We've seen the Avatar footage

The IndieMovies crew was in attendance for the first screening of Avatar footage at the BFI IMAX in Waterloo. Yep, two hours ago, we strapped on our 3D goggles and took our seats for 16 minutes of footage from the Cameron effects epic. We’re still reeling with vertigo, but read on for our first thoughts.

The footage comprised a number of scenes from the first half of the film (as we discovered from Big Jim Cameron's 3D intro. Big Jim is an apt description here – the IMAX screen is 60 foot tall, and the director was himself rendered in 3D.)

The first scene (which was also shown at Comic-Con and Movie-Con) showed Jake, the wheelchair-bound ex-marine (played by Terminator Salvation’s Sam Worthington) arriving on the jungle planet of Pandora to be briefed by a typically tough-as-nails head of security with a silvery claw scar running across his skull. His job, he tells them, is to keep the soldiers alive, but he doesn't expect to be able to do so – not all of them.

The second scene shows the avatar creator Dr Grace Augustin (Sigourney Weaver) helping Jake into what looks like an MRI machine. From here, his consciousness is downloaded into a Na’Vi avatar. He wakes up on a lab table, in the form of a slender blue giant, with cat-like features and a tail. His delight – not only at being able to walk again but also at his new, powerful body – is obvious and he crashes around the room, knocking things over with his tail and alarming the technicians as they jump for needles to sedate him.

Next, we cut to the footage already shown at Comic-Con in the US and Empire’s Movie-Con II. Grace and Jake are in their avatar bodies, in the jungle, facing down a stampeding creature that looks part rhino, part hammerhead shark, part dino. Jake stands his ground and while he’s crowing about this victory, another forest animal (this time a much more dangeorus animal – a vast, feline beetle) sneaks up on him. He runs and the beast gives chase, almost running him to the ground – whereupon the third clip ends.

The fourth scene takes place in the jungle at night. Jake – still in avatar form – is fighting off a pack of dog-like creatures (they actually look nothing like dogs but their cries sound canine). Clearly, he’s in trouble when a genuine Na’Vi , Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) throws his torch into a river and kills the animals to save him. She is angry and upset at having to destroy them, and blames Jake’s childishness in running about the jungle without a clue as to what he’s doing.

The fifth scene takes places on the floating rocks you can see in the trailer. Jake is with a Na’Vi tribe, tracking down a nest of pterodactyl-like flying dino-mutants, with a view to taming and riding one of them. Neytiri explains that the animal must accept him: how will he know when that happens? It will try to kill him, she says. Using what appears to be a snake, he lassoos one of the animals, and is nearly thrown from the rock, into the vertiginous space below. The rest of the Na’Vi clearly enjoy this moment. He creates some kind of a symbiotic relationship with the animal and is able to climb aboard and ride it off the edge of the rock. Controlling the flying monster is a mental act and Jake plummets down the side of the rock before figuring out how to make his mount fly away.

These scenes were followed by a clip reel of fast-flashing images from the rest of the film.

The verdict? It was less like watching a film and more like observing a technological leap forward. Think Star Wars (if you’re old enough to remember what the effects looked like first time around) or the first time you saw the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. It may not redefine cinema but it will redefine the term ‘event movie.’

When the trailer footage was released online yesterday, there were many cries of disappointment. Several people voiced the opinion that it looked like cut scenes from a video game. But seeing it online, in a little box, is not seeing it at all. You will need to watch this movie on a big screen, preferably in 3D (it will also be shown around the country in 2D.) When you do, the experience is immersive and spectacular. The nighttime jungle scenes (neon-lit) were stunningly beautiful, as were the Na’Vi themselves. The motion capture of the actors’ faces was impressive: every twitch and blink is rendered perfectly. So much so that it's difficult to look away. One of the most impressive scenes is in the lab, where Jake wakes up in the avatar body. Seeing the alien form amongst the human techs really drove home the impressive effects. It is one thing to see the avatars against a CGI backdrop but to see them interacting with people (who are dwarfed by them) was jaw-dropping.

What we saw of dialogue and plot were much less engrossing. Cameron himself has stated that he went for a Dances With Wolves-style story of a man ‘going native’: he has deliberately, it appears, pared down the plot so tha the audience does not get lost or overwhelmed. The dialogue was similarly lame – think your macho usual Marine guff, as well as the slightly embarrassing broken English from Zoe Saldana’s character. But this is the kind of film you just want to stare at – and believe us, there’s plenty to see.

Here's the trailer: