From the get go Avatar was intended to represent a heightened level of technology and a whole new viewing experience. Set in an alternate universe where a race of part human, part alien species have physical, emotional and spiritual powers far advanced to humans, James Cameron knew that the advertising for this film was going to have to represent something spectacular and mysteriously unearthly.
With that in mind, here was one of the posters used in the Avatar campaign. Simply picturing one of the Pandora natives, this picture doesn’t need anything more than this one mystical face to capture a viewers attention. With blue skin, terrifically bright green eyes and intriguing dollops of light tracing their way across this Na’vi’s face, the image looks very real and foreboding. What really captured me here was the way the Na’vi’s (I think this is Zoe Saldana’s Avatar, Neytiri) face leaps of the page as if it is 3D rather than an ordinary 2D image. The importance of making this image pop was huge to stay in keeping with the kind of viewing technology this film represented.
The use of black in the background makes the face even bolder and unearthly and light is used in a very unusual way. Rather than introducing any natural light into the image, the artist has made the Avatar’s skin glow which further separates this face from a human species. And the extremely large and bright eyes of the Avatar make this species seem as if it knows something you don’t, staring boldly off the page.
Overall I believe the artist did a terrific job of creating an image that would have lasting results and would encourage its viewers to seek out further what this movie was all about. With limited wording, the information is simple. “From the director of Titanic” is a smart move that instantly wins over a whole audience that have seen and loved Cameron’s Titanic for the historic masterpiece that it is. This one sentence ensures the viewer that the advertised movie will not disappoint – or at least that there is something new and special to be seen.
Lets see what Mr James Cameron will come up with next…
First off, I would just like to talk about the depth of detail that the creator’s took with this piece. The different colors in the eye, specifically the green and yellow, differentiate the poster altogether, because Neytiri’s face is blue, and the background is a dark blue/black. The eye is a cultural symbol for anyone – as a sign of understanding and respect. The saying goes that if you look into someone’s eye, you look into their soul. That is one of the themes of the movie, to know this other person, this other culture, and to have a respect for them and their land. By setting the eye apart with this color difference, the theme of the movie is shown in such a simple way, by just half a face.
I would like to emphasize a that the 3D-ness of the poster was not only to display the technology the film represents but to also give the viewer a taste of the immersive viewing experience of the plot and story. Though the story itself followed the commonly used trope of “alien invasions” (though this time the humans are aliens) James Cameron hopes to let the viewer get lost in this new world of Pandora. Did he succeed? At a minimum, his posters did.