As if the problems with Fox’s “Avatar Day” promotion weren’t enough, the marketing of James Cameron’s Avatar continued to hit snags today with the faulty debut of the film’s trailer. Despite there being a literal countdown until its premiere, at 10am EST this morning Twitter was abuzz with complaints that the thing not only didn’t work, but that it was a massive failure on the part of Fox, Apple and whoever else was responsible. Not helping matters was the fact that while we waited for the thing to be available on Apple’s site, we looked around the page and noticed the embarrassing copy that reads “FROM THE DIRECTOR OF THE ‘TITANIC.’” Meanwhile, others found they could view the trailer on a French MSN site.

Then came the biggest fail of all: the trailer was a disappointment! Derivative visuals aside, the movie looks to be a letdown in terms of its responsibility to be a groundbreaking work of cinema. Of course, there could have been no other reaction coming off so much hype. And it is indeed possible that the backlash will turn back around once people see some of the film as its meant to be seen, in 3D. But that’s just the problem of this marketing blunder. While some are saying the trailer shouldn’t have hit the web before “Avatar Day,” I think this particular trailer shouldn’t have been made, let alone released, at all. As I wrote earlier this year in anticipation of Avatar’s marketing, “You really don’t need to show one second of footage. Because we’ll be there no matter what.” However, now that I’ve seen a disappointing mess of CGI and familiar-looking footage, maybe I won’t be there after all — unless I hear legitimate reason to bother (fortunately, I’m sure I will hear one).

Check out what the rest of the film blogosphere has to say about the trailer’s failure — or success — after the jump:
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James Cameron’s Avatar is supposed to be like nothing we’ve ever seen before. So why does it look so familiar? One of the most disappointing things about the film’s promotion so far is how derivative the film looks in the trailer that (eventually) debuted online today. And much of what we’re reminded of wasn’t even that great to begin with. To help illustrate our feeling of déjà vu, we’ve captured a few screenshots from the trailer and, where available, put them next to their older visual counterparts.
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We’re starting to hear some positive buzz about G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Apparently it doesn’t rape or ruin your childhood; rather, it may make you feel like a kid again. This is what a toy/cartoon adaptation should do, we guess, but we still wish they’d made a Reagan-era-style war movie instead of a CG-heavy action blockbuster with too much comic relief. Because even when we were little we knew the property was a young person’s version of the conservative, Cold War-informed military pictures of the 1980s. And if Rambo could get his own Saturday morning animated series, why couldn’t we get a hard-R-rated G.I. Joe after all these years?

We know the answer to that question, but that doesn’t change the fact that we’re disappointed. See, while others might feel GIJTROC has ruined their childhood by being too unfaithful to the action figures and show, we feel it’s ruined our childhood because it isn’t the movie we dreamed of. So that’s how the following list of films was selected. Instead of going for all the obvious remakes and video game adaptations (we’ve never cared about games), we’re focusing on movies that really turned our beloved films, comics and cartoons of our youth into something we’re now almost embarrassed to ever admit we enjoyed.
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Are you tired of all the false rumors of celebrity deaths (today it was Rick Astley)? And are you tired of all the jokes that Michael Jackson is really still alive somewhere, hanging out with Tupac, JFK and Elvis? So are we, but we thought we’d take both the obnoxious death hoax trend and the idea that MJ faked it so he could live in peace and out of debt as inspiration for something more worthwhile: a discussion of favorite false deaths in movies.

The device is quite popular, especially in thrillers and horror flicks, and it can be employed as a plot starter or in a twist ending. James Bond has done it, as has Sherlock Holmes. Whether someone fakes his/her own death or is simply mistaken for dead, the actual deed or the ultimate reveal can end up terrific cinema. In fact, it was very difficult for us to narrow our favorites down to ten. It’s a shame we had to leave out memorable scenes from Heathers, Hero and many other movies. Certainly you’ll disagree with some of our exclusions, too, so feel free to name them in the comments section.

Just beware; there may be SPOILERS after the jump:
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Should special effects only be used to service a film’s story, or is it perfectly fine for movies to feature extraneous spectacle? That’s a debate that comes up often among cineastes, but ultimately there’s room for both functions. Sometimes, in cases like Jurassic Park and The Matrix, both categories of effects may even faultlessly coexist in the same film. Yet there is one kind of effects employment that’s intolerable to all film-loving parties: the gratuitous exploitation for the sole purpose of brazen gimmickry. It’s this kind of effects work that goes beyond spectacle. It’s not so much a show as a show off.

For one example of this cinematic sin check out Karina’s review of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, in which she references a scene featuring an inessential and irrelevant rocket launch in the background of an otherwise intimate moment between two lovers on a sailboat. Actually, that’s apparently only a minor citation in a “a film about the feat of its own whiz-bang, Frankensteinian digital imagery, drunk on its own accomplishment to an extent that feels quasi-ethical.” Hardly the first movie to commit such a crime, sure, but Benjamin Button seems to be the most thoroughly guilty exploiter since Forrest Gump (both films, incidentally, were scripted by Eric Roth).

So, in (dis)honor of Roth’s repeat offense, let’s take a short look at the worst exploitations of special effects in the last 15 years:
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I was reading Diablo Cody’s recent article in Entertainment Weekly about her love for Judy Blume, and started wondering why there haven’t been any movies made from anything she’s written. Earlier this summer my friend Jen Jones published a biography of Judy Blume, and when I rang her up about any Judy Blume films, she confirmed my fears: she’d been relegated to the world of made-for-TV movies and development hell.

Blume signed a multi-picture contract with Disney way back in March of 2004 (The New York Times talks about why it took so long), and since then we’ve neither seen nor heard a glimmer about the Deenie movie that was supposedly in development, nor anything about her other books. So in an effort to prime the pump, we’re going to present our top five dream casts for five of our favorite Judy Blume books. Check them out after the break.

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This week I wanted to make a simple point: Andrew Stanton’s WALL-E is a near-masterpiece of A.I. proportions and socio-political implications, reduced by its cloying musical score to just another ingenious Disney/Pixar heart-tugger. The most effective way to illustrate this would have been to create a video mash-up of the WALL-E score and an immersive philosophical sci-fi like 2001: A Space Odyssey, THX-1138 or Tarkovsky’s Solaris. But my laptop’s down, so I’m stuck here telling you rather than showing.

Let’s try another way:

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I don’t know what is the worse idea, an all-CGI 3-D Smurfs movie, as Paramount had planned, or a CGI/live-action mix, as Sony Animation is now planning for our beloved blue communists friends. I guess if we only think back to Alvin and the Chipmunks and Underdog, it’s easy to think Sony’s new plan for The Smurfs is a terrible idea. But I think the second Scooby-Doo movie worked pretty well as far as cartoon adaptations go, and there’s a chance Hollywood could do a good job again, despite the majority (including Garfield: The Movie, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, the first Scooby-Doo) being on the bad side.

That said, I’m still no fan of the trend. However, if it must continue, I think it would be interesting to see any of the following 15 animated series, all of which feature the necessary mix of talking animals (or inanimate objects) and humans, turned into live-action movies with CGI characters:

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• Dreamworks is coming back, baby! All Steven Spielberg needs is a new distribution partner…and one billion dollars in outside financing…and an early exit from his Paramount contract…and an assurance that Jeffrey Katzenberg will take his side if there’s a battle over the Dreamworks name…
• Sony Animation is producing an Alvin and the Chipmunks-inspired live action/CGI Smurfs feature. Insert tasteless joke about random partying starlet turning blue as research for a role …. here.
• Madonna has canceled a screening of her Malawi doc I Am Because We Are at the Glastonbury music festival, because she’s afraid that not enough people are going to show up.
• Hugh Grant and Ziyi Zhang are in talks to star in Lost For Words, a romantic comedy directed by Suzanne Bier. The plot will cleverly circumvent the problem of Ziyi being unable to speak English.

I’ve come to a funny realization: My constant complaints against CGI are somewhat akin to complaints against blogging. Yet, while I admit that my writing isn’t quite the same as print journalism and film criticism of the past, I also don’t cost a ridiculous amount of money relative to the cost of modern special effects.

Anyway, I don’t need to defend or justify my existence as compared to the way things used to be, yet it’s certainly necessary for the people at ILM to defend their use of CG rather than old-fashioned matte paintings and models for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Especially considering how many reviews, both positive and negative, harp on the fact that Indy’s world doesn’t look like it used to.

So, perhaps in anticipation of all the nostalgic moviegoers who leave the theater this weekend wondering why all the locations and creatures looked so bad, the Associated Press has a story on the making of the latest Indy installment, complete with plenty of prematurely defensive quotes from visual effects supervisor Pablo Helman:

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When I saw the title of Olly Richardson’s rant on The Empire Blog asking if CG has killed our imaginations, I presumed he meant filmmakers’ imaginations and how special effects are less creative when done with the ease of computer graphics. But no, he’s really talking about our imaginations, meaning me and you and everyone we know. I’d never given it too much thought, but maybe modern audiences are really losing their ability to believe at the movies:

We never used to be so picky. If somebody watches the original King Kong or any of the works of Ray Harryhausen, you will never hear them complain about how the skeletons were a bit jerky or that the big ape’s fur didn’t blow realistically when he was climbing the Empire State Building (if they do complain, however, you should feel free to shoot them on the grounds of wrongness and philistinism). You just watch the film, acknowledge that what you are seeing couldn’t possibly exist, admire the artistry it took to create it and choose to believe it anyway. That’s what suspension of disbelief is: ignoring the protests of your eyes and more logical parts of your brain in order to enjoy a good story.

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According to Scott Kirsner, today is the 25th anniversary of the release of Tron, the groundbreaking Disney film that served, as Kirsner puts it “as the “shot heard ’round the world” for computer-generated visual effects.” Kirsner recently interviewed Tron director Steven Lisberger, who notes that in spite of the innovation Tron represented, at the time Disney compared his film unfavorably to another 1982 release:

Tron was nominated for two Academy Awards, in sound and costume design. But it wasn’t nominated for Best Visual Effects.

“We found out that the statement that was made was that we had cheated when we used computers,” [Lisberger] said.

[...] Lisberger said that when ET came out a few weeks before Tron, Disney executives told him they wished ‘Tron’ had turned out more warm and fuzzy… like ET. (ET won the Best Visual Effects Oscar for 1982.)

In honor of Tron, feast your eyes on this infamous deleted scene from the film, in which Yori takes Tron back to her “very illegal” private quarters, where they can “talk.”