become a serious Hollywood trend. But it’s the cutting-edge, futuristic, government-type shit that Cameron used for Avatar that’s truly going to be mind blowing. The movie fuses two unrelated technologies–e-motion capture, which uses images from tiny cameras rigged to actors’ heads to replicate their expressions, and digital 3-D. From reporters and insiders that have seen bits and pieces of footage have said that they couldn’t tell what was real and what was not.

The release date for Avatar is December 18, 2009, only 8 months away. It’s not that much longer to wait, considering the film has been in the works for nearly a decade, has a budget of over $300 million and has over a thousand people working on it. All I can say is bring it on James!

What do you think? Discuss