I applied to get free tickets to something that read like this “Free Screening: Avatar – Exclusive Free Footage.” I didn’t even think of what exactly I was applying for presuming it would be a preview screening of some new movie. To my surprise I’d applied for free tickets to go see a … wait for it …. trailer! You like me are probably wondering what the big fuss was – wouldn’t you just see the trailer as part of the next movie that you saw? Well, apparently not quite. This was an extended 15 minute trailer, in 3D and with an introduction by the director himself, James Cameron. I would have happily gone to see it myself but since I had two tickets I dragged Rita along as well.

When we got to Wimbledon Odeon we were surprised to see a giant queue of people waiting get into our screening. There were some serious hard core geeks in the line I tell you. Very defensive of their position in the queue as well! It was all rather amusing and almost worth turning up just to observe the actions and reactions of the people in the queue, and that was even before we got into the cinema.

There was quite some excitement in the air in the cinema as we all sat and waited for the preview to begin. Rita and I couldn’t help giggling at the audience.

Finally, after a quick introduction by some production manager the preview started …

… and exactly 15 minutes later finished!

Avatar, just in case you’re wondering, is a very weird story. Its set a couple of centuries into the future and a group of marines land on a very strange jungle planet called Pandora with all sort of weird and wonderful, and truly scary at times creatures, and sentinent beings. Somehow the minds of the marines are transported into the sentinent beings though its not entirely clear why they are set to occupy the planet.

I was quite impressed with the excerpts we saw. The 3D technology was very impressive. I would say almost seamless though characters on the screen still had a sort of stilted not quite real feel to them. I’m looking forward to seeing the full thing … though I was clearly not as keen as one diehard fan who actually started clapping at the end. No one joined him though …