Film director James Cameron’s latest ‘most-expensive-film-ever-made’ has made its screen debut in London, and early reports are that it lives up to its hype.
Invite-only attendees have been sworn to secrecy until Monday, but reports have been leaking out on Twitter and elsewhere and the general buzz seems to be that it’s worth at least a sizeable chunk of its reported $237m price tag.
The ecologically themed film, about a solider who decides to help an alien species whose planet is under attack from his home planet, earth, in the year 2154, is based on a story written by Cameron over 15 years ago, and has been almost five years in development, including groundbreaking new special effects techniques to create a fully immersive new world.
The 3D effects in the sci-fi movie, many of them created especially for it, achieved near-legendary status among film aficionados, as well as the suspicion that they were simply part of an extended hype campaign.
Although 3D has been a major part of kids movies this year, this is the first A-list film to be aimed as much at adults as children, and the level of its success will be seen as a benchmark for the future of 3D both in cinemas and at home.
In the 12 years since his last film, Titanic, and 4.5 years of development on Avatar, Cameron has set himself up as the spearhead of Hollywood’s drive towards a 3D future. Quoted at the launch he said, “We need something that kick-starts public enthusiasm for cinema as people watch on smaller devices like iPhones. We need something to reverse that trend so I’ve set as my goal bringing the movie theatre back to it being a sacred experience and 3D is part of that.”