An extra dimension

James Cameron. Photo / AP

The director James Cameron creates new worlds for his audience. As the man behind The Terminator and Titanic, two of the most successful films of all time, he has changed the parameters of popular entertainment at least twice during his 30 years behind the camera. And now, at the age of 55, many believe he is about to do it all over again with his new film, Avatar, and its revolutionary 3D technology.

It is 12 years since the Canadian last wowed audiences with his ocean-going blockbuster, Titanic, and there is so much excitement surrounding the new film that the unveiling of its trailer became an event in America, some weeks before the film's release.

This time, the master of special effects takes us into outer space, but Cameron's unorthodox vision delivers a space that is very much his own creation. As ever, his mind is full of strikingly beautiful visual tricks that sear on to the imagination, like the molten metal of the murderous cyborg in Terminator 2 or the spellbinding, watery shape that is encountered by the submariners in The Abyss.

"When you look at the history of film, there have been to date two great revolutions - sound and colour," says Jeffrey Katzenberg, the influential head of Dreamworks animation.

Talking to the New Yorker for an almost unprecedentedly prestigious, 12-page profile of the director on the eve of Avatar's release, Katzenberg stakes his reputation on Cameron's ability to persuade the public to clasp 3D cinema to their hearts at last.

"This will be the third great revolution. People are still somewhat sceptical and wonder if it's a gimmick and if it is better suited to cartoons. I don't believe that for a second. I think the day after Jim Cameron's movie comes out, it's a new world," he says.

The director has not been slow to sound a fanfare either. "This film integrates my life's achievements," he insists. It's a typical phrase from a man who simply wants to take the sensory side of the cinematic experience further than anyone else has. Cameron, the son of an engineer, has been working for 10 years on the development of a 3D camera.

Avatar is set 120 years from now on planet Pandora, where humans can't breathe the air. Our hero, Jake, played by Aussie Sam Worthington, lies in a box, while his virtual representative, a nine-foot-tall, electric-blue avatar explores the terrain. The love interest is blue too - an alien covered in luminous spots.

As so often with sci-fi, the mournful story unfolds in a post-apocalyptic future where careless humans have laid waste to their home planet - on this occasion in an obsessive search for a rare but crucial element: the ironically named "unobtanium".

On the set, his key actors had to wear a special head rig which suspended a tiny camera in front of their faces to register every change in their facial expressions. The electronic information was then relayed to a computer system and reinterpreted in the movements of the digital characters.