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A Fox Cock-up? My Avatar Preview Review

It's probably presumptuous to review 15 minutes worth of select scenes from a movie so pioneering, it has been billed as something unlike anything seen before. Instead, I'm mostly going to talk about it as an experience and a marketing strategy.

But right off the bat, let me just deflate expectations: Avatar is a movie. It has characters, plot and, if you can believe it, plenty of things we've all seen before. The technology is amazing and definitely pushing the boundaries, but it seems more like an evolution than a quantum leap forward.

More about what was shown specifically later. First of all, we have to talk about how this method of marketing a movie was more pioneering and, in my opinion, a big missed opportunity. I first heard about this promotion Sunday night at a party from some friends who had been at the Avatar preview at Comic Con. (I don't know whether they had heard about it there, or just from the many movie websites they read.) To get a ticket, you'd have to go to the Avatar website at noon on Monday and sign up. I asked point blank: "You've seen the footage. Is it worth it? Is it worth seeing 15 minutes a few months early, when I'll definitely see the movie when it comes out?" Their answer was a hesitant yes.

Continue reading about the Avatar (contains no spoilers according to James Cameron himself)...The Botched Web Sign-Up

So on Monday at noon at work I went to the Avatar website to sign up. It was crashy; I couldn't. I got a direct sign up link from friends on Twitter - that didn't work either. I was almost laughing at how stupid Fox was in structuring this promotion. I figured everyone knew that if you sent thousands of people to a website at one time you needed serious server tech and bandwidth to keep it going. It's the principal of Distributed Denial Of Service attacks. Fox had DDOSed themselves. With movie fans.

It's not that this sort of web process is un-doable. Fox could've made it a rolling sign-up by geography or gone to Akamai or any number of other solutions. I'm assuming they just didn't know -- not, as some conspiracy-minded folks were speculating, that they wanted to be able to report in the press that they were overwhelmed by demand.

In any case, by mid-afternoon (3:30pm) they had gotten their act together enough that I got through on the direct link. I had been trying at irregular intervals up until then. (I had to work.) The website said it would send a confirmation to my email. Of course I used my spam-catcher address and didn't check it until that night. But it all looked good:

John Ott,

Congratulations! You are confirmed to be among the first to experience select scenes from James Cameron's epic motion picture AVATAR in IMAX 3D, on August 21st.

Details of your screening are as follows:

AMC Universal CityWalk Stadium 19 with IMAX
100 Universal City Plaza Bldg 5511, 6th Floor
Universal City, CA 91608
21st Aug, 2009 07:00 pm
Seats: 2
Code: a16-0298

Please print this e-mail and bring it with you to the screening along with a photo ID.

This screening will be monitored for unauthorized recording. By attending, you agree not to bring any recording devices into the theatre and you consent to physical search of your belongings and person for recording devices. If you attempt to enter with a recording device, you will be denied admission. If you attempt to use a recording device, you consent to immediate removal from the theatre and forfeiture of the device. Unauthorized recording will be reported to law enforcement and may subject you to criminal and civil liability.

Notice the legal paranoia is as long as the other information. C'mon, I thought the 3D made it impossible to pirate. (Or, conversely, if someone goes to the trouble of recording an extended promotion for your movie -- not the whole movie mind you -- shouldn't you thank them for caring?)

Two days later I got a second email:

We apologize for the inconvenience, but due to overwhelming demand to see the special scenes from James Cameron’s epic motion picture AVATAR, our AVATARMOVIES.COM RSVP site experienced technical difficulties. As a result of the crash you must re-select a screening time. Please note you may not get the original time you selected. Also new ticket confirmations that will be generated by your selection here will be the only accepted form of admittance.

Please click below and choose a new screening time.
http://rsvp.foxfilm.com/confirmation/screenings/id/13336/hash/e1f4222b35299ace1374b304d50a8d0e

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent by TCF.
Click here to view our online privacy policy.

http://foxus.rsys1.net/servlet/website/ResponseForm?MQNlE1zwkpOHJRwhspJR

They at least trusted their system had captured email addresses. I re-signed up and it was painless. The second confirmation was pretty much identical to the first, other than saying, "Please discard any previous confirmation letters as they are no longer valid."

The Low-Energy Screening

Up until Friday, I was still debating whether I would show up. Then it occurred to me that Fox had, through self-selection and a trial of dedication -- with all the technical difficulties -- gathered only the most extreme fanboys (and -girls) for these previews. They would probably put on a big dog-and-pony show and hand out gifts and generally get people pumped up to spread word-of-mouth. I wanted to see that as much as clips from the "revolutionary" new James Cameron movie.

So I got to the AMC Citywalk at Universal City around 6:30 for the 7:00 show (came straight from work). There was a check-in table with a very small line. I had to show my ID, got one of those anti-arm-hair wrist bands and a coupon for a discount movie ticket (that night only, matinee price) and free popcorn (with the purchase of a large Coke). This did not bode well. There was no line outside the IMAX theater and no security screening. A man handed me glasses and I was able to walk straight in.

Issue number one: The theater was only half full. It didn't fill up much more in the half hour I sat and waited. The mood was excited, but not a-buzz like a theater often feels on an opening night. Looking around, I'd guess the audience was 90% or more young men. Fanboys -- many of them probably USC film students. (UCLA students aren't as fanboyish, and they would've gone to the IMAX theater at The Bridge.)

A pre-recorded message kept playing every few minutes saying the show was sold out and asking everyone to move in -- only emphasizing that the show wasn't sold out. At one point, a security guard came in and asked everyone with a wristband to raise their right hand. This was confusing for people who had put the band on their left wrist, but it didn't matter. He wasn't going to be able to check everyone personally anyway, so it served only a theatrical security purpose.

A Fox PR person came and spoke to the audience. She was pretty good enthusiasm-wise -- said she had seen the movie, it was great, she was excited we'd be getting to see it for the first time -- but she had to stop and read a message from the corporate overlords telling us we would be monitored for recording devices. No prizes, no calls to action other than to see the movie on December 18.

A very nervous-to-be-public-speaking AMC representative then spoke. He reminded us of our coupons and then said that tickets for the midnight opening night of Avatar in December would be on sale tonight in the box office. We could buy them when we went out to get our matinee ticket for another movie at the theater. I'm sure I wasn't the only person at that point thinking -- actually, I'm in the theater already and it would be easier for me to sneak into a movie for free, thanks.

The Disconnected Footage

The preview began with a 3D message from James Cameron. It felt like he was standing too far forward in the screen. I read an interview where he was bragging that he'd figured out optimum parallax for 3D movies, so that didn't bode well. He also spoke as if the trailer hadn't come out -- which it had, a few days ago. Hello -- was this introduction recycled from Comic Con? (More on the trailer later.)

The first scene was a marine sergeant giving a speech to the troops. It felt derivative of Full Metal Jacket and Patton and very aware of itself in context of military movie speeches, but I'll reserve final judgment till I see it in context. The problem of strobing in motion in 3D movies was on full display in this scene. Even a slow tracking shot looked flickery. It was by far the weakest scene, but I understand why they showed it -- to introduce the fact that the main character, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), is wheelchair bound.

The next scene also suffered from the flicker problem, although there was less strobey movement. This involved the Jake getting brain-melded to his Avatar. There was some cool stuff of the scientists moving images from a screen to a tablet and generally good conflict and tension around the procedure, with Jake, when he is in his 11-foot blue avatar getting overjoyed. (With the Avatar, he can walk again.) There is a contrast between the live action and the cg that makes the cg look too clean -- one thing people had criticized in the trailer and, I think, something that will be a legitimate turn off to movie-goers, who are starting to expect something like District 9 that has a more gritty, realistic feel.

In the next scene, he's out with some other Avatars. He encounters a big creature that looks like a dinosaur mixed with a hammer-head shark. This big creature runs away when an even bigger creature comes up behind Jake. Just like we've seen in Jurassic Park, Star Wars and the new Star Trek. Anyway, Jake gets chased by the second creature and it's a pretty good, exciting chase, with a part where he hides in some tree roots being imagined in great and perilous detail. The other thing I noticed with this scene, the first one in full-cg, is how much more smooth the motion is. The CG looks much better when it isn't mixed with live action. (Could Zemekis have been onto something?)

In the next scene, Jake is saved from some small rodent-dinosaur creatures by Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). She speaks halting English, and because she is dressed tribally and loves nature I guess we're supposed to get a sort of Native American vibe from her. I have a co-worker who thinks the character design for her is super-hot. My reptile brain is a bit more conflicted about finding an elongated blue giraffe-faced woman attractive, although I admit was distracted by the repeated teasing glimpses of her nipples. It would be sad if Avatar's lasting contribution to the art of film was to provoke a new set of rules from the MPAA on CG nudity.

The final scene was by far the best. It involved a group of Na'vi, including Jake and Neytiri, edging out on a rock cliff filled with dragons so Jake could find one to "bond" with. It was like a 'breaking-the-stallion' scene in a Western, but with a fantasy spin. It was excellently realized, because only looking back on it did I notice that I wasn't paying attention to the CG or the 3D or anything else but the story.

The scene ended, they showed what appeared to be the end of the trailer, then lights came up and everyone filed out. No games; no prizes. I didn't overhear anyone talking about the movie, excitedly or negatively. Maybe the rest of the audience was too blown-away to speak. Or maybe Fox's strategy all along was just to lower the impossible expectations for a $300M+ movie that has been 14+ years in the making.

The Unfortunate Conclusion

I think Avatar will probably be a good movie. Between the clips and the trailer, I'm not convinced it will be a great movie. I'm not even convinced that the movie must be seen in 3D, and I'm a 3D booster. PIXAR's Up in 3D impressed me more with how 3D complemented the storytelling. For this story, it seems like a Wizard of Oz structure would've been suitable -- have the movie go into 3D once Jake had entered his avatar. That way, the immersive experience of 3D mirrors Jake's immersion in the ecosystem of the alien world.

It seems pretty clear from the trailer that Fox is trying to market this movie to women. (Billing it as "from the director of Titanic" but not Terminator 2 or Aliens; ending the trailer with a Braveheart-style kiss.) With a budget this big, they probably need to hit all four quadrants. It was pretty clear from the clips I saw that there is sexual tension between Jake and Neytiri. But the kiss shot looks like it's between her and another Na'vi. (Love triangle?) Anyhow, that looks like a very small part of the movie. It doesn't seem like it's a love story; it seems like it's a 'respect other cultures and respect nature' story.

What Avatar clearly does have, from what I saw, is plenty of action and an epic feel. Fox would do well to try to fit that into the next version of the trailer. There just aren't enough theaters to sell it on the 3D alone and, if it's a good enough movie, people who liked it the first time in 2D might come back to see it in 3D.

I think Avatar has been coasting on great buzz and Fox is taking a huge risk by showing only these clips of the movie and the teaser trailer. It may be a more forward-looking strategy -- have expectations more realistic going into opening weekend -- but, for me at least, my excitement for this movie has now flatlined. This preview screening -- which must've cost a small fortune in lost Friday-night box office, could've been improved by just a little more audience entertainment. Have a trivia contest and hand out a few signed posters -- something! Instead, it seemed Fox just wanted those email addresses, more than they wanted to show clips from the movie. They didn't even ask people to talk about it if they liked it. This preview screening strategy may be looked back on as a disaster, but I think it was more of a missed opportunity for Fox Marketing. I think it could've succeeded with a bit more effort and a lot more managing of expectations.

The alien planet is amazing and the mo-cap animation is better than the dead-eyed Zemekis version (how god awful is the Christmas Carol trailer?), but it did not blow me away. I wanted to be blown away and I expected to be blown away. If this had come out a few years ago, I might've been blown away. But coming, as it does, a week after I saw District 9, a sci-fi movie very much influenced by Cameron's earlier work that nonetheless tells an original and unpredictable story, it feels like a let down.

As I said at the beginning, it's presumptuous for me to judge the movie from just a few clips. I do believe Fox marketing and probably James Cameron made avoidable mistakes that may have squelched some of the stratospheric anticipation among the most rabid fans. I haven't looked around the net yet to see other responses. What you have just read is straight from my gut. I will now start adding links to other opinions below so we can all see whether I'm an outlier.

MORE:
The HD Room: A Reserved Reaction
Twitter Search: "Avatar preview" - seems generally positive
LATimes - video reactions
The Guardian.co.uk - they also think that Avatar Day may be designed to dampen expectations
Cinematical - tales of half-full theaters. "For a film that purports to be a magical, transporting experience, I feel like I just went to the DMV."
Aint It Cool's Dedicated Talkback
The Wrap

Seems like a lot of people felt like I did. A lot also didn't. The people willing to go on camera for LA Times were all ecstatic. The AICN fanboys were very negative about a perceived 'cartoon' appearance. Some of them also praised how the movie 'raped their eyeballs.' In all, a mixed bag and certainly not all positive. James Cameron gets a lot of blame for promising "photorealism" and delivering something else entirely (which is pretty cool, but doesn't mesh well with live action stuff that is, actually, photoreal).

About J. Ott

John Ott is a writer, filmmaker and futurist. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.