Cold Man Runs to Fire

Crappy Hack J.J. Abrams Sucks-up to James Cameron

James Cameron, in the words of Stan Winston, is "The ultimate pioneer." J.J. Abrams, in the words of David Brennan, is "The ultimate hack."

So why the heck is this hack running around fanboy gatherings promoting James Cameron's works? And does this make Avatar shitty by association? And does this mean we're going to have to endure other worthless people trying to legitimize themselves by cozying up to other great ones?

The answers, respectively, are:

1. Trying to gain sci-fi cred.
2. Not if I can wipe my memory of this image.
3. Yes.

Sci-fi website i09.com reported that J.J. Abrams was wearing an t-shirt for 'Avatar' during one those inane panel discussions at a pop culture "convention" (where fans pay for the privilege of being propagandized by the film studios for three straight days). Apparently, the shirt had some all-but-meaningless schematics from the movie (the suit humans have to wear to survive the methane-rich Pandora atmosphere), which was excuse enough to send the wannabe fanboys tripping over themselves in an attempt to divine meaning from the bizarre promotion.

Well, as long as Cameron doesn't start wearing Mission Impossible 3 t-shirts, I'll be able to withstand this. But if he does (or, for that matter, if he wears Cloverfield baseball caps), I'm going to have serious doubts about whether he's starting to show signs of late-middle-age dimensia.

In all seriousness, let's quantify how much J.J. Abrams is the doppelganger of the great James Cameron.

James Cameron's last movie, opened with a pretty-darn modest $28 million (yes, that was even modest in 1997). Once people saw the movie, they told their acquaintances to go and see it, who then told their acquaintances to see it. Very soon, before Steven Spielberg and George Lucas could say, "What the hell just happened?!?" the movie not only became the most successful movie of all time....it became the number-one movie of all time by a margin so big that you could fit two blockbusters between it and its closest competitor.

So, in honor of this masterpiece of genuine public appreciation, let's quickly rig a method to quantify how much people actually like a movie, and name it thusly. "The Titan Grade" will simply divide a movie's opening weekend gross by its total gross (North American figures only; folks in Sri Lanka and Russia only go to watch the pretty America pictures and don't have to listen to J.J. Abrams's embarassingly bad Syd Field-approved dribble.)

The Titan Score is figured thusly:

1-(Opening Weekend Gross/Total Domestic Gross)

Okay, it's as basic as can be, and it's hardly comprehensive or definitive (movies that open in limited release can't be measured at all). But still, using this system, it can be comfortably stated that, for any two movies released in the same timeframe, the movie with the higher score was better received by the moviegoing public. (Clearly, I'm no Blaise Pascal!)

Titanic's Titan Grade is 95%. (1-($28,638,131/600,788,188)

J.J. Abrams's most celebrated phony-fanboy-frolic, Cloverfield, scores a 50%. His other cinematic soul vacuum, Mission Impossible 3 (no, these "movies" don't merit hyperlinks), had an almost equally abyssmal Titan Grade of 34%. (Now, does this mean that his next magnum crapus, Star Trek, is going to suck, too? Well, yeah, it does. The man hacks more than Woody Harrelson and Tommy Chong at Hash Bash.)

Everything James Cameron is, in other words, J.J. Abrams is not.

So why is he running around turning himself into a walking billboard for Avatar? Well, I'm guessing it's because of an old expression: "When it's cold outside, people run towards the fire."

James Cameron on CBC (Oct. '08)

ENGAGING & FUN, BUT NOT TOO REVEALING

This CBC interview was taped last October (don't know how I missed it!), and there are a few biographical tidbits that I was unaware of, including his pre-Corman days as a machinist and a high school janitor ("When you're sitting in high school wondering who guts the gum off the desk? That was me!"), but the conversation is mostly as trite as the 15-minute run-time would lead you to belief, not excepting the subject of Avatar.

The apparent reason for the trip to his homeland was that he was receiving a star on the Canadian Walk of Fame. As he points out, this is a uniquely meaningful honor because it came at a time of relatively low-visibility, so it was genuine recognition as opposed to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Like he says, you have to pay for that "honor". (Isn't it suspicious that celebrities always conveniently "earn" Hollywood stars right when their latest project is arriving? It's a good bet that, come December '09, Fox will make the payoff and Cameron'll gamely play that silly publicity stunt.)

About eleven minutes in, he apparently jokes that they're going to retrofit Titanic into 3D and re-release it. However, I know that this is being done to many other movies (including Star Wars), so it's very possible that he was serious. (Personally, I think that this is a waste of manpower and, because you cannot fundamentally improve on the original source material of 35-mm film, a transparent gimmick, so I hope it was a joke.)

For my fellow quote hounds, here's his philosophical soundbite:

"You do have to have a really strong personal ethos in the film business because there is so much craziness and backstabbing and fame is very fleeting fickle and all those things. So ultimately being a person of your word, I think, is really important."

And here's a funny-because-it's-true comment:

"It's a fun challenge as a male to write female characters and have them not just be, like, ya know....guys with tits. You can't treat a female action character as just a soulless warrior or women won't relate to her."

Please feel free to make observations or expound on the interview in the comment section. Also....send me some links, eh? This darn interview was conducted back in October, so I can't catch everything!

Video I Edited: 'Obi-Wan Kenobi: Whacko Conspiracy Theorist?'

Avatar Scriptment: Summary, Review, and Analysis

Part 2: Analysis of the Avatar Scriptment

NOTE: This is just a series of random thoughts and comments I have about 'Avatar'.

"It's fine for a guy to be attracted to women, but I need the male audience to respond to this guy and say, 'Yeah, I see why people would follow him'."

-James Cameron on Josh Sully

I could've chosen any one of about half a dozen quotes from Avatar which similarly show that Josh is a great man because of his inner character - his bravery and independence - rather than the superficial traits pop culture ascribes to men ("attitude" and "testosterone" or being a "NASCAR Dad" or any other laughably desperate label), but this quote is just arch-Cameron in its totally casual incisiveness.

The scene in the story where cynical Grace warms up to Josh is cool and refreshingly non-timid behavior for a man (it could only happen in a movie, though: most workplaces would fire the man on the spot for being "hostile" or "aggressive"). Later, Zuleika also takes to Josh because of his bravery.

So I guess the point I'm making here is that Josh is going to be a real man in the Rudyard Kipling sense (James Cameron's words....although he'd be wise to never use them again, as Rudyard Kipling is now politically incorrect).

In addition to Kipling, Cameron also tossed out names like Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. Rider Haggard, Lawrence of Arabia (the movie itself) and Russell Crowe in Gladiator as inspirations for Josh Sully.

But reading Avatar, there's one other movie which I don't think there's any question provided some dose of inspiration (and more than just a teaspoon): Dances With Wolves. The two stories are so remarkably parallel that it's impossible to think that Cameron wasn't influenced by the 1990 classic. (In the notes on the laserdisc for The Abyss: Special Edition, Cameron actually acknowledged Dances With Wolves - and Kevin Costner, specifically - for reopening the doorway for 3-hour movies, which had gone against Hollywood business philosophy for over a decade.)

"People have asked me if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future and my answer has been recently that I am pessimistic about systems and optimistic about individuals."

James Cameron, 1998

Last fall, Sports Illustrated wrote about the aftermath of Pat Tillman's death, and writer Gary Smith did a really awesome job of describing the cognitive dissonance between Pat Tillman's family - this strong, independent-minded group with true California fiber - and the U.S. Department of Defense - which is both the most powerful entity in the history of mankind and the most bureaucratic and system-centric entity.

So after Pat was killed, the Army told the Tillman family a series of lies (deliberate, orchestrated lies), and they expected the Tillman family to react the way that the average military family would react: they'd give their honesty away. They'd nod their heads mournfully, thank the military for being our heroes and saviors, and then repeat the Army's lies for the rest of their lives. Instead of following this script, though, the Tillman family called the Army out on its orgy of truly dark lies. The Army wasn't just embarrassed by the Tillman's search for the truth....they were confused by it. (The lieutenant who wrote the Army's second official report, Ralph Kauzlarich, laughably said that the reason that the Tillman's wouldn't stop pursuing the truth is because they weren't Christians who knew their son was in Heaven. Thus he exposed himself as both corrupt and wholly ignorant of Christianity.)

Here's how Sports Illustrated writer Gary Smith interpreted the dynamic (which continues to this day, incidentally): "How were men who made their living in a bureaucracy....people accustomed to giving truth a little pull here, another tug there for the sake of their institutions, to foresee the tension that would be created when they began stretching the story of the death of a man who put so little stock in institutions....and so much in living an honest life?"

Now, there is a reason for this story in a James Cameron blog. It's to illustrate a real-world example of the eternal human conflict that's at the heart of Avatar (or at least near its heart): the tension between people who love the systems which support them (and who cede their honesty and their consciences to that system), and those people who are compelled to something more ethereal and abstract (perhaps God, an ideal, a personal dream, whatever) and, by having this greater dream or faith, don't have to give a damn for systems and institutions.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that Avatar is probably as violently an anti-system story as anybody could possibly write. I mean, the SECFOR military in this story is the most uniformally sadistic and corrupt force you can imagine. (They're always called just "the troops", although I'm certain that political correctness has forced a change in that language.) The troops are shown as sadistic automotons, taking delight in the genocide of Pandora's indigenous people throughout the story and, at one point, mocking a crippled man when he falls out of his wheelchair.

The sadism of the troops is equaled, though, by the sadism they receive. The story seems to take great joy in concocting newer, more-grotesque ways to kill them. "The troops" die from....

-Being stampeded by a herd of rhino-like animals
-Asphyxiation
-Run over by tractors
-Pierced by the beak of a pterodactyl-like beast (while Grace shrugs casually)
-Arrows through their throats....

And the list goes on.

I'm going to be totally honest with you: I'd be amazed if even a shred of this important element of the original story exists anymore. Both The Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security have offices at every major studio, and, I mean, they might be bureaucratic morons but even Cletus the Slack Jawed Yokel can spot the profoundly anti-military sentiment in here. It's not like trying to decrypt Finnegan's Wake or anything, ya know? (And for whatever it's worth, Cameron's brother, Dave, was a Marine.)

(I guess....I guess I'm partial to this "political" angle of Avatar. Not just because the military's evils often get whitewashed (FYI: Pat Tillman was not - NOT - killed accidentally. It was murder.) and not just because I think that this tension between systems and creative people is an important human dynamic in everyday life as well as in dramatic arenas, but because there's so much damn political correctness nowadays about "the troops" that, reading the story, I felt cathartic chills. I mean, I went to a baseball game last year and during the 7th inning, they didn't even sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" anymore, but instead made everybody stand up and place their hands on their heart while they sang "God Bless America". Everybody was pretending to cry and all this phony nonsense. I mean....it was disgusting. But whatever, aye?)

And speaking of cognitive dissonance....

"The seafaring nations of Europe grew mighty from the wealth returned from the discovery and settlement of the New World. Those societies who stayed home languished, those who embraced the unknown prospered. Seen broadly, we are a species which owes its current success to Exploration."

-James Cameron

James Cameron spent his time on NASA's board of advisers aggressively championing exploration and pushing hard for a move to Mars. His writing about exploration is (no surprise) inspiring and I don't think that there's any question that it's fully thought out and heartfelt. He uses words like "our outbound quest can [satisfy our soul]." and "We need to push outward." He didn't use the words "manifest destiny"....but he might as well have.

So it's hard to believe that a man who spent so much time, money, and energy romanticizing exploration write a story in which that very human trait results in so much villainy. One would expect that the timid souls who languish on decaying Earth would be the villains in a James Cameron movie.

In Avatar, the RDA are the European colonists and the Na'vi are the Native Americans, right? (Right. This analogy is made time and again in the scriptment.) So it's totally contradictory that the "Europeans" are the heroes in his real world view, but in this fictional world, they're the villains.

I know that, in a way, I'm writing about a false dichotomy: Avatar doesn't denigrate exploration, but rather exploitation. But I think we've seen in modern, feminized America how much guilt by association we have. Americans have turned on the very men who explored, civilized, and colonized this land. Columbus is the bad guy in textbooks across the country, and the Spanish, Dutch, and Englishmen who braved unspeakably dangerous voyages to carve out a life from the wilderness are all evil racists. (I wonder why the white people who so hate their ancestors don't commit suicide out of shame.)

So what I'm saying is that the message of Avatar won't be that mankind's exploration is bad, it will be that the RDA (the businesses pillaging Pandora, the "system") is bad. But, well, that's just not how lazy-minded people will perceive it.

I think it will be a great irony when two people are discussing whether we should explore the universe and the "con" side of the argument says, "No, we'll just screw everything up, just like the bad guys in Avatar!"

-----

Really quickly, I also wanted to write about one of my primary gripes in science fiction - a pratfall that I wish that the greatest of all science fiction minds, James Cameron, would avoid - and that is the tendency to overlook the idea of the Singuarity. The Singularity is a broad, complex idea which I don't want to carry on about here, but in a nutshell it's the idea that our various technological advances in every field - from genetics to nanotech to IT - are advancing exponentially (doubling roughly 18 months, in accordance with "Moore's Law" which referred to computer processors) and that around the year 2030 (and there's frightening consistency in the projections) our technology will be so advanced that we'll transcend humanity.

I know, I know, it's an abstract concept that sounds flaky, but make no mistake there is some hard science behind it and some truly great minds, including Ray Kurzweil and Bill Joy.

But it's a lot easier to write stories where mankind in the future is just like mankind of today, only we don't have winters and we do have spaceships....but some very important research suggests that things are a whole hell of a lot more complex than that. In this, Avatar is really archaic science fiction - from the 1960's mind of Ray Bradbury rather than from the 2000's mind of James Cameron, where I wish it would have come from.

Cameron has said that he aspires for Avatar to be mythic, and it will be. But I wish he could have created something more realistic, too.

(And if anybody wants to read my illustrated science fiction epic which doesn't shy away from the Singularity....e-mail me at DavidCBrennan@aol.com!!!)

Avatar Scriptment: Summary, Review, and Analysis

Part 1: Summary of the Avatar Scriptment

First off, a couple of disclaimers. The scriptment was written over a decade ago, and has, by all accounts, been revamped to a pretty high degree. So lots of the events and characters will be different in the film version.

Secondly (and most of you probably know this, but it still bears mentioning), this was just a crude scriptment, and just as a recipe doesn't do justice to actually eating the entree, nor does the scriptment do justice to the cinematic experience. (This also means that my summary probably doesn't even do justice to the scriptment!)

_____ _____ _____

We begin on planet Earth a hundred years hence, and it's pretty depressing. The planet's ecosystem has been so exploited by humankind that it can barely even shelter us any longer. Stripmining, air pollution, and every other form of exploitation and abuse have lead to mankind living in a tired world. "A cross between THX-1138 and a Calcutta train station," says the scriptment.

Because we've used up all Earth's resources (and apparently recycling techniques haven't advanced much) many companies are looking to the rest of the galaxy for new resources, and there's no extraterrestrial locale richer in resources than Pandora. Sure, pillaging Pandora has its problems (it's five light-years away and its atmosphere is toxic for humans to breathe) but its billions and billions of dollars worth of a (fictitious) superconducter called unobatainium make those hurdles well worth jumping over. There's a joint-venture of companies called the RDA who have a massive colony on Pandora to mine for unobtainium, as well as Pandora's many other resources.

Josh Sully (mid-twenties), is a disllusioned war vet, paralyzed from some meaningless war a few years back. (Spinal medicine apparently hasn't advanced much, either. Like much of science fiction - including even Star Trek - Avatar is frustratingly selective about how and where our technology has advanced.) Because he happens to have genes which are useful to the RDA, Josh ultimately finds himself making the three-year trip to Pandora to work on the Avatar program.

Pandora's most sentient race is called the Na'vi, and the RDA has a way to communicate with them. They grow Na'vi bodies and then those bodies are controlled externally by, well, "controllers". The controllers wear a headset called the link, and their human bodies are effectively unconscious while commandeering their Na'vi avatar. (Only a small percentage of humans have genes which allow for an Avatar body to be grown for them, and Josh is needed because he's in the minority.)

So Josh and the new crew from Earth awaken from suspended animation and arrive at the RDA's Pandora colony. It's run by Selfridge, an efficient company man wholly dedicated to the RDA. He also oversees the compound's massive, highly-trained military force, SECFOR, which is run mostly by Colonel Quaritch, a military man through-and-through who loves blood and hates life....especially Pandoran life.

Josh also meets Grace, who is both an Avatar and the compound's "xenobotanist". After he defends himself against her cynicism and insults, Grace takes to Josh and eventually becomes his mentor. (In the film, Grace will be the head of the entire Avatar program.)

So Josh begins life as a Na'vi. Their bodies are very human-like - they're bipedal and with similar faces - but they're blue, 10-feet tall, and evoke a feline impression, complete with a tail. Also, the Na'vi are much stronger, faster, and more agile than humans. At first, Josh is just happy to be walking again.

The Avatar program is just a small part of the RDA's Pandoran operation, there's a palpable tension between those in the Avatar program and everybody else. While most of the people at Hell's Gate (the RDA compound) are just mindless labor or system-dependant troops, the Avatar controllers are described sort of like a pack of stoners, high on the experience of living as a Na'vi. Says the scriptment, "They are a scruffy, smelly lot...with unkempt hair and beards and poor appetites."

When you put these two types of people together....something's bound to snap.

During an early venture into the beautiful but ultra-lethal Pandoran wilderness, one of the trigger-happy troops is about to fire at Grace's Avatar. Josh, now comfortable in his Avatar body, manhandles the troop (like a "ragdoll") and this doesn't exactly help in easing the tension between the two groups.

Later, on a seperate venture into Pandora, Josh gets seperated from the rest of the Avatars and finds himself having to fend for himself in the ultra-savage Pandoran wilderness. This is like putting a three year-old out in the middle of the worst jungles of Africa and expecting him to survive. The only way to survive in Pandora is knowledge, and Josh is still a novice.

But he's brave. After witnessing a manticore ("This thing could eat a T-Rex and have the Alien for dessert") scarf down a titanothere (like a rhino, only bigger and faster), Josh is then attacked by a pack of viperwolves ("Wolves as painted by Francis Bacon") and is saved by somebody who has a lot of knowledge of Pandora: Zuleika, the princess of the local Na'vi tribe. (How does she look? Well, when was the last time you saw an ugly princess in a Hollywood movie?)

Like Grace, Josh gets through Zuleika's tough exterior because she's inspired by his bravery and feistiness.

So Zuleika takes Josh back to her village, showing him the infinite mysteries of the Pandoran ecosystem. (It's like listening to a Greenpeace fanatic talk about Earth.) Josh meets the tribe, including Zuleika's parents, and begins the spiritual transformation from human to Na'vi. He feels "right" as a Na'vi.

(The scriptment makes clear in numerous places that the Na'vi are analogs for the Native Americans and their culture emobodies all of the traits that we descendants of European Christendom most romanticize about the Native Americans: a close community, a connection to the spiritual world, and, most of all, harmony with nature. And in Pandora, the spirtual world and nature are synonymous.

(In keeping with this analogy, the RDA is openly modeled after the European settlers.)

In the following days, Josh and Zuleika's bond grows and there's an elaborate montage of Josh fully learning the ways of the Na'vi and how to surivive in Pandora. He's a natural amongst them, and far more intuitive than the other science-minded Avatars. And more courageous, too.

Because of this, Josh is the first Avatar that the Na'vi invite into their ritualistic sturmbeest hunt (i.e., a buffalo hunt squared). This is where the important concept of "queueing" comes into play. Most Pandoran creatures have an external nerve which acts as an input port to their brains. The Na'vi have the output, called their queue, which enables them to jack into the animals and commandeer them. (The Na'vi queue looks like a ponytail, with the hair being functional nerves.)

After the sturmbeest hunt (where Josh again proves his courageous mettle), he partakes in the Na'vi's festive celebration. Afterwards, Zuleika takes Josh to her special place in the forest and they make love.

The next day, the real trouble begins. Selfridge unexpectedly bulldozes a large section of the Na'vi forest, including sacred land. Josh and Grace, in human form, argue against this new construction, especially in light of the new potential Josh's bonding with the Na'vi has created. But Selfridge and the troops are sick of the Avatar program (presumably jealous of them), and the bulldozing continues the next day. This time, Powersuit-armed troops accompany the bulldozers, killing anything that moves. Powersuits, as their name suggests, are massive robotic soots that dramatically improve the troops size, speed, strength, etc.

Josh realizes that there's no reasoning with Selfridge or the system-worshipping troops and bureaucrats beneath him, so he seeks assistance from his fellow controllers, trying to arrange some sort of coup. "Pandora is not Hell, it's Eden. And Eden is being bulldozed and stripmined and raped. We have no right. We are the aliens here. We are the space monsters".

The Avatar controllers might have free minds but, alas, they're non-committal.

That's cool. Because it's not like the Na'vi were responding to the foreign aggression with sing-ins and picket signs. Led by Tsu Te, their greatest warrior, the Na'vi sabotage the RDA's construction equipment, destroying it with a napalm-like incendiary.

The next day Selfridge orders a retaliatory raid and Quaritch and his troops love it. They hop into their powersuits and raid the Na'vi with an assault that makes Haditha or My Lai look like a schoolyard scuffle. Countless Na'vi are killed, including the tribe's patriach (Zuleika's father), and many others are taken prisoner....including Zuleika.

Selfridge has also shut down the Avatar program, physically turning off the link equipment. But Josh, Grace, and several others head to Site 26, an auxiliary link facility. On the way, Grace takes a bullet, and her human body ultimately dies.

After re-linking to his Avatar, Josh goes to the Na'vi and helps them orchestrate a rescue of their imprisoned friends. (There's nothing especially clever about this rescue: they get in under cover of the RDA's tractors and protect themselves from the automated sentry guns by wearing employee's identifying badges.)

As the Na'vi are fleeing the facility, Quaritch and the rest of the troops discover what's happened and they Powersuit up and chase the Na'vi into the forest. The Na'vi, though, utterly destroy the troops, killing many of them brutally. Quaritch, the bloodthirsty trooper, is left dumbstruck at the defeat of his team. "What the hell is happening. They just go their asses kicked by bows and arrows?"

This episode prompts a formal declaration of war from Selfridge: the Na'vi are all to be killed, as are the renegade controllers.

And Josh is rallying the Na'vi with no less enthusiasm. He gives his best Henry V speech. Here's an excerpt:

"He tells them they are not just fighting for this part of the forest or these few trees, but for the very future of their world. He says the history [of the humans]....is one of blood. For as long as can be remembered, they take what is not theirs.... Their world, their forest, is a dying place. A poisoned place. They have killed their mother. And they will do the same here. The must be driven away. When they come again they will come with all their force, and we must be ready. We must fight, to our last breath...."

After speech, Grace's Na'vi body miraculously appears. (Her human body had been killed, remember.) Grace, now living exclusively as a Na'vi, explains the wholistic wonders of the Pandoran ecosystem. Pandora, the planet itself, is essentially a brain, its tress are the neurons, their roots its synapses. The humans and their troops were a cancer for Pandora, and so it used its resources (the animal and the plants) to cleanse itself of the cancer. Lastly (and this will be important later), Pandora can sometimes do a "soul transfer", put one consciousness into another body (where the Na'vi keep their spare bodies, I don't know), and it chose to save Grace's soul in this manner.

Josh then has all the Na'vi queue into the planet itself so that he can explain to Pandora the magnitude of the danger the humans present. He tells her about the Navajo and the Sioux, and how their treaties and their trust was betrayed, as will Pandora be betrayed if she trusts the humans.

Pandora listens.

The next day, Selfridge and Quaritch begin the epic war that will later be called the Battle of the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

The first part of the battle is in the air between thousands of queued Na'vi riding bansheerays and leonyptertyx (savage, hawk-like predators with wingspans of perhaps 30 meters) against dozens of humans vehicles, which all have VTOL ability. Most of the human ships are destroyed in a hydrogen explosion when a massive hydrogen-based bug is detonated.

While the air battle rages, dozens of troops in Powersuits raid the forest, as well. Here, the Na'vi have the help of all of Pandora's creatures, which the planet has directed against the humans.

Now these two interconnected battles are too dense with events for me to explain here. Suffice to say, the Pandorans eventually come ou ton top.

The battle climaxes in a fight between Josh (as a Na'vi, of course) fighting Colonel Quaritch in a Powersuit. Josh eventually gets Quaritch out of the suit. Quaritch flees back to the base on foot but is chased down by a pack of viperwolves.

And that's it for the Battle of the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

All the suriviving humans are rounded up - including Selfridge - and shipped back to the command ship in Pandora's orbit. Josh bluffs to them that Pandora is developing an extremely potent antibody for humans in its atmosphere, and if they return they will all certainly die.

That night, the Na'vi gather in a chant, queued into the planet itself. Josh's human and Avatar bodies lie side by side. His rebreather is removed from his human body, insuring its death. Zuleika kisses him....and his Na'vi eyes open.

_____ _____ _____

Note: I'll be posting my review of the story within a few days , and some other thoughts and analysis a few days after that. By February 20th - at the absolute latest - I'll have everything posted. As always, feel free to write to me at davidcbrennan@aol.com.

UPDATE: Avatar Review Will be One Day Late

With sincere apologies, I want to say that my review of Avatar is going to be a little late. I promised to have it posted today, but I'll have it up by tomorrow, the 11th. (This time, I don't just promise, but cross-my-heart and hope-to-die promise!)

To the extent that you're interested in an excuse, I've been busy trying to get funding for my business, and I've also just spread myself a little thin in studying the story.

Coming Soon: Review of Avatar Scriptment

Most of you probably know by now that Avatar is now official. Since the news came over two weeks ago and this is the first update since then, you've probably deduced that, while this is a pretty good place to come for opinions, I'm not stopping any presses with insider scoops.

However, through my relentless and intrepid investigatory work (www.google.com), I've finally obtained a full copy of the original scriptment for Avatar, and you can check back in here by February 10th for a full review. If you have any specific questions about it, e-mail them to me at DavidCBrennan@aol.com and I'll make sure to answer them, either in the review or via e-mail (the smart money's on "Can I have a copy?" as being the most submitted query).

Oh sure, the Avatar script's been floating around for a decade, so you can find plenty of reviews elsewhere online....but my opinions are the only ones that count, okay? (And you're also bound to find my criticisms laughably politically incorrect. (I mean, aren't I the only guy to slip in a reference to the Duke lacrosse hoax when mentioning James Cameron's works?)

In the meantime, here are some relevant links:

1) AintItCoolNews on seeing The Polar Express in D-3D, comparable to Avatar's. (After venturing out to see The Polar Express in Imax 3D myself, I agree with the praise of the format, although not really to the same degree. One other note is that, for some reason, digital movies like The Polar Express look a lot better in this format than real-world shoots in D-3D, such as Aliens of the Deep.)

2) AintItCoolNews on Robert Zemeckis' comparable upcoming digital movie, Beowulf.

3) Greg Dean Schmitz at Yahoo Movies now has an Avatar page. This site has some pretty good stuff....on the rare occasion when they have anything at all. But while it might get updated about as frequently as Star magazine's Pullitzer collection, when they do post a bit of gossip, you can go ahead and mark it down as fact.