FIRST LOOK

What's with all the fake-looking CGI?

Not sure how anyone can consider any of this less than photo-realistic.

What happened to James Cameron regular Michael Biehn?!

From a person who saw the teaser in high def AND the preview in IMAX in 3D i can honestly say that the Na'vi in action DO NOT look that good. You can make even some of the shittiest CG look good in a still photo. not saying that Avatar's CG is in any way shitty. just that it didn't look as good as even that scanned photo. and yea Alex...take a break. This isn't a big deal enough to keep pestering your readers with this.

I dunno, i think i my have my excitement level too high for this. Every picture i see makes me feel sad that it drop me on the floor. I think he should do more making of videos like watchmen did. Give us some parts of the movie, in motion, the way it's supposed to be.

I will say though, that the lips are spot on.

You know what I cant stand when creatives design fantasy elements. They dont apply normal scientific evolution to elements and characters, they just try and make them cool looking. Sure make them cool looking but think about why each element is there, why do the navi have blue faces and why are there dots on their faces, if there is a normal evolutionary reason those are there.... like the dots confuse predators that like to eat Navi eye balls, so that is why evolution has given them that kind of features. But no... these just seem like "hey lets make cool looking alien tribe beings". It just isnt smart creativity.

if I am asked if I want to look like an Avatar - I will answer: never I dont like this big Manga Eyes but I am sure the kids will love them. Somehow they look in the photo like LION KING... And the soldier looks like a G.I.JOE or HE MAN doll..sorry.. action figure but hell, its just a movie and I am sure it will have some kind of entertainment level

Looks worse than I originally thought. Wow...Ferngully live action.

Chihuahua ears? Amazing.

The CG looks CG!? GASP!!!! How could the CG possibly look like CG? 1) Part of the reason your brain is telling you that these are fake is because they are aliens. Of course it's fake. King Kong was fake, Gollum was fake, Davey Jones was fake, the tits on Playboy models are fake. We all know what real shit looks like, so anything that doesn't look like that real shit will look fake to us. 2) That doesn't change the fact that we're all able to get into the movies that have this fake crap in it. Once you see them in motion in a world and with a story to go along with it, the effects tend to melt away and we allow ourselves to see the story and the characters instead of just seeing CG. That's sorta the whole point with all special effects. To make shit that you couldn't otherwise make. I think a lot of the fuckers calling this film out for looking fake are just douchebags looking to troll shit. Yeah, it does look fake. IT IS FAKE, so no fucking shit it looks fake. I agree that I wish more filmmakers would use prosthetics or puppets or guys in suits, but the reality is that those things STILL look fake, and in most cases those effects are extremely limiting in what you can do with them. You can't have a puppet go running around a set with the same ease you can do it with a CG character, and nine times out of ten the CG character will look better. A lot of people don't realize how many films are chock full of subtle effects that you never notice. People notice the big alien robots and giant buildings being blown to bits and recognize them as being fake, no matter how well they're pulled off. I bet a lot of you never notice when they use CG to add background buildings that just sit there, or when they use it to cover up unwanted stuff in the shots (some sections of the LOTR films weren't shot too far from large cities and major effects work went into painting out buildings, adding trees to cover them, painting out power lines, replacing the entire sky, adding mountains to background shots, removing mountains from other shots... But that big elephant thing... that's fucking fake, isn't it?) Nevermind the fact that the sets also had a lot of CG enhancement going on that no one seemed to notice, and that several bits were 100% cg, and that every other shot had some major effect going on. No one really mentioned the fact there were a ton of shots that required half the cast to be resized because they were playing hobbits. @SS: No, there are live-action bits in the film. @sean: Because the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles looked SO believable back in the day. Just like the Stay Puft Man, ET and the Gremlins. Most guys in suits still look fake as hell. The only person I've seen pull off that sort of effect well is Del Toro, and his stuff is ususally CG enhanced as well. Also, I've noticed that the general consensus by the comments on this website are generally the exact opposite of correct. You all thought Transformers 2 would be great, you all thought Moon and District 9 looked dull, you all thought Heath Ledger would make a shitty Joker and now you all think this film will suck. @Tomi... There are a ton of creatures on earth that have blue all over them. There are tons of birds, insects, reptimes, some primates... all have blue on them, on their faces... Tons of them. Why? Well, maybe if you knew more about the places they inhabited or how they lived you'd understand why the NaVi were blue. You can't understand the evolution of a creature without knowing anything about their environment... that's the whole point of evolution... to adapt to the environment. No one really knows that much about Pandora, so speculating on their evolutionary processes is premature. And finally, as a lot of you numbskulls told me when I went off on the transformers films for being mindless, pointless, racist bullshit: "It's just a movie, man!!! It's not like every movie has to be some perfectly realistic thing!!!"

Last image looks ok. I do wonder if what we've seen so far is all rush rendered and possibly to make it seem like we 'have' to see it in 3d to appreciate it.

Amen Squiggly.... This movie is going to be insane....All these idiots are missing the forest through the trees. I think once you immerse yourself in the story you will forget what is real and what is not, and only then will you realize how beautiful and intense the imagery really is.

Well said Squiggly.

Clearly Cameron has a boner for the broad nosed cat creature, Beast, who messed with his Sarah Conner on TV enough to reflect it's design in his Navi.... am I right, or am I right folks?!!!?!?! Eh? Eh? Eh?

how come Sigourney's avatar has a human nose?

kreig70 doesn't get it. This movie will be amazing. the only thing that will stop people from letting themselves be amazed is the fact that they need to be right or talk bad about a hyped film, it's in a jerks nature.

I must admit that when i saw the trailer i wasnt to sure that it was in any way photo real but it did look smart as fuck in a live painting sort of way especially the all the shots of Pandora. Now that i have seen those photos of the Na'vi all i can say is yeah In Cameron i trust (as always) cos those pics are the fuckin muts nuts, well better than gollum and they looked so much better than in the teaser...... mind you i did watch it from my pc monitor which aint goin to do it any justice.

22 is a douche. Nbody is gonna read that.

#36 you make no freaking sense.

James Cameron of Piranha 2!! Hahaha!! That's like saying Steven Spielberg, director of "Always"... Nice touch!

BTW - Sigourney Weaver looks like a blue Jodie Foster...

@ #34. First off none of the creatures in Aliens were CGI all of them were built by Stan Winston as were the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. Although some of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were cg at times. Sure Cameron could have used rubber puppets for the na'vi but there are a hell of a lot of em in this movie and that would be a very difficult task. He could have used prosthetics and make up but the design of the na'vi would have caused alot of problems for approaching it this way. They are 10 feet tall. So either Cameron would have to work very hard to never include a na'vi and a human in the same shot or he would have the task of actually making actors appear 10 feet tall when compared to other actors portraying human characters. If he did it this way he would either have to find a shit ton of people who are abnormally tall with some acting experience or he would have to put actors on stilts. Imagine 20 or so actors and extras stumbling around the set on stilts. After thinking this through myself its no wonder Cameron chose to use cgi and its no wonder that he decided to wait 14 years for technology to improve to make this movie. Secondly, all you Avatar haters should just go watch District 9 over and over again since its so great. In ten years I'll come back and ask you if people still care about District 9 or if they care more about Avatar. Personally I think people are mad that Avatar might bring the kid out in them again.

Yet again... Why do losers on this board keep trying to justify these aliens, they look absolutely ridiculous and like something from a computer game. Get over it, the movie may be brilliant, nobody knows yet, but the aliens look like shite. End of.

Hey Kenco @ 47 what exactly makes us losers for justifying the way these aliens look? Say something intelligent next time.

#22 Thankyou! Your completely right. Of course it's gonna look fake. But the cg is still excellent. And in my opinion the movie looks very good & interesting. & I'll be seeing it on opening day.

#45 So, creating huge believable monsters and creatures @Jurassic Park, LoTR and Aliens was absolutely no problem but creating humanlike aliens is a big nogo ? Call me when you believe that your self. Secondly. Nowhere did I say I am Avatar hater. The only thing you fanboys have so far is "THE stunning visuals of the century". Which simply is not true. It still could be a great movie with a nice story and polished effects (improved from the trailer), but please skip the OMG its da shitz bullshit.

I wonder if they have sex like humans???.....thats what I wanna see

@Shige: My point was that we know this stuff is fake. You were aware of the fact that the Aliens in "Aliens" were fake, right? They were puppets and occasionally guys in suits. We know they're fake because we are currently unaware of aliens and we know that Cameron didn't genetically engineer creatures to attack Sigourney Weaver & Co. The point was that while you're outside the film looking in, you can see that these things aren't real. The one thing the aliens had going for them was the fact that they were physical props, but look how limiting that was. All the shots of the aliens have them moving slowly or you only see a bit of them at a time, like just the head and arms or just the legs. You never really get a good look at them, and maybe that's one of the reasons they register as more 'real'... you never really get a good shot of them until towards the very end of the film. And the CG dinosaurs in Jurassic Park look fake as hell today. Also, describing these things as looking like something from a videogame is 1) not true and 2) a really degrading remark about videogames more than it is about these creatures. What the fuck are you trying to say? Videogame concept artists aren't as creative as film concept artists? Do you play games at all? It's the same sort of art. Hell, a lot of game artists do work on film as well. I don't understand really what you're trying to say with that crack. I think you hold games to some lesser standard or something, and you shouldn't. Just because it's lower poly doesn't mean they put less effort into it. The Point: Dr Manhattan was a blue CG humanoid. Most people were glad they left him blue and naked. Closer to the original story, they say. Well why is it ok for one story to have a blue naked god-like being, but it's not ok for another movie to have blue humanoid tribal people? Changing them to something else wouldn't be following Mr Cameron's original intent, would it? You don't like the things, go make your own $250 Million movie. Otherwise, shut the fuck up about it and wait to see the flick before you pass judgement. For all I know this movie is going to be utter garbage. I don't know. I just find it absurd that people are going this overboard about the fact that the fucking aliens are blue. You're half blue yourself. Why is it so odd that there might be a species that's blue?

First off Shige, just to clear things up, your last comment should have been directed @57 not me @56. So for what its worth next time recheck what you read before you tell someone else to learn to read. Second your comment @53 "please skip the OMG its da shitz bullshit." just makes you look like a hypocrite. Why should you be allowed to post your opinion of something but someone else shouldn't? Are you tired of people having a different opinion than you, or what? If I said " please skip the OMG the cgi looks like shit." you would tell me to fuck off and you would have a right to. Overall I just don't get it. Why do people who already think that the cgi is awful click on articles like this expecting to see anything different? If you truly think that it looks like shit than why waste more of your time looking at pictures of it? As long as any image of this movie is in a 2D format its not going to look any different or better than what everyone has already seen in the trailer. I think everyone knows the famous Einstein quote: " The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results".

Looks truly realistic.

#59 my comment was not directed at you. It was 56 untill someone added or deleted some posts. Overall Im tired about this entire discussion as everone takes any sort of negative remark about this flick personally. Its a flamewar that one person cant win against hordes of fanboys. Yolu guys really need learn how to read before coming here throwing around pointless arguments. I hope this movie will meet your expectations.

Shige my question wasn't: why did you attack people for thinking the CGI is good? My question was: what is it that makes you feel you have the right to tell people to hold their positive comments about the CGI while you should freely be allowed to post your negative comments? I never accused you of attacking anyone just of being a hypocrite. In regards to your "I just wish the fanboys would relax and quit attacking everything and everyone who happen to think differently" statement, I personally don't feel like its a fair statement to make. From what I can tell both sides are attacking each other. So if its really just peace you are after than ask everyone to stop fighting. Don't single out the group who you just assume are all James Cameron groupies. As for "I look forward to this movie so clicking on avatar articles I expect to find some news about the project and not just some random rant about the instagodomfg thing this will be". Seriously the article is called "First Look: New Avatar Na'vi PHOTOS are Worth Checking Out". PHOTOS. Lastly, stop telling people to learn how to read or need I mention the "photos" bit again.

The Na'vi look crap, big silly eyes and huge noses, its poor design, nothing to do with bad cg

I've seen several clips from the movie in full HD quality and, 3-D or not, the movie looks incredible. The Na'vi are perfectly fitted in their world, (which is a fully realized planet, not just an Ice World, Forest Moon, Cloud Planet as in Star Wars) There's an eco system, a realized food chain, and a culture to the region that's shown in the film. The movements of the Aliens, the subtle gestures and facial expression are far beyond anything ever achieved. They are to Gollum as Gollum is to Jar Jar. I, personally, can't wait to see the movie. Has James Cameron ever made a bad film in his career? I can only think about every achievement he made. Every record he's broken. Everytime he makes a movie, it changes how we see them, how they're made. Many would give Spielberg or Lucus that honor, but its Cameron. Spielberg couldn't have made Jurassic Park without Cameron's Water tentacle in The Abyss. The Man's a genius. Lucas and/or Peter Jackson couldn't have made their fantasies if not for the Massing Technology that Cameron cooked up for Titanic. They may have perfected them, but the idea was his. Now with his new Polarized Cameron Technology, this should be the most hardcore 3-D film to date. He's been making this movie for 14 years. Long before it was cast, before the budget was drawn up, he was working on the science that would make this movie possible. Its a dream of his fully realized. And I can't wait to see it.

70- i agree what a bunch of idiots, ridiculing something they have no idea about. oh, and "this movie will never be as good as iron man, blah blah" so, you wishing you owned avatar on dvd now?

*cough* Actually, the Pandoran forests are pretty bright at night, and Na'vi were actually nocturnal animals, that is why the blue colour, and the bioluminescent freckles are for breaking up the silhouette in nighttime. I like Avatar and the Na'vi, but I have to admit, that those eyes are too big. Look at some big cats, tigers for example, their eyes are not that big compared to their faces. They do not need to be. I could imagine the reason to the huge eyes is that people want to have big eyes. Ask any woman. Why do you wear mascara and stuff? "To make my eyes look bigger." But I think, that the Na'vi would look better with smaller eyes. But, hey, don't worry, be happy, at least they are not nekos. (Human with cat ears and tails etc.)