More On: Avatar

Ah-ha! Finally, some reports that Avatar's hype is simply over-the-top and unlikely to meet its insanely high expectations:

"The consensus among the people who saw Thursday night's footage was that it was glorious and eye-popping — but they had no trouble telling the CG animation from reality, especially in the scene where live actors are interacting with the CG animated avatars. And the 3-D didn't seem to add all that much to the viewing experience. The footage was great, but not quite photorealistic."

"The criticisms boiled down to saying that the Avatar footage was better than the CG people had seen in the past — but not the massive world-shattering change we'd been promised."

"It's not that Avatar wasn't a hit, it just wasn't the grand slam everyone expected. I've talked to a number of people - fans and people in the industry - who were a little underwhelmed by the 24 minutes of footage. No one disliked it, but the weight of expectations kept the film from really taking off."

This is good news. Now I can start lowering my expectations in hopes of being suitably blown away come December. Let the five-month cool-down period begin...now.