James Cameron chats Avatar

James Cameron has been mostly tight-lipped about Avatar, his latest dive into the world of envelope-shoving cinema.

But now the lucky gits at the Microsoft Advance ’08 conference got to hear the director talk up his new baby and the wonders it promises. Never one to humbly talk down his creations, the director cited the bustling amount of CG characters Avatar will boast: “This is the single most complex piece of filmmaking ever made," he told the crowd. "We have 1,600 shots for a two-and-a-half hour movie. It's not with a single CGI character, like King Kong or Gollum. We have hundreds of photo-realistic CG characters."

Naturally, he gave very little away about the plot, except to confirm that it’s about a wounded ex-marine who gets dragooned into the effort to settle and exploit an exotic, distance planet. Oh, and he ends up fighting on the side of the natives.