Is the Avatar Re-Release Worth Seeing?

August 28, 2010 | Jitterbug 4

James Cameron is already holding the top two spots in the largest selling movies of all time.  Avatar wears the crown with nearly $750 million and Titanic sinks just beneath at $600 million, but Cameron wants to make sure no one comes along to challenge him. This weekend, Cameron is re-releasing Avatar in 800+ 3D theaters throughout the country.

This isn’t just a simple replay though.  The new version of Avatar sports an extra 8-9 minutes to the already ridiculous two and a half hour running time.  Whether or not you plan on seeing this in theaters again depends on a lot of factors, but I’ve done some digging and have uncovered what you can expect to see from the added footage.  Spoiler Alert: none of it looks very interesting.

I will probably go see this with my daughter because we didn’t see it in 3D the first time around.  I don’t think it’s a good film, but I can’t deny that it’s gorgeous, and I feel like I’d be missing out to not see it in the theaters with those silly glasses on.  However, if I had already seen it in 3D I would have no desire to see it again.  It’s too long, too silly, and the promise of 9 more minutes of footage deemed too useless for the first release doesn’t sound very appetizing.  This is a James Cameron movie though, and he is well known for cutting great scenes out of his movies to accommodate film standards.  For instance, in Aliens he cut a scene showing how Ripley had lost a child, which is an important bit of backstory that helps explain the way she latches onto Newt when the child first appears.  So maybe Avatar will have similar scenes that they just couldn’t manage to pack into the first release’s 162 minutes.  Here’s what I’ve been able to find out about the new footage.

Read More