By far the most anticipated event at Comic Con '09 (except for possibly, and rather unfortunately, New Moon), the panel for Avatar arrived with uproarious enthusiasm as James Cameron arrived on stage to announce that he would be screening over 25 minutes worth of footage. You can check out our thoughts on the clips in a separate video blog, but in addition to that, we also thought we should divulge as much detailed information regarding these scenes as our memories would allow.
The first clip begins with a Col. Quaritch, a gruff-voiced military man with scars running down the right side of his head. He walks down a hallway barking orders at recruits and informs them that his job is to keep them alive. "I won't succeed. Not with all of you." We hear a voiceover by Sam Worthington, playing Jake Sully, explain how he used to be an officer until he lost his legs. He pulls up in a wheelchair smiling, and passes by the recruits. A group of scientists, the most prominent of which is played by Sigourney Weaver, escort him alongside two large cylindrical containers housing unconscious alien bodies (a genetic replication of the Na'vi species), one of which he'll be able to control by having his brain waves synchronized with that of the Na'vi. This is his avatar.
The next scene gives us our first glimpse at the Na'vi (or rather, the avatar) in action. Visually, they look to be about ten feet in height, and have vibrant blue skin that's texturally very similar to, say, a frog. Think of them like giant "furries" without the fur. Jake Sully aligns himself on a platform, and exchanges some snarky dialogue with a scientist. She closes the platform shut, and activates it, locking his body into some sort of containment area. Surrounding the device are transparent, touch-based computers, which the scientists are using to monitor Jake's heart. One scientists slides his hand against a computer screen and it unlocks, allowing him to carry the vital information elsewhere in the facility.
In another room, two avatars are laid out like hospital patients. The scientists start the process that allows the human's minds to connect to the avatars, and they suddenly come to life. The scientists begin testing out the their motor functions to see how capable they are of controlling their new alien bodies. Jake though, has no interest in waiting around for tests, and immediately embraces his regained ability to walk. The scientists try to sedate him as he eagerly stumbles out of the room.
The next set of clips take place on the Na'vi homeworld, Pandora. We see Jake's avatar, along with a group of other avatars, examining the lush, colorful forest landscape. Jake lightly touches a large, orange flower-like plant. It immediately withers down into a small stump, and his eyes light up. He runs around touching all the plants in sight, laughing as they follow suit. Before long though, he's staring right in the face of an agitated triceratops-esque creature that appears ready to attack. The rest of the group tells him to settle down and hold perfectly still. Instead, he grinningly provokes it, chanting and waving about for it to fight. The creature rushes toward him. Jake thrusts his arms in the air and leaps forward, stopping the creature in its tracks. It cautiously backs away, and runs off to safety. For a brief moment, Jake soaks in his victory, cheering arrogantly. His excitement soon turns into terror though, when he realizes why the creature ran away: a massive flying creature with razor-sharp retractable teeth has landed directly behind him. Realizing this, Jake turns to the group in horror. "Uh… Hold still or run?" The group hesitates a moment. "Run!"
Jake darts through the forest as fast as he possibly can, desperately trying to evade capture from the ferocious beast. Describing this action sequence (and several others that follow) in much more detail than that is fairly useless without being able to experience the visual wonder of the world on display, unfortunately, but it's definitely a sight to behold.
We were also shown a variety of other sequences with Jake interacting with an actual Na'vi named Neytiri, played by Zoe Saldana. She's a native who we first meet when she spots Jake wandering the wilderness with no real sense of the environment around him. She raises her bow and prepares to shoot him, but a beautiful glowing bug (that's reminiscent in many ways of a jellyfish) seems to convince her that she shouldn't. She decides instead to follow him, and eventually finds herself forced to interject when he stumbles into the middle of a creature-filled n
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