The last time James Cameron made a straight-up action movie, True Lies, the internet (as we know it, anyway; it's been apparently been around for 40 years) was in a somewhat nascent form. By the time Titanic was released in 1997, the internet, and the messageboard, was already in a state of rather healthy activity as far as messageboards and online comments went, but sites like aintitcoolnews.com were still a year or so away from truly exploding onto the pop-culture scene. And in any event, Titanic made its megabucks through women and teenage girls who enjoyed a good cry and the boyfriends and husbands who wanted to appease them.
Avatar is James Cameron's first feature film in twelve years, and it is opening to a completely different pop culture milieu than any of his other movies. It's opening in the age of u-torrents, trailers on Apple, TMZ and most imporantly, of legions upon legions of self-important fanboys.
The whining was evident on at least two of the sites that showcased the Avatar trailer. Every other comment was how let down they felt, how the Na'vi (the fantastical aliens whose planet serves as the setting for the story) looked cartoony, or how James Cameron had turned into George Lucas. Bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch.
I'm pretty sure Cameron isn't exactly thin-skinned, but I wonder how he feels about thousands upon thousands of posts by strident, know-it-all fanboys proclaim that his film sucks four full months before its theatrical release?
Such feedback isn't what I'd call completely useless as reactions to things like Superbowl ads were cues for special effects vendors to tweak some shots but in general, like I've said a thousand times before, fanboys really are nothing more than a bunch of trolls at heart. There were legions of them who predicted that the new Terminator movie would rule the box-office just because their beloved Christian Bale is in it. There were bunches of them that predicted Star Wars: Episode II would kick Spider-Man's butt. And there are multitudes of them who, EVERY time there's a movie that makes heavy use of digital effects, have to harp on how fake the effects look, no matter how outlandish the character being depicted is. And so many of them are so woefully inarticulate that, apart from their inability to conjugate or spell properly, some of them can only manage to write one word: fail! Why Avi Arad strove to pander to these people when making Spider-Man 3 will forever be beyond me.
Avatar will probably make a killing at the box-office, and even though that isn't likely to shut the fanboys up any time soon even if it does, at least we'll know for sure that life goes on no matter how many trolls infest the internet.
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