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Sam Worthington Defends 'Avatar' Trailer, Praises Cameron

by Jenni Miller Aug 25th 2009 // 10:02AM

Filed under: Action, Animation, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, 20th Century Fox, Interviews

While some folks were partaking in Avatar Day across the country, a very dusty Sam Worthington was chatting up a group of journalists across the pond on the set of Clash of the Titans. (Who, uh, missed seeing Avatar on the big screen.) The Aussie actor has been reading our reactions to the trailer and the IMAX/3D experience, and he wants you to know that Avatar is built for the theater and not your laptop. But will James Cameron's plan to get people back into theaters work?

And it's a lot of pressure for the hot young star, whose done five blockbuster projects in a row and is ready to "take four months off and just do f*ckin' nothing... hang out with my mates."

Worthington said, "Man, it's got a hell of a lot of hype to it. I read all what was said yesterday about the trailer and I can see their point. As I said, it's not meant to be [seen] on an Apple Mac. It's built for IMAX. It's built for 3D. That's what [James Cameron] designed it for. He's designed it to bring people back to the cinema. It's interesting that he's released that trailer, that Jim's gone and done that, and then the next day shows it in IMAX. One extreme to the other. We get the criticism and then we get the rave reviews of what it looks like in its own formula. That's obviously going to get people to think and go, "Damn right! I'm going to go and see this at the cinema!" Jim has always said to me he wants to bring people back to the movies, and he's a smart enough man for that to be tactical."



So far the people who did get to see the footage on the big screen were suitably impressed, like Cinematical's Jessica Barnes, especially when compared to the trailer. Commenters had a lot to say about the trailer when it came out on whether or not it ruined the pre-Friday buzz.

As for the notoriously hands-on director, Worthington called him "the ultimate collaborator. He's the boss and he'll have final say, but he'll tell you, 'Gimme what you've got,' and the first thing I ever said to him is, 'I've got nothing to lose, man, I'll give you everything.' So I threw everything at him, every idea, every thing, and he'll whittle it down to get what he wants, but that's your job, is to offer and offer and offer. If you're designing one of the plants or one of the spaceships, the guys would give him 100 or a thousand different designs and Jim would go, "Take that and that and this and this," then put it all together to get Jim Cameron's space, his Samson, his dragon, and he's the ultimate at that."

And that's not where Cameron's hands-on technique ends. When it came to the significant amount of time Worthington spent against the good old green screen, the director was right there with him – usually throwing stuff at him.

"[Green screen acting] increases your skills, it takes you down to the essence of what acting is, which is reacting, so it's more challenging in the sense of, you've got nothing – Jim is very clever. In Avatar, you wouldn't ever act to nothing – there's an explosion and he'll throw stuff at you or hit you with a big stick so you're propelled across the room or fire a gun so there was the sound of it. And it was the case of, he would always give you something to react to. The challenge is finding the right thing to make the reaction true. And also, working with nothing takes you back to the basics, which is – it's just you and another person. There's no distractions. It's you trying to get something off the other person, [and] they're trying to get it off you. Very simple. So I love that."

It's a big gamble for Cameron, Fox, and its stars who have been transmogrified into blue aliens with distinctly feline features. It had audiences at Comic-Con aglow with excitement, but it's experienced a fair share of backlash and caused no small amount of consternation for fans and press members who tried to see the footage without success and then read about half-full theaters, as per Elisabeth Rappe's experience.

However, even if Avatar doesn't satiate the masses (or Fox's bottom line), Worthington's star will continue to rise. He seems to take his craft very seriously, and let's face it, he looks rather "fit" in a Grecian kilt.

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Tags: avatar, clash of the titans, ClashOfTheTitans, featured, james cameron, JamesCameron, sam worthington, SamWorthington

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