By Alicia Hollinger
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| Sam Worthington (Jake Sully) |
HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 4/20/10 –
Green is the new blue as director James Cameron and producer Jon Landau announce the worldwide launch of AVATAR on Blu-ray and DVD on April 22 to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Earth Day.
“I think the public has really felt an emotional outpouring around the movie” says Cameron about the world’s biggest grossing picture, “Avatar.”
“Earth Day is exactly the right time to premiere the disks.” Cameron explains “I’m not trying to sort of sell DVDs on the back of the hardship of the planet as much as I’m hoping that continued conversation around AVATAR and around the needs and the issues will actually kind of elevate consciousness and help us to get the things done that need to get done. That’s kind of my new mission.”
He continues, “I actually almost see it as an opportunity for AVATAR to be helpful as opposed to for things to help AVATAR. My wife said ‘Honey, this is more than an opportunity here, this is a duty, a responsibility.’ I’ve always been an environmental activist, but I’m going to a whole other level now.”
This begins the global partnership between Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment and Earth Day Network, the international non-profit organization that coordinates Earth Day programs annually. “Earth Day Network’s commitment and actions to promote a healthy, sustainable planet go hand-in-hand with the themes of AVATAR,” says Cameron.
Cameron and Landau emphasize that on the DVD you will find “purely movie.” Because of the length of the movie, any extraneous material takes down the bit rate, degrading the image quality. He jokes “I have this unwritten deal with Fox that anytime any one of my movies makes more than a billion dollars, they leave all the crap trailers off. Just a little service to pass on to the viewer because I can’t stand watching them any more than you can” said the director who also helmed the previous top-grosser “Titanic.”
For those who love the extra content, no need to fear. In November, they will begin launching added content, a filmmaker’s journey and other bonus material. Also, through a unique code found inside the AVATAR Blu-ray/DVD, consumers can register at www.avatarmovie.com into “The AVATAR Program” and gain exclusive access to first-look bonus materials, special content and more. Additionally, fans will be able to adopt one of the one million trees being planted on behalf of Earth Day and receive a virtual “hometree” they can locate on a map to see where it’s actually planted. Cameron believes that AVATAR is a sensually immersive experience, and that although it was the most pirated film in history, it was also the highest grossing movie in history, proving that audiences are willing to wait in line and shell out money rather than watch a poor downloaded version.
“There’s a return to the big presentation and they can have that experience now in their home,” he says. Part of that $2.7 billion worldwide gross was from 3-D theaters, which take in a larger ticket price and are all the rage right now. A character in itself, the lush and inviting rainforest of Pandora beckoned audiences back to the theaters. Cameron feared that if the rainforest looked too alien. It could be off-putting to audiences. So he decided to “have the rainforest look more like we would expect a rainforest to look here on Earth with some exotic plants and then at night, it transitions into a much more alien looking place.”
The exotic beauty of the AVATAR rainforests apparently caused a whole new psychological disorder coined “The AVATAR Blues.” Some Avatar fans found themselves so transported into the alluring world of Pandora that they did not want to return to the real world, some to the point of suicidal thoughts. In response to this, Cameron says “The whole point is that AVATAR was supposed to celebrate the natural world and how wonderful it is here on Earth, so to those who have AVATAR depression I would say ‘Take a walk in the woods, walk on the beach or go snorkeling and see what you need to see.’”
“I’ve been thinking a lot about this film,” says Cameron, “and maybe why it’s connected to people so much, and I’ve kind of realized that what I was trying to do was create dream imagery, create a lucid dream state while you’re watching the film. I think that most people dream of flying at some point and when we’re kids we dream of flying and I certainly did, and still have a lot of flying dreams and I thought that if I can connect to an audience, to a kind of collective unconscious in almost the Jungian sense, then it bypasses all the politics and all the bullshit, and all the culturally specific stuff and all the language specific stuff around the world and connects us all to that kind of childhood, dreamlike state when the world was magical and infinite and scary and cool and you could soar. So that was the concept behind these scenes. And for me, personally, this was the part of the movie that I like the best, that I can watch over and over again.”
James Cameron’s interest in environmentalism began early on — in high school at the age of 16 after the big Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969. He wrote a play entitled “The Extinction Syndrome” which he describes as “sophomoric screed about how humans are bent on destroying the planet and themselves in the process. Sounds kind of familiar…” he jokes.
Regarding the environmental persuasion of AVATAR, Cameron says, “The themes of the film are pretty damn overt. I was asked early on in the process of the movie to take them out or to downplay them, you know, as any studio would have said, because there was no historical precedent for a big entertainment movie having these ideas.”When it first began screening, he says, “people said ‘Hey, it’s got an environmental message.’ I said ‘Damn straight it does.’”
“I think there’s a real opportunity here,” says Cameron, “around the, you know, slightly elevated consciousness around a movie that’s a piece of entertainment and I have no illusions about an entertainment movie saving the world or anything like that, but I do think that people are thinking about this and they’re talking about it and they’re emotionally open to it… I think that not only is there opportunity for me personally around this movie, I think it’s almost coming at me as a duty or responsibility to take advantage of this moment. And it’s not about trying to make more money for AVATAR, it’s trying to leverage the good that could be created out of AVATAR, if you will. And it may even work against making more money for AVATAR, I don’t care, y’know?
“We got enough money. Fuck it,” he said.
No official comment on a sequel, but a vague “a sequel always lurks in the back of your mind,” said Jon Landau.
Written and directed by James Cameron and produced with his long-time collaborator Jon Landau, AVATAR stars Sam Worthington, Zoë Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Wes Studi and Laz Alonso.
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