Mattel has released some photos of the toys for James Cameron’s Avatar, and I couldn’t help but notice this one:
I liked this ship the first time I saw it…in Aliens twenty years ago. Zing!
Ha ha! But in all seriousness, folks, James Cameron has been sapped of all imagination.
Philip Reed
Kinda looks like one of the GI Joe vehicles from a few years ago.
yo go re
wow, yeah, that is blatantly the Dragonhawk. It's a shame the real Avatar movie had to lose its name for this…
Chad B.
Yeah there's a Sigma 6 vehicle that also looks a lot like that. Gotta love originality. At least it looks cool!
PrfktTear
Theres no denying that James Cameron has been the driving force behind some of modern cinema's best films. Terminator 1 & 2, Aliens, The Abyss (my personal favorite), Rambo: First Blood Part II, True Lies, and of course Titanic are all greats. That said, whats he done really over the last 12 years? Yes, he started making documentaries like Into the Deep and such, but making a feature film and making a documentary are two separate things. I guess we'll just have to wait and see how Avatar is. For once I agree with Yo, its too bad the real Avatar had to lose its name for this.
Nightboomfer
What scale is that in? I hope it's 3 3/4th.
jumper11
The alien designs kinda look like Power Lords toys as well. I will buy two of those Drago… Er Scorpions for my Joes!
dayraven
@Nightboomfer: yup, 1/18th scale (3 & 3/4 inch)… so yes, you're joes will be able to ride in it to fight your star wars droid tanks. i don't think that's an accident either.
Ben
I just wish Cameron hadn't hyped up this film like he has. I think Avatar will be a decent film, and even though some of the designs may lack a certain originality, I'm hoping that the story makes up for it. We wouldn't revere his films nearly as much if they didn't have some good stories driving them.
Motorthing
This one is a direct rip of the UNSC Hawk from Halo Wars – the fans on the wings are bigger here but I would imagine Mr. Cameron will be hearing from Bungie's people sometime soon
And that seems to be the main pitfall of what I'm expecting from this film – everything will look just like something else I have already seen before. The Mechs look like watered down APC Units from the Matrix (He's ripping Matrix Revolutions? He's in real need of a new nine year old to crayon his design's for him!) and the Aliens….well I don't care if they are supposed to be the emotional hook, they look so flat out irritating I would want to shoot them too.
Pass.
Poe
@Motorthing: I highly doubt Cameron will be hearing from Bungie. They swiped the design from Cameron's Aliens in the first place.
Cameron is only ripping off himself (and besides, the dropship itself was based on the real-life AH-64 Apache helicopter).
Motorthing
Poe – the much larger Pelican was the rip-off from the Drop-ship (down to the overhead swing out engine-nacelles, which the original designer on Aliens recognised was an "inspiration" from designs used on Macross/Exoforce)but both the Hawk and this are obviously heavy borrowers from elements of the Longbow Apache – down to the Hellfires on the stub wings here.
The point is this type of design is so generic its been seen in just about every military based sci-fi property you can name – and it's therefore unremarkable and pretty pointless.
And generic or not – you really think Cameron is too big for Microsoft to tap on the shoulder and wag a finger at?
Newton Gimmick
Ripping yourself off is perfectly legal.
Poe
@Motorthing: Actually, I just think they won't bother. As pointed out above, they apparently didn't give Hasbro any crap about the Dragonhawk, either.
And Avatar is being distributed by Fox, and I highly doubt it would be worth it to Microsoft to tangle with them over something like this. Your average person will look at the Halo ship and the Aliens dropship, see the same thing and ask, "Which came first?" and that's the end of that.
Really, the sad thing here is how generic both this dropship thing and the mech are. The mech is the most pathetic sort of second-generation Robotech ripoff.
Motorthing
Poe – Fair enough.
I'm not usually big on dismissing films before I've seen them (Unless M.Bay is directing them in which case it's just easier and saves time) but having seen such a large chunk of what are supposedly the highlights I think this thing will look OK but suck socks as far as anything beyond that goes.
dayraven
gentlemen, you're both missing the point… the toys. now, the dragonhawk was fairly recent, and about the same price range as the scorpion above… but not everyone bought the dragonhawk. the APC had nothing comparable in this scale or price range… until now. if i can affordably bring these toys into my home to inspire my kids, then the whole affair is worth it. you're being really jaded… not every one who will see this movie (or play w/ it's toys) has seen everything or knows the inspiration for every design. these look like viable kids toys and that's fine by me.
and for the record, star trek. star trek has nothing that looks like these… so there's goes the "every sci-fi property looks like this," argument.
Philip Reed
Wait. The Avatar toys will be 3.75-inch scale? That could be a good thing.
Paul
Every dropship since aliens has looked liked the Aliens dropship, which if anyone has the right to take the desigin, it's James Cameron.
I'm kind of tired of Cameraon bashing lately. It seems like the popular thing to do. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt on this one.
Poe
@Paul: No! Follow the consensus of the nerd herd!
Personally, I'm not saying Avatar will be a bad film based on its completely uninspired choice of vehicle design. Plenty of war movies are great, and they feature the same vehicles over and over again.
But I grew up expecting to be wowed every time by Cameron's creations, and after all the time, development and secrecy surrounding this project, it's weird to see so much "been there, done that" production design. But none of that means the movie won't be good. It just means I'm not interested in the toys.
Reverend Ender
I guess I am the only one who's sad that these figures and vehicles will not go with my 6"-7" figure collection, and that we will probably never see any such vehicles anymore. That, to me, is the unfortunate part.
dayraven
@Reverend Ender:
here, here!! my personal fav scale as well, and what do we get for cool mech & stuff? ZIP!
'cept battle cat!
Robzy
Paul – I agree… there seems to be A LOT of Cameron bashing on the internet these days. Hell, a few years ago everyone was screaming for him to make another film, and now he finally has and everyone (on other sites) seems to be saying it's garbage and unoriginal. I personally remember lots of people saying (at the time) Aliens and Terminator 2 were just going to be the same old thing, and look how they turned out!
It really annoys me… what's he ever done wrong? He's given us some of the best Sci-fi in the past 25 years! I love the man!!! His films do have an incredible WOW factor, and he's always pushing the envelope technology-wise.
I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt… as far as I'm concerned he's more than earned it!
Newton Gimmick
I thought everyone loved the Avatar stuff? All I heard was gushing over how great it all looked.
DankOne
Original or not looks like the gem from this line IMO.
Giant Monster From J
I thought it looked like a much larger version of the Hornet from Halo 3, but what do I know, I'm just a stupid little video game fan :3
Philip Reed
I managed to get a look at these toys at PAX and the figures are very much not good. I posted some pics of the toys – http://www.battlegrip.com/?p=5806