Aug 10 2010
That ‘Avatar’ Will Never Work
Everyone knows that Avatar was in development for a long while, but most people didn’t know about it. But Hollywood insiders heard about the project being passed around, and in 1999 seemed like perhaps the most ridiculous idea in the world.
As you can see from this newspaper(?) excerpt, the idea of a CGI race of giant blue people in a movie with a $400M budget was a joke, and I have to stop and imagine what the film might have looked like with 1999 special effects. I now know what Cameron meant when he said the movie couldn’t be made because “the technology didn’t exist yet.”
How long do you think it’ll take for Avatar‘s visual effects to look dated? So far, films released after have yet to catch it, but when will those FX become the norm?
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- Five Awesome Pioneering Special Effects in Movies
This is a excerpt from one of the Uncle John’s books. It’s those water proofed cover books that just contain a bunch of tidbits for bathroom readers.
If I had to guess it’s from “Uncle John’s bathroom reader plunges into Hollywood”.
In hindsight, this seems like a very ignorant article, but it is interesting to look at it from the perspective of the producers of the time.
Without knowing of Avatar’s success, it sounds like a pretty silly idea and the $400 million price-tag only makes the concept even more incredulous.
“Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader”
I reached that page right around the time Avatar was hitting theaters.
And I agree with Grant… The movie sounds a little silly, even knowing how successful it is.
I’m sure this movie will looked dated sometime w/in the next few years. That is one of my major gripes about CGI, even watching movies like Matrix (trilogy), StarWars, Spiderman…etc…etc…they all looked dated and fake.
I’m not a fan of CGI.
That Dieter movie looks pretty funny
one of the other movies they mention in that article (cuz I have that book, it’s a bathroom trivia book) is an animated film by John K (of Ren and Stimpy fame) which eventually turned into the show Ripping Friends…the show was pretty bad, but if they had done it like the hard R flick they described in the article it would have been great
I forgot they mentioned avatar in that.
Didn’t Lord of the Rings get turned down at first?
The Dieter movie sure looks like a good ideOH MY GOD ITS THE SAME THING AS BRUNO AND BORAT!