Will Avatar, James Cameron’s new 3D movie that is apparently the next stage in human evolution, have legs? The folks at IMAX certainly hope so. They’ve booked the film for a huge run of three months, which is two months, three weeks and four day longer than they gave Watchmen.
The three month window is not set in stone, and it seems likely that the rerelease of Beauty and the Beast will cut into those three months towards the end. But it’s still incredibly noteworthy. Movies just don’t play three months anymore. That’s most of the way to the modern home video window, in fact.
For the Avatards this is another sign that Cameron is about to raise the human consciousness to brand new levels. For those of us with knowledge of the history of cinema, it brings to mind the doomed roadshow releases of movies like Dr. Doolittle. I hope that the movie is just as amazing as the true believers expect; I’ve only seen one or two Cameron movies that touched me on any level that held once I walked out of the theater, and I’m not counting on Avatar bieng a film I need to revisit over the course of its potential three month IMAX lifespan. We’ll see.
And we’ll get our first taste of the film as early as next month, as recent reports have the trailer for Avatar appearing in front of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. This is weird because many people were certain that the first glimpse of Avatar footage would be in a 3D format. I would kind of love if Cameron did an old-fashioned Hitchcock-style trailer where he walked us through the sets and the computer labs and explained how the 2D presentation just wasn’t going to cut it for his movie.