James Cameron: Wows Comic Con with 'Avatar'

James Cameron: Wows Comic Con with 'Avatar'

Director James Cameron showed 25-minute of footage from the 3-D sci-fi/thriller movie "Avatar" at the Comic-Con International convention in San Diego.

Cameron said that a 15-minute clip of the movie will be shown for free on August 21 in some 3-D cinemas, including Imax Corp. theaters.

while speaking about the movie, Cameron said, "In the same way that I wrote 'Terminator' just to get a directing gig, I decided to write a story that was full of creatures and characters that would push the art of CG for that company".

The animated "Avatar" tells the story of the planet of Pandora, where the lithe, blue, indigenous Navi people inhabit a lush and wondrous place dense with green forests, fluorescent pink flowers, bizarre hammerhead dinosaurs and flying dragons.

Sam Worthington played the role of Jake Sully, a soldier on duty there, and Zoe Saldana played the role of Neytiri, the Navi princess who befriends him. The movie is set for a release on December 18, 2009.

Cameron used a new technology to make the film. He used both 3-D and performance-capture technology that places images of the actors in a computer-generated world.

Cameron said that he imagined the project 14 years ago specifically to push the art of digital 3-D animation and spent more than four years to make it.

The director also said that it may seem like a simple story about "nasty" humans fighting with "those beautifully, spiritually evolved Navi. But, it's really not, because we make science fiction as human beings for human consumption.

Cameron's credits as a director also include "The Terminator", "Aliens", "Terminator 2: Judgment Day", "Titanic" and "True Lies".