By Jeremy Hoodaman
In a shocking press conference held yesterday, James Cameron revealed that many of the people, places and events depicted in his critically acclaimed film Avatar were fabricated.
Avatar, which premiered late last year, focuses on an indigenous tribe of aliens, known as Na’vi, living on Pandora, a moon in the Alpha Centauri star system. Now the highest-grossing film of all time, Avatar has captivated millions of viewers with its picturesque scenery, extraterrestrial battles, and nature-loving, blue-skinned aliens.
Moviegoers were understandably furious when Cameron admitted yesterday that he had made up many of the aspects of the Na’vi and their environment.
“We are many decades, even centuries, away from traveling to planets in other galaxies, let alone controlling ten-foot-tall aliens with our minds,” Cameron admitted to a stunned crowd. Attendees of the press conference often groaned and gasped at Cameron’s halting, stuttered admissions that certain facts and characters had been created by a team of writers.
Jon Landau, who produced the movie alongside Cameron, expressed his outrage in a statement made to The Flipside; “When James told me the movie would cost $300 million, I was surprised that the expenses of flying filming equipment to Pandora and back weren’t greater. Now I have one question: where the %$@# did my $300 million go?”
“I think for a while, this will make people careful,” said Roger Ebert, legendary film critic. “But this question of fact checking is a complicated one. At The New Yorker and Time and Newsweek, you have experienced people who know where to go and what’s right and what’s wrong. We as critics have been tricked by this demon seed known by some as James Cameron. There’s been a traditional dependency on the director, and this trust has apparently been broken.”
Upon hearing the news, picketers who had been protesting the government’s drilling under the Hometree sheepishly collected their things and left.
In a statement issued later yesterday, 20th Century Fox, which initially had called the allegations not worth looking into, said it had “sadly come to the realization that a number of facts have been altered and incidents embellished.” The film studio is also looking into allegations made towards Titanic, another one of Cameron’s well-received projects. Sources, who request anonymity, suspect that Leonardo DiCaprio was, in fact, never on the infamous passenger boat.
