_Avatar_, directed by James Cameron

The real game-changers - from "Jaws" and "Star Wars" to "The Matrix" and even "Terminator 2" and "Titanic," to some degree - arrived without this kind of carefully managed hype.

i wasn't alive for "jaws" or "star wars", though i know that they had near-unprecedentedly large simultaneous releases (oi-oi), but dude you have got to be shitting me on the last three. they had the shit hyped outta them. if they felt "less present" it's mainly because they were pre-mass-uptake-of-the-internet so you didn't have them in your face at your work-station. but "titanic" was the most expensive film of all time (inflation possibly not adjusted) and "the matrix" was hailed *as a gamechanger* and so, really, was "terminator 2" for its effects work.

ya it's not like titanic quietly slipped into theaters and modestly blew everyone's minds

T2 was EVERYWHERE for awhile; I remember seeing it in the theaters on opening and then like six times more and the place was always packed
^HS SFX nerd

3 of those 5 movies are horrible

avatar more like ashitr

I'm too young to really remember the ad hype around "Jaws" or "Star Wars" but I do remember taking them as given facets of existence, like kitchens and driveways, so I infer from that that there was a significant amount of hype around both of them if it could reach through the consciousness of a 2/4-year-old living off of a gravel road out in the country.

can't believe your parents made you eat gravel

times were tough, we (literally) scraped by

what a rockin post

it made me grit my teeth

I hate my job

pebble

I was gonna make a joke about drinking a mr. pibb in france but then I just couldn't do it

"joke"

there's a pile of reviews on AICN now, so I'd say the embargo is effectively over.

wonderfully formed embargo

reviews are everywhere now

might as well spill the beans

It's like being one of Tiger's mistresses and not talking to the media.

I know sexy

xposts - i'm technically an 'arts & culture' critic but have done my fair share of film stuff. glad not to be a full-on film critic tbh.
yeah lol embargo
in my unprofessional opinion: i am going to see this again next week just to make sure i wasn't high because it was AWESOME (and yet some things abt it could've been better)

The thing I keep forgetting re: this movie is that I tend to really really really like James Cameron movies (although some, like "Titanic", have the shine wear off of them really really quickly).

You'll laugh, you'll cry etc.

while watching you're really not gonna be thinking abt the shine wearing off

Wonder what the first film will be where its embargo just trundles on forever, never to end?

x-post to a bunch of people

No one talked about the game-changing special effects of "T2" for months in advance. Same with "The Matrix," which, like "Titanic," actually only did modestly at the box office when it first opened ($37 million opening for "The Matrix," $28 million opening weekend for "Titanic" - for some scale, albeit not totally analogous, "Spider-Man" opened with $115 mil; maybe more illustrative, Tim Burton's Batman" opened around $43 million ten years before "The Matrix"). As for "Star Wars" and "Jaws," no one knew what they had until they had it. They were all "game-changers" in retrospect. Cameron called "Avatar" a game-changer MONTHS ago.

game changer = Phrases I Never Want to Hear Uttered by Talking Heads/Press/Politicians Ever Again

reviews are everywhere now

Let's see some! I don't know where to look..

to start with:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/avatar/

I have no idea what you are talking about re: "The Matrix" considering that entire half hours of entertainment news television programs were dedicated to talking about the filming techniques and wire work that went into the making of it.

My memory could be wrong, but (and I saw the movie opening night, mostly by chance) I don't recall months of anticipation for and lead-up to "The Matrix" and do recall it taking a lot of people by surprise, which in turn lead to all the making-of features. That's why I cited its opening box office - it was no out-of-the-gate hype-baby hit. Sites like aintitcool were up and running back then, weren't they? Were they going nuts? (Honest question; I've been trying to dig up that site's contemporaneous reviews).

the matrix was one of those films that once the commercials hit people were like "whoa" (lol), but unlike some of these other flicks it wasn't something that was hotly anticipated. i mean keanu reeves/laurence fishburne sci-fi from the directors of 'bound' could have been anticipated as 'johnny mnemonic 2'

I recall nothing but mountains of hype aimed mostly at sci-fi/comic book geeks in the months leading up to its release.

*anticipated before people started to see the ads, i mean

Original AICN "Matrix" review (for reference): http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=3353

Doesn't read like something he'd been looking forward to for months, seems like it sort of took him by surprise, too, etc.

Wow, the Matrix. I remember downloading my first ever cam of that. After I saw it in the theaters, of course! It took a couple weeks I think....

Matrix definitely took me by surprise, and I was a pretty big scifi movie nerd in HS.

The Matrix was not in anyway overly hyped when it came out. It was shunted off into a spring release because there wasn't much faith in it from the studio. There adverts for it, but not really any media saturation. It surprised a lot of people, both in its qualities and in its financial success.

pretty sure T2 was hyped to all hell though.

^^^yep. see: GnR video

yeah, but of all the films I mentioned, it was also the only sequel. And sequels, by definition, get hyped and anticipated. But c. that GNR video, no one knew T2 would change movies and make "morph" a household word.

i did! and i tried to tell everyone! and i got shoved into a toilet for my troubles....

Well, I mean, I did, too, but I was under embargo at the time.

T2 et al didn't have special effects in every single frame, though.

I'm not sure what that has to do with anything.

I mean, those movies were absolutely packed with effects, regardless. Heck, half of "The Hangover" appears to have been shot against green screen. As far as all-effects arbiters go, "Phantom Menace" was all FX, all the time, and that was ten years ago.

four stars from rog:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091211/REVIEWS/912119998

And Cameron and his artists succeed at the difficult challenge of making Neytiri a blue-skinned giantess with golden eyes and a long, supple tail, and yet--I'll be damned. Sexy.

Glenn Kenny

RIP Embargo I guess

yeah all the cool kids are saying PWN.

i think he's joking?