Principal photography for Avatar began in April 2007 in Los Angeles and Wellington. Cameron described the film as a hybrid with a full live-action shoot in combination with computer-generated characters and live environments. "Ideally at the end of the day the audience has no idea which they're looking at," Cameron said. The director indicated that he had already worked four months on nonprincipal scenes for the film.[66] The live action was shot with a modified version of the proprietary digital 3-D Fusion Camera System, developed by Cameron and Vince Pace.[67] In January 2007, Fox had announced that 3-D filming for Avatar would be done at 24 frames per second despite Cameron's strong opinion that a 3-D film requires higher frame rate to make strobing less noticeable.[68] According to Cameron, the film is composed of 60% computer-generated elements and 40% live action, as well as traditional miniatures.[69] Motion-capture photography lasted 31 days at the Hughes Aircraft stage in Playa Vista in Los Angeles.[54][70] Live action photography began in October 2007 at Stone Street Studios in Wellington and was scheduled to last 31 days.[71] More than a thousand people worked on the production.[70] In preparation of the filming sequences, all of the actors underwent professional training specific to their characters such as archery, horseback riding, firearm use, and hand-to-hand combat. They received language and dialect training in the Na'vi language created for the film.[72] Before shooting the film, Cameron also sent the cast to the Hawaiian tropical rainforests[73] to get a feel for a rainforest setting before shooting on the soundstage.[72] During filming, Cameron made use of his virtual camera system, a new way of directing motion-capture filmmaking. The system shows the actors' virtual counterparts in their digital surroundings in real time, allowing the director to adjust and direct scenes just as if shooting live action. According to Cameron, "It's like a big, powerful game engine. If I want to fly through space, or change my perspective, I can. I can turn the whole scene into a living miniature and go through it on a 50 to 1 scale."[74] Using conventional techniques, the complete virtual world cannot be seen until the motion-capture of the actors is complete. Cameron said this process does not diminish the value or importance of acting. On the contrary, because there is no need for repeated camera and lighting setups, costume fittings and make-up touch-ups, scenes do not need to be interrupted repeatedly.[75] Cameron described the system as a "form of pure creation where if you want to move a tree or a mountain or the sky or change the time of day, you have complete control over the elements".[76] Cameron gave fellow directors Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson a chance to test the new technology.[65] Spielberg said, "I like to think of it as digital makeup, not augmented animation ... Motion capture brings the director back to a kind of intimacy that actors and directors only know when they're working in live theater."[75] Spielberg and George Lucas were also able to visit the set to watch Cameron direct with the equipment.[77] To film the shots where CGI interacts with live action, a unique camera referred to as a "simulcam" was used, a merger of the 3-D fusion camera and the virtual camera systems. While filming live action in real time with the simulcam, the CGI images captured with the virtual camera or designed from scratch, are superimposed over the live action images as in augmented reality and shown on a small monitor, making it possible for the director to instruct the actors how to relate to the virtual material in the scene.[72] Due to Cameron's personal convictions about climate change, he allowed only plant-based (vegan) food to be served on set. |
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A number of innovative visual effects techniques were used during production. According to Cameron, work on the film had been delayed since the 1990s to allow the techniques to reach the necessary degree of advancement to adequately portray his vision of the film.[13][14] The director planned to make use of photorealistic computer-generated characters, created using new motion capture animation technologies he had been developing in the 14 months leading up to December 2006.[74] Innovations include a new system for lighting massive areas like Pandora's jungle,[80] a motion-capture stage or "volume" six times larger than any previously used, and an improved method of capturing facial expressions, enabling full performance capture. To achieve the face capturing, actors wore individually made skull caps fitted with a tiny camera positioned in front of the actors' faces; the information collected about their facial expressions and eyes is then transmitted to computers.[81] According to Cameron, the method allows the filmmakers to transfer 100% of the actors' physical performances to their digital counterparts.[82] Besides the performance capture data which were transferred directly to the computers, numerous reference cameras gave the digital artists multiple angles of each performance.[83] A technically challenging scene was near the end of the film when the computer-generated Neytiri held the live action Jake in human form, and attention was given to the details of the shadows and reflected light between them.[84] The lead visual effects company was Weta Digital in Wellington, at one point employing 900 people to work on the film.[85] Because of the huge amount of data which needed to be stored, cataloged and available for everybody involved, even on the other side of the world, a new cloud computing and Digital Asset Management (DAM) system named Gaia was created by Microsoft especially for Avatar, which allowed the crews to keep track of and coordinate all stages in the digital processing.[86] To render Avatar, Weta used a 930 m2 (10,000 sq ft) server farm making use of 4,000 Hewlett-Packard servers with 35,000 processor cores with 104 terabytes of RAM and three petabytes of network area storage running Ubuntu Linux, Grid Engine cluster manager, and 2 of the animation software and managers, Pixar's RenderMan and Pixar's Alfred queue management system.[87][88][89][90] The render farm occupies the 193rd to 197th spots in the TOP500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers. A new texturing and paint software system, called Mari, was developed by The Foundry in cooperation with Weta.[91][92] Creating the Na'vi characters and the virtual world of Pandora required over a petabyte of digital storage,[93] and each minute of the final footage for Avatar occupies 17.28 gigabytes of storage.[94] It would often take the computer several hours to render a single frame of the film.[95] To help finish preparing the special effects sequences on time, a number of other companies were brought on board, including Industrial Light & Magic, which worked alongside Weta Digital to create the battle sequences. ILM was responsible for the visual effects for many of the film's specialized vehicles and devised a new way to make CGI explosions.[96] Joe Letteri was the film's visual effects general supervisor.[97] Music and soundtrack Main article: Avatar: Music from the Motion Picture James Horner – "Jake Enters His Avatar World" 0:32 listen to a clip from the score of the 2009 film Avatar. Problems playing this file? See media help. Composer James Horner scored the film, his third collaboration with Cameron after Aliens and Titanic.[98] Horner recorded parts of the score with a small chorus singing in the alien language Na'vi in March 2008.[99] He also worked with Wanda Bryant, an ethnomusicologist, to create a music culture for the alien race.[100] The first scoring sessions were planned to take place in early 2009.[101] During production, Horner promised Cameron that he would not work on any other project except for Avatar and reportedly worked on the score from four in the morning until ten at night throughout the process. He stated in an interview, "Avatar has been the most difficult film I have worked on and the biggest job I have undertaken."[102] Horner composed the score as two different scores merged into one. He first created a score that reflected the Na'vi way of sound and then combined it with a separate "traditional" score to drive the film.[72] British singer Leona Lewis was chosen to sing the theme song for the film, called "I See You". An accompanying music video, directed by Jake Nava, premiered December 15, 2009, on MySpace. |
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Avatar is primarily an action-adventure journey of self-discovery, in the context of imperialism, and deep ecology.[104] Cameron said his inspiration was "every single science fiction book I read as a kid" and that he wanted to update the style of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter series.[11] He acknowledged that Avatar shares themes with the films At Play in the Fields of the Lord, The Emerald Forest, and Princess Mononoke, which feature clashes between cultures and civilizations, and with Dances with Wolves, where a battered soldier finds himself drawn to the culture he was initially fighting against.[105][106] He also cited Hayao Miyazaki's anime films such as Princess Mononoke as an influence on the ecosystem of Pandora.[106] In 2012, Cameron filed a 45-page legal declaration that intended to "describe in great detail the genesis of the ideas, themes, storylines, and images that came to be Avatar."[107] In addition to historical events (such as European colonization of the Americas), his life experiences and several of his unproduced projects, Cameron drew connections between Avatar and his previous films. He cited his script and concept art for Xenogenesis, partially produced as a short film, as being the basis for many of the ideas and visual designs in Avatar. He stated that Avatar's "concepts of a world mind, intelligence within nature, the idea of projecting force or consciousness using an avatar, colonization of alien planets, greedy corporate interests backed up by military force, the story of a seemingly weaker group prevailing over a technologically superior force, and the good scientist were all established and recurrent themes" from his earlier films including Aliens, The Abyss, Rambo: First Blood Part II, The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. He specifically mentioned the "water tentacle" in The Abyss as an example of an "avatar" that "takes on the appearance of...an alien life form...in order to bridge the cultural gap and build trust."[108] Cameron also cited a number of works by other creators as "reference points and sources of inspiration" for Avatar. These include two of his "favorite" films, 2001: A Space Odyssey, where mankind experiences an evolution after meeting alien life, and Lawrence of Arabia, where "an outsider...encounters and immerses into a foreign culture and then ultimately joins that group to fight other outsiders." Cameron said he became familiar with the concept of a human operating a "synthetic avatar" inside another world from George Henry Smith's short story "In the Imagicon" and Arthur C. Clarke's novel The City and the Stars. He said he learned of the term "avatar" by reading the cyberpunk novels Neuromancer by William Gibson and Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling. The idea of a "world mind" originated in the novel Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. Cameron mentioned several other films about people interacting with "indigenous cultures" as inspiring him, including Dances with Wolves, The Man Who Would Be King, The Mission, The Emerald Forest, Medicine Man, The Jungle Book and FernGully. He also cited as inspiration the John Carter and Tarzan stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs and other adventure stories by Rudyard Kipling and H. Rider Haggard.[108] In a 2007 interview with Time magazine, Cameron was asked about the meaning of the term Avatar, to which he replied, "It's an incarnation of one of the Hindu gods taking a flesh form. In this film what that means is that the human technology in the future is capable of injecting a human's intelligence into a remotely located body, a biological body."[10] Cameron also cited the Japanese cyberpunk manga and anime Ghost in the Shell, in terms of how humans can remotely control, and transfer their personalities into, alien bodies.[109][110] For the love story between characters Jake and Neytiri, Cameron applied a star-crossed love theme, which he said was in the tradition of Romeo and Juliet.[108] He acknowledged its similarity to the pairing of Jack and Rose from his film Titanic. An interviewer stated, "Both couples come from radically different cultures that are contemptuous of their relationship and are forced to choose sides between the competing communities."[113] Cameron described Neytiri as his "Pocahontas," saying that his plotline followed the historical story of a "white outsider [who] falls in love with the chief's daughter, who becomes his guide to the tribe and to their special bond with nature."[108] Cameron felt that whether or not the Jake and Neytiri love story would be perceived as believable partially hinged on the physical attractiveness of Neytiri's alien appearance, which was developed by considering her appeal to the all-male crew of artists.[114] Although Cameron felt Jake and Neytiri do not fall in love right away, their portrayers (Worthington and Saldana) felt the characters did. Cameron said the two actors "had a great chemistry" during filming.[113] A gray mountain in the middle of a forest. Pandora's floating "Hallelujah Mountains" were inspired in part by the Chinese Huangshan mountains (pictured).[115] Zhangjiajie National Forest Park For the film's floating "Hallelujah Mountains", the designers drew inspiration from "many different types of mountains, but mainly the karst limestone formations in China."[116] According to production designer Dylan Cole, the fictional floating rocks were inspired by Huangshan (also known as Yellow Mountain), Guilin, Zhangjiajie, among others around the world.[116] Cameron had noted the influence of the Chinese peaks on the design of the floating mountains.[117] To create the interiors of the human mining colony on Pandora, production designers visited the Noble Clyde Boudreaux[118] oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico during June 2007. They photographed, measured and filmed every aspect of the platform, which was later replicated on-screen with photorealistic CGI during post-production. |
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The first photo of the film was released on August 14, 2009,[124] and Empire released exclusive images from the film in its October issue.[125] Cameron, producer Jon Landau, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, and Sigourney Weaver appeared at a panel, moderated by Tom Rothman, at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con on July 23. Twenty-five minutes of footage was screened[126] in Dolby 3D.[127] Weaver and Cameron appeared at additional panels to promote the film, speaking on the 23rd[128] and 24th[129][130] respectively. James Cameron announced at the Comic-Con Avatar Panel that August 21 will be 'Avatar Day'. On this day, the trailer was released in all theatrical formats. The official game trailer and toy line of the film were also unveiled on this day.[131] The 129-second trailer was released online on August 20, 2009.[132] The new 210-second trailer was premiered in theaters on October 23, 2009, then soon after premiered online on Yahoo! on October 29, 2009, to positive reviews.[133][134] An extended version in IMAX 3D received overwhelmingly positive reviews.[132] The Hollywood Reporter said that audience expectations were colored by "the [same] establishment skepticism that preceded Titanic" and suggested the showing reflected the desire for original storytelling.[135] The teaser has been among the most viewed trailers in the history of film marketing, reaching the first place of all trailers viewed on Apple.com with 4 million views.[136] On October 30, to celebrate the opening of the first 3-D cinema in Vietnam, Fox allowed Megastar Cinema to screen exclusive 16 minutes of Avatar to a number of press.[137] The three-and-a-half-minute trailer of the film premiered live on November 1, 2009, during a Dallas Cowboys football game at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on the Diamond Vision screen, one of the world's largest video displays, and to TV audiences viewing the game on Fox. It is said to be the largest live motion picture trailer viewing in history.[138] The Coca-Cola Company collaborated with Fox to launch a worldwide marketing campaign to promote the film. The highlight of the campaign was the website AVTR.com. Specially marked bottles and cans of Coca-Cola Zero, when held in front of a webcam, enabled users to interact with the website's 3-D features using augmented reality (AR) technology.[139] The film was heavily promoted in an episode of the Fox series Bones in the episode "The Gamer In The Grease" (Season 5, Episode 9). Avatar star Joel David Moore has a recurring role on the program, and is seen in the episode anxiously awaiting the release of the film.[140] A week prior to the American release, Zoe Saldana promoted the film on Adult Swim when she was interviewed by an animated Space Ghost.[141] McDonald's had a promotion mentioned in television commercials in Europe called "Avatarize yourself", which encouraged people to go to the website set up by Oddcast, and use a photograph of themselves to change into a Na'vi.[142] Books Avatar: A Confidential Report on the Biological and Social History of Pandora, a 224-page book in the form of a field guide to the film's fictional setting of the planet of Pandora, was released by Harper Entertainment on November 24, 2009.[143] It is presented as a compilation of data collected by the humans about Pandora and the life on it, written by Maria Wilhelm and Dirk Mathison. HarperFestival also released Wilhelm's 48-page James Cameron's Avatar: The Reusable Scrapbook for children.[144] The Art of Avatar was released on November 30, 2009, by Abrams Books. The book features detailed production artwork from the film, including production sketches, illustrations by Lisa Fitzpatrick, and film stills. Producer Jon Landau wrote the foreword, Cameron wrote the epilogue, and director Peter Jackson wrote the preface.[145] In October 2010, Abrams Books also released The Making of Avatar, a 272-page book that detailed the film's production process and contains over 500 color photographs and illustrations.[146] In a 2009 interview, Cameron said that he planned to write a novel version of Avatar after the film was released.[147] In February 2010, producer Jon Landau stated that Cameron plans a prequel novel for Avatar that will "lead up to telling the story of the movie, but it would go into much more depth about all the stories that we didn't have time to deal with", saying that "Jim wants to write a novel that is a big, epic story that fills in a lot of things".[148] In August 2013 it was announced that Cameron hired Steven Gould to pen four standalone novels to expand the Avatar universe.[149] ance Post released a special limited edition stamp based on Avatar, coinciding with the film's worldwide release. |
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Vision restored Vision begins to suffer mental stress and curiosity, realizing he wishes a purpose in life beyond the Avengers. He seeks out help from scientist Miles Lipton, an expert in artificial intelligence and philosophies regarding consciousness. Lipton upgrades Vision with a holographic projector so he can disguise himself as a human, "Victor Shade", and mingle with humanity to learn more about them. When Vision continues to show mental stress, Lipton learns the android's mind requires a replicated human brain pattern for his operating system to properly function. Miles Lipton uploads a program based on the brain patterns and memory recordings of his deceased son, scientist Alex Lipton. As a result, Vision's mental strain is alleviated and he regains some understanding of emotion, as well as a greater capacity for empathy.[41] The Avengers fight a group of enemies called the Gatherers, one of whom is an overtly emotional and corrupt Vision who still has red-colored skin and is native to a parallel Earth. This other Vision (later called "Anti-Vision") infiltrates the Avengers by exchanging minds with the heroic Vision.[10] While the Anti-Vision operates with the Avengers, now housed in the chalk-white body, the heroic Vision awakens in a red-skinned body identical to his original form, now a prisoner of the Gatherers. Eventually, he is freed but Anti-Vision escapes before they can exchange minds again.[11] Soon after having his original appearance restored, Vision experiences nightmares and then suffers a temporary break from reality, convincing himself he is a 1930s movie style private detective named Simon Williams. He realizes Ultron's design included a back-up of Wonder Man's brain patterns, a back-up which is now activating and clashing with those of Alex Lipton. After defeating the Anti-Vision, who was responsible for his nightmares, Vision is able to reassert his identity and the different aspects of his mind merge, restoring his original personality. Vision takes a leave of absence from the Avengers to properly adjust.[12] Returning to the Avengers team later, he approaches Wanda, who realizes that he his capacity for emotions has been restored. When Vision broaches the subject, Wanda becomes guarded and tells him that their relationship is in the past.[42] Vision decides not to explain to her he has also regained the emotions tied to his memories from before he was dismantled, deciding he has hurt Wanda enough. When Wanda later officially rejoins the main Avengers team, the two are tense around each other but Pietro Maximoff, having also returned and now regretful of his treatment of Vision in the past, attempts to reconnect them as friends. Vision is present when the Fantastic Four and the Avengers attempt to stop the powerful villain Onslaught. During the battle, he is seriously injured and instinctively asks for Wanda, hoping she will comfort him. Soon afterward, Vision joins Wanda, the other Avengers present, and the Fantastic Four in destroying Onslaught by sacrificing their lives.[43] Thanks to the intervention of the powerful superhuman child Franklin Richards, the heroes do not die but are sent to an alternate Earth where they live out new versions of their lives. In this Heroes Reborn reality, Vision is a purely robotic android. Months after their apparent death, these heroes are able to return to their original Earth. Heroes Return: Avengers After returning home, the Avengers discuss reforming only to then wind up in a battle with the sorceress Morgan Le Fay. The battle is won, but Vision suffers injuries that take weeks to repair, forcing him again to communicate by hologram. During this time, Wanda repeatedly checks on Vision. Vision, still afraid to hurt Wanda again, insists that although he has a true personality again, he is still a different person than the one she married. Conflicted about her feelings for Vision and his seemingly cold and harsh attitude toward her, Wanda finds comforts with Wonder Man and later concludes she has had feelings for him for some time but was still mourning her marriage. The two begin a relationship.[44] Soon afterward, Vision's body is restored and he rejoins as a fully active Avenger. Later on, Wanda realizes Vision lied about still thinking of himself as a new person and has regained the full emotional connections to his memories before he was dismantled, including their relationship.[45] Sympathetic that Vision misses her, Wanda remains firm about leaving their relationship in the past and continuing her romance with Simon, adding that a reunion may have been possible earlier if her former husband had not chosen to lie and close himself off.[46] Later, she has a copy of her own brain patterns made and gifts it to Vision, suggesting that one day if he wishes he can create a friend or love interest who is similar to her and understands him but is not an exact copy of her, just as he and Wonder Man are similar but not exact copies of each other.[47] After a battle with Ultron,[48] Vision admits he has been suffering from depression and insecurity. He once believed his attraction to Wanda was his own experience, free of Simon's influence and proof he was a person who could love. But Simon's attraction to Wanda and their relationship seems to confirm, in his mind, that his android personality only mimics what Wonder Man would do in the same situation. Wonder Man points out that Ultron recently confirmed Vision's brain patterns have evolved into a unique pattern due to experiences and emotional changes Simon Williams never had. Wonder Man also admits Vision is the man he wished he could be, a person who had his inclinations and basic emotions but none of the memories of his many personal defeats and shames in life, someone free of Simon's emotional baggage who is able to grow into a different, better person. Touched by these words and Simon's view, Vision decides he needs space to consider his situation. He takes a leave of absence from the Avengers, eventually settling in Chicago where he lives as Victor Shade.[49] Weeks later, Vision alerts the Avengers to a crime syndicate meeting. After the adventure, he rejoins the team, serving alongside Wanda (Wonder Man at this point had left to pursue his own agenda). After checking Wanda will not be distressed by the situation, Vision asks out teammate Carol Danvers, and the two enjoy their first date after several delays.[50] Further adventures prevent a second date and Carol indicated more than once that she believed things between Wanda and Vision were not done, leading to the two deciding to enjoy each other's company as friends. Around the same time, after a relationship of several months, Simon Williams and Wanda Maximoff break up, realizing they have been drifting apart for some time.[51] After a war against the time villain Kang, Victor runs into Darby, a friend from Chicago who met him as "Victor Shade" and figured out his identity. To his surprise, Darby shows romantic interest as well.[52] A malfunction leads Vision to lose his memories. Led to the grave of Phineas T. Horton, he meets a boy named Derek and a woman named Victoria Anderson, the latter of whom is the granddaughter of Horton. Together, the three fight a robot "brother" of Vision's called the Gremlin, a dangerous device created by Horton science that can hack different systems. Vision's memory is restored but a side effect now means his robotic skeletal frame becomes visible when he becomes intangible. Victoria Anderson tells Vision that they are family and he is grateful to make another familial connection.[19] Weeks afterward, Wanda is injured during an Avengers mission. Afterward, Carol presses Vision to accept that he is worried about her and follow his desire to check on her recovery.[53] After recovering, Wanda remarks her regret that friction remains between her and Vision.[54] After another battle, Vision is cold to Wanda again then apologizes and admits he has feelings for her and the two begin reconnecting. Diseases like skin cancer, liver disease, and diabetes...
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Disassembled / Reassembled Through circumstances that are not explained, Wanda somehow forgets the existence of her children again, as well as the years she spent learning to cope with their loss, and the Avengers also forget that she regained the memories soon after losing them.[40] Likewise, Dr. Strange forgets having encountered Wanda and the Avengers after the loss of the children and being updated about Wanda's life. During some recreation time, Wanda is then reminded of the twins thanks to the Wasp commenting it is wrong for superheroes to have children and that Wanda was foolish for trying to have two. The sudden flood of memories and grief overwhelm Wanda, who suddenly also has another power increase and then attempts to alter reality to recreate them. This causes a series of catastrophic events that includes the destruction of Avengers Mansion as well as Vision himself. Wanda is later subdued and falls into a coma. Having suffered heavy losses, the Avengers disband and do not reform until months later.[56] Unknown to the heroes at the time, Wanda was not entirely responsible for her actions. After recalling the loss of her children, she sought help from Dr. Doom in possibly restoring them to existence. Doom, a powerful scientist and sorcerer, used Wanda to tap into a great, powerful source of magical energy that then boosted her power and took over her mind. It was Doom who then influenced her to attack the Avengers.[57] Several young heroes are recruited to form a new Young Avengers team by a program Vision created before his death. Vision's basic programming is later merged with the armor of Iron Lad (a young and heroic version of Kang). The armor later becomes a sentient being of its own that resembles a teenage version of Vision. In Mighty Avengers the original Vision and Iron Lad are briefly separated from this being by the power of the Cosmic Cube.[58] The teenage Vision serves with the Young Avengers for some time, even beginning a relationship with teammate Cassie Lang. During the Chaos War, the original android Vision is one of many deceased heroes seemingly restored to life after the events in the death realms.[59] Vision joins with other resurrected Avengers in their fight against Grim Reaper and Nekra.[60] During the fight, Vision blows himself up while in battle with Grim Reaper, apparently destroying them both.[61] The Young Avenger known as Wiccan (Billy Kaplan) and the teenage hero called Speed (Tommy Shepherd) realize they look like identical twins. Wiccan realizes that they might be the reincarnated children of Wanda and Vision, little Billy and Thomas. They and other heroes investigate and find Wanda Maximoff in Latveria, amnesiac and about to marry Doctor Doom. Restoring Wanda's memories, she now refers to Billy and Thomas as "lost souls" who were taken by Mephisto rather than, as he claimed, false people empowered by Mephisto's own essence. The heroes discover Wanda was not entirely responsible for her actions when she attacked the Avengers, causing the destruction of the original android Vision and Avengers Mansion. The life force power Doom had her tap into not only gave her the ability to warp reality but overwhelmed her mind. Doom takes the power from Wanda briefly, returning her to normal, but he is then defeated and the power is released. Before escaping, Doom indicates he deliberately took control of Wanda and forced her to make the attack (though it is unclear if he is truthful or is absolving her because he has grown to love her). The battle ends with the death of Cassie Lang and the destruction of teenage Vision. While Wanda consider how she can atone for her actions, even if she was not entirely responsible, the Young Avengers decide not to try resurrecting teenage Vision from an earlier back-up since it might not truly be him and they would cause him pain by revealing Cassie died after his last back-up and the team was now disbanding.[57] Vision Returns Soon after the death of teenage Vision, Tony Stark is finally able to rebuild the original android Vision, who once again joins the Avengers.[62] After being informed about what happened after his destruction, the Vision makes amends with She-Hulk, who had destroyed his already damaged form while under Wanda's influence.[63] Later, the possibility of bringing Wanda back to the team is discussed, now that it has been discovered she was under the influence of Doctor Doom and a cosmic force when she unleashed her temporarily enhanced power on the Avengers. Despite knowing this, Vision refuses to absolve Wanda of all guilt and reminds her that she still corrupted his mind and used him to attack his friends, something he cannot forgive yet when she has not proven that she is worth trusting against. As Wanda leaves the mansion, Vision weeps.[64] Later on, Wanda is invited to atone for her actions by joining the new Avengers Unity Squad, a team of former Avengers and former X-Men meant to promote mutant/human cooperation to the public. After several adventures, Wanda discovers Magneto is not her father. Vision joins the Unity Squad on a mission to rescue Wanda and her twin brother Pietro from Counter-Earth, where they are hoping to gain answers about their past from the geneticist the High Evolutionary. Vision is initially still bitter, describing Wanda as a bomb that will detonate again. During the adventure, he sees her actions to protect the team and her sorrow at not being able to learn much about her past beyond that she is not a mutant. Vision finds sympathy for Scarlet Witch and reaches out to her with compassion. The two begin a new friendship.[65] Soon afterward, Vision leaves the Avengers for a short time and visits Billy Kaplan, Wiccan.[66] Increasingly overwhelmed with guilt due to having a perfect memory of his many losses and failures, including a failure to save someone from a bus crash, Vision begins suffering post-traumatic hallucinations. He decides to delete his emotions again to regain a functional state, trusting that his recent upgrades will keep him functional.[67] During this, while Vision is off-line and vulnerable, an incarnation of Kang the Conqueror installs his own protocols into the android. When the Avengers reform, the corrupted Vision starts making them suspicious of one another.[68] When the incarnation of Kang attacks, Vision joins him.[69] Iron Man forces a reboot of Vision's mind from the "Avengers Cloud." Now in control of his mind again, Vision restores his capacity for emotions and helps the Avengers defeat Kang. Vision feels shame and regret for his actions against the Avengers, even while acknowledging he was under another's control. After taking several days to himself, he tries to atone for his actions by making gestures of friendship to his teammates.[70] After another battle with Ultron, Vision upgrades himself by activating evolution protocols the evil robot had programmed into him. This results in Vision being broken down and then rebuilt as a colony of millions of microscopic nanorobotics or "nanobots" that unite to replicate his previous body but also now grant him enhanced abilities.[71] He then joins Hank Pym's new "Avengers A.I." group alongside Monica Chang, Ultron's other "son" Victor Mancha, and a reprogrammed Doombot.[71] In the miniseries Ultron Forever, Vision and Black Widow are drawn into the future and join a team of Avengers apparently brought together by Doctor Doom to defeat a future Ultron.[72] Doom's true plan is to take Ultron's place, but Vision realizes this not Doom but the Doombot who worked with him in the Avengers A.I. team. He convinces the Doombot to abandon his plans for conquest and follow more positive ideas. All the best,
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Home media 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released the film on DVD and Blu-ray in the US on April 22, 2010,[175] and in the UK on April 26.[176] The US release was not on a Tuesday as is the norm, but was done to coincide with Earth Day.[177] The first DVD and Blu-ray release does not contain any supplemental features other than the theatrical film and the disc menu in favor of and to make space for optimal picture and sound. The release also preserves the film's native 1.78:1 (16:9) format as Cameron felt that was the best format to watch the film.[178] The Blu-ray disc contains DRM (BD+ 5) which some Blu-ray players might not support without a firmware update.[179][180] Avatar set a first-day launch record in the U.S. for Blu-ray sales at 1.5 million units sold, breaking the record previously held by The Dark Knight (600,000 units sold). First-day DVD and Blu-ray sales combined were over four million units sold.[181] In its first four days of release, sales of Avatar on Blu-ray reached 2.7 million in the United States and Canada – overtaking The Dark Knight to become the best ever selling Blu-ray release in the region.[182][183] The release later broke the Blu-ray sales record in the UK the following week.[184] In its first three weeks of release, the film sold a total of 19.7 million DVD and Blu-ray discs combined, a new record for sales in that period.[185] As of July 18, 2012, DVD sales (not including Blu-ray) totaled over 10.5 million units sold with $190,806,055 in revenue.[186] Avatar retained its record as the top-selling Blu-ray in the US market until January 2015, when it was surpassed by Disney's Frozen.[187] The Avatar three-disc Extended Collector's Edition on DVD and Blu-ray was released on November 16, 2010. Three different versions of the film are present on the discs: the original theatrical cut (162 minutes), the special edition cut (170 minutes), and a collector's extended cut (178 minutes). The DVD set spreads the film across two discs, while the Blu-ray set presents it on a single disc.[188] The collector's extended cut contains 8 more minutes of footage, thus making it 16 minutes longer than the original theatrical cut. Cameron mentioned, "you can sit down, and in a continuous screening of the film, watch it with the Earth opening". He stated the "Earth opening" is an additional 4+1⁄2 minutes of scenes that were in the film for much of its production but were ultimately cut before the film's theatrical release.[189] The release also includes an additional 45 minutes of deleted scenes and other extras.[188] Cameron initially stated that Avatar would be released in 3D around November 2010, but the studio issued a correction: "3-D is in the conceptual stage and Avatar will not be out on 3D Blu-ray in November."[190] In May 2010, Fox stated that the 3D version would be released some time in 2011.[185] It was later revealed that Fox had given Panasonic an exclusive license for the 3D Blu-ray version and only with the purchase of a Panasonic 3DTV. The length of Panasonic's exclusivity period is stated to last until February 2012.[191] On October 2010, Cameron stated that the standalone 3D Blu-ray would be the final version of the film's home release and that it was "maybe one, two years out".[192] On Christmas Eve 2010, Avatar had its 3D television world premiere on Sky.[193][194][195] On August 13, 2012, Cameron announced on Facebook that Avatar would be released globally on Blu-ray 3D.[196] The Blu-ray 3D version was finally released on October 16, 2012.[197] Reception Critical response On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 82% of 319 reviews are positive, and the average rating is 7.4/10. The site's consensus reads, "It might be more impressive on a technical level than as a piece of storytelling, but Avatar reaffirms James Cameron's singular gift for imaginative, absorbing filmmaking."[198] On Metacritic — which assigns a weighted mean score — the film has a score of 83 out of 100 based on 35 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[199] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale. Every demographic surveyed was reported to give this rating. These polls also indicated that the main draw of the film was its use of 3D.[200] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called the film "extraordinary" and gave it four stars out of four. "Watching Avatar, I felt sort of the same as when I saw Star Wars in 1977," he said, adding that like Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, the film "employs a new generation of special effects" and it "is not simply a sensational entertainment, although it is that. It's a technical breakthrough. It has a flat-out Green and anti-war message".[201] A. O. Scott of At The Movies also compared his viewing of the film to the first time he viewed Star Wars and he said "although the script is a little bit ... obvious," it was "part of what made it work".[202][203] Todd McCarthy of Variety praised the film, saying "The King of the World sets his sights on creating another world entirely in Avatar, and it's very much a place worth visiting."[204] Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a positive review. "The screen is alive with more action and the soundtrack pops with more robust music than any dozen sci-fi shoot-'em-ups you care to mention," he stated.[205] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone awarded Avatar a three-and-a-half out of four star rating and wrote in his print review "It extends the possibilities of what movies can do. Cameron's talent may just be as big as his dreams."[206] Richard Corliss of Time magazine thought that the film was "the most vivid and convincing creation of a fantasy world ever seen in the history of moving pictures."[207] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times thought the film has "powerful" visual accomplishments but "flat dialogue" and "obvious characterization".[208] James Berardinelli of ReelViews praised the film and its story, giving it four out of four stars; he wrote "In 3-D, it's immersive – but the traditional film elements – story, character, editing, theme, emotional resonance, etc. – are presented with sufficient expertise to make even the 2-D version an engrossing 2+1⁄2-hour experience."[209] Avatar's underlying social and political themes attracted attention. Armond White of the New York Press wrote that Cameron used "villainous American characters" to "misrepresent facets of militarism, capitalism, and imperialism".[210][211] Russell D. Moore of The Christian Post concluded that "propaganda exists in the film" and stated "If you can get a theater full of people in Kentucky to stand and applaud the defeat of their country in war, then you've got some amazing special effects."[212] Adam Cohen of The New York Times was more positive about the film, calling its anti-imperialist message "a 22nd-century version of the American colonists vs. the British, India vs. the Raj, or Latin America vs. United Fruit".[213] Ross Douthat of The New York Times opined that the film is "Cameron's long apologia for pantheism [...] Hollywood's religion of choice for a generation now",[214] while Saritha Prabhu of The Tennessean called the film a "misportrayal of pantheism and Eastern spirituality in general",[215] and Maxim Osipov of The Hindustan Times, on the contrary, commended the film's message for its overall consistency with the teachings of Hinduism in the Bhagavad Gita.[216] Annalee Newitz of io9 concluded that Avatar is another film that has the recurring "fantasy about race" whereby "some white guy" becomes the "most awesome" member of a non-white culture.[217] Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune called Avatar "the season's ideological Rorschach blot",[218] while Miranda Devine of The Sydney Morning Herald thought that "It [was] impossible to watch Avatar without being banged over the head with the director's ideological hammer."[219] Nidesh Lawtoo believed that an essential, yet less visible social theme that contributed to Avatar's success concerns contemporary fascinations with virtual avatars and "the transition from the world of reality to that of virtual reality".[220] Critics and audiences have cited similarities with other films, literature or media, describing the perceived connections in ways ranging from simple "borrowing" to outright plagiarism. Ty Burr of The Boston Globe called it "the same movie" as Dances with Wolves.[221] Like Dances with Wolves, Avatar has been characterized as being a "white savior" movie, in which a "backwards" native people is impotent without the leadership of a member of the invading white culture.[222][223] Parallels to the concept and use of an avatar are in Poul Anderson's 1957 novelette "Call Me Joe", in which a paralyzed man uses his mind from orbit to control an artificial body on Jupiter.[224][225] Cinema audiences in Russia have noted that Avatar has elements in common with the 1960s Noon Universe novels by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, which are set in the 22nd century on a forested world called Pandora with a sentient indigenous species called the Nave.[226] Various reviews have compared Avatar to the films FernGully: The Last Rainforest,[227][228] Pocahontas[229] and The Last Samurai.[230] NPR's Morning Edition has compared the film to a montage of tropes, with one commentator stating that Avatar was made by "mixing a bunch of film scripts in a blender".[231] Gary Westfahl wrote that "the science fiction story that most closely resembles Avatar has to be Ursula Le Guin's novella The Word for World Is Forest (1972), another epic about a benevolent race of alien beings who happily inhabit dense forests while living in harmony with nature until they are attacked and slaughtered by invading human soldiers who believe that the only good gook is a dead gook".[225] The science fiction writer and editor Gardner Dozois said that along with the Anderson and Le Guin stories, the "mash-up" included Alan Dean Foster's 1975 novel, Midworld.[232] Some sources saw similarities to the artwork of Roger Dean, which features fantastic images of dragons and floating rock formations.[233][234] In 2013, Dean sued Cameron and Fox, claiming that Pandora was inspired by 14 of his images. Dean sought damages of $50m.[235] Dean's case was dismissed in 2014, and The Hollywood Reporter noted that Cameron had won multiple Avatar idea theft cases.[236] Avatar received compliments from filmmakers, with Steven Spielberg praising it as "the most evocative and amazing science-fiction movie since Star Wars" and others calling it "audacious and awe inspiring", "master class", and "brilliant". Noted art director-turned-filmmaker Roger Christian is also a noted fan of the film.[237] On the other hand, Duncan Jones said: "It's not in my top three James Cameron films. ... [A]t what point in the film did you have any doubt what was going to happen next?".[238] For French filmmaker Luc Besson, Avatar opened the doors for him to now create an adaptation of the graphic novel series Valérian and Laureline that technologically supports the scope of its source material, with Besson even throwing his original script in the trash and redoing it after seeing the film.[239] TIME ranked Avatar number 3 in their list of "The 10 Greatest Movies of the Millennium (Thus Far)"[240] also earning it a spot on the magazine's All-Time 100 list,[241] and IGN listed Avatar as number 22 on their list of the top 25 Sci-Fi movies of all time. |
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After the film's release and unusually strong box office performance over its first two weeks, it was debated as the one film capable of surpassing Titanic's worldwide gross, and its continued strength perplexed box office analysts.[294] Other films in recent years had been cited as contenders for surpassing Titanic, such as 2008's The Dark Knight,[295] but Avatar was considered the first film with a genuine chance to do so, and its numbers being aided by higher ticket prices for 3D screenings[294] did not fully explain its success to box office analysts. "Most films are considered to be healthy if they manage anything less than a 50% drop from their first weekend to their second. Dipping just 11% from the first to the third is unheard of," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office analysis for Hollywood.com. "This is just unprecedented. I had to do a double take. I thought it was a miscalculation."[296] Analysts predicted second place for the film's worldwide gross, but most were uncertain about it surpassing Titanic because "Today's films flame out much faster than they did when Titanic was released."[296] Brandon Gray, president of Box Office Mojo, believed in the film's chances of becoming the highest-grossing film of all time, though he also believed it was too early to surmise because it had only played during the holidays. He said, "While Avatar may beat Titanic's record, it will be tough, and the film is unlikely to surpass Titanic in attendance. Ticket prices were about $3 cheaper in the late 1990s."[296] Cameron said he did not think it was realistic to "try to topple Titanic off its perch" because it "just struck some kind of chord" and there had been other good films in recent years.[297] He changed his prediction by mid-January. "It's gonna happen. It's just a matter of time," he said.[298] You've got to compete head on with these other epic works of fantasy and fiction, the Tolkiens and the Star Wars and the Star Treks. People want a persistent alternate reality to invest themselves in and they want the detail that makes it rich and worth their time. They want to live somewhere else. Like Pandora. James Cameron on the success of Avatar[299] Although analysts have been unable to agree that Avatar's success is attributable to one primary factor, several explanations have been advanced. First, January is historically "the dumping ground for the year's weakest films", and this also applied to 2010.[300] Cameron himself said he decided to open the film in December so that it would have less competition from then to January.[287] Titanic capitalized on the same January predictability, and earned most of its gross in 1998.[300] Additionally, Avatar established itself as a "must-see" event. Gray said, "At this point, people who are going to see Avatar are going to see Avatar and would even if the slate was strong."[300] Marketing the film as a "novelty factor" also helped. Fox positioned the film as a cinematic event that should be seen in the theaters. "It's really hard to sell the idea that you can have the same experience at home," stated David Mumpower, an analyst at BoxOfficeProphets.com.[300] The "Oscar buzz" surrounding the film and international viewings helped. "Two-thirds of Titanic's haul was earned overseas, and Avatar [tracked] similarly ...Avatar opened in 106 markets globally and was No. 1 in all of them", and the markets "such as Russia, where Titanic saw modest receipts in 1997 and 1998, are white-hot today" with "more screens and moviegoers" than before.[300] According to Variety, films in 3D accumulated $1.3 billion in 2009, "a threefold increase over 2008 and more than 10% of the total 2009 box-office gross". The increased ticket price – an average of $2 to $3 per ticket in most markets – helped the film.[300] Likewise, Entertainment Weekly attributed the film's success to 3D glasses but also to its "astronomic word-of-mouth". Not only do some theaters charge up to $18.50 for IMAX tickets, but "the buzz" created by the new technology was the possible cause for sold-out screenings.[301] Gray said Avatar having no basis in previously established material makes its performance remarkable and even more impressive. "The movie might be derivative of many movies in its story and themes," he said, "but it had no direct antecedent like the other top-grossing films: Titanic (historical events), the Star Wars movies (an established film franchise), or The Lord of the Rings (literature). It was a tougher sell ..."[300] The Hollywood Reporter estimated that after a combined production and promotion cost of between $387–437 million, the film turned a net profit of $1.2 billion. |
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