Magic isn't gone from box office's fall slate

With the release of the latest Harry Potter movie, the summer blockbuster season has unofficially passed its pinnacle. There's just a few big movies left to sate the appetites of mega-hit seekers.

Thankfully, the end of the year holds several movies with the potential to rival any giant robot, boy wizard or balloon-borne septuagenarian in box office returns.

Primary among these is director James Cameron's “Avatar,” a movie with so much buzz from so far off (it's set to open Dec. 18) that it's become a bit of a film anomaly.

The anticipation is based on a few factors: First, it's James Cameron. The director, famous for redefining the scope of big-budget films with a catalog including “Aliens,” “Terminator 2” and “Titanic,” has not had a major release since that doomed ship hit the ocean floor in 1997, taking with it the all-time box office record.

“You get a filmmaker like that, who actually made the most successful film of all time, added to the fact that he hasn't made a film in a long time — that's a big buildup. You're definitely going to have people on the edge of their seat wondering what he's going to do next, and can he be successful,” said Mark Hoeger, president of local film company Oberon Entertainment Properties and an adjunct film professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Cameron is known not only for bringing a new level of technical ingenuity and story depth to his movies, but also for the massive scale of his vision.

Which brings us to the second factor of anticipation: “Avatar” is supposed to change movies.

The story involves a paralyzed human soldier on a lush alien world called Pandora. There, due to an injury and the planet's atmosphere, he is forced to mentally control an alien body — an avatar — to survive. The planet's native Na'vi species and humanity fall into violent conflict, forcing the soldier to choose sides.

The technology used during filming is said to be almost completely new, created by Cameron and his team specifically for this story, employing 3-D technology to a depth not seen before. Apparently, that's what a budget north of $200 million can get you these days.

“What Cameron's doing is sort of like what George Lucas did after ‘Star Wars,'” Hoeger said. “He's taken all this money he's made and put it into pioneering film technology. He's made it all about reaching this vision, and from an insider's perspective, that's what's got people excited.”

The anticipation for “Avatar” was bumped up a peg a few months ago when Josh Quittner of Time magazine saw a clip of the film and wrote that “the scenes were so startling and absorbing that the following morning, I had the peculiar sensation of wanting to return there, as if Pandora were real.”

Similar reactions hit the Internet last week after 25 minutes of footage was screened at Comic-Con 2009 in San Diego, bringing the fervor to a fever pitch.

And we're still more than four months away from the premiere. Anxious yet?

Speaking of anxious, the teen angst and blood lust saga “Twilight” will see its next entry, “The Twilight Saga: New Moon,” in November.

Based on the novel by Stephenie Meyer, the vampire-loves-confused-teen story involves new man-eating creatures and brand new locations where heroine Bella (Kristen Stewart) can be frightened/in love.

The story also takes on new characters, including those played by veteran British thespian Michael Sheen (“The Queen,” “Frost/Nixon”) and the phenomenal child-to-teen actress Dakota Fanning (“Man On Fire,” “The Secret Life of Bees”).

The Twilight films seem to be going the way of Harry Potter, in that each installment has a different director so far. (Potter films 2, 3 and 4 all had different directors, though 5-8 are all helmed by David Yates.)

Catherine Hardwicke directed last year's “Twilight,” director Chris Weitz (“The Golden Compass”) is finishing up work on “New Moon” and David Slade (“30 Days of Night”) is taking over for the third installment, “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse,” due out in the summer of 2010.

“I think that it's a cool idea, seeing how they'll play out, seeing a completely different vision each time a new director takes on the material,” said fan Megan Ingram, 19, of Omaha, who's a student at North Central College in Illinois. “I wasn't all that into Catherine Hardwicke's version anyway.”

As long as star Robert Pattinson (as vampire Edward) is on screen, the series' other fans may not even notice the change in directors.

A third likely contender at theaters this winter is British crime-specialist director Guy Ritchie's new film “Sherlock Holmes,” opening Christmas Day.

The movie is a reinterpretation of the legendary English detective, incorporating the action, gritty fisticuffs and humor of Ritchie's earlier films “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” and “Snatch” with the more academic leanings of the classic character. Just like Arthur Conan Doyle's original Sherlock, but with explosions and partial nudity.

It could be a huge risk. For some fans, turning the great detective into an earlier version of James Bond is a complete about-face.

“I'm excited, because it's Sherlock Holmes,” said Sean Creswell of Omaha, a fan of both the literary Holmes and Guy Ritchie films. “But then again, this is a whole different thing. I mean, ‘Snatch' is one of my all-time favorite movies, but if you read (the Doyle books), Holmes is really kind of an effeminate character. I have a friend who's a huge Holmes fan, and he's actually (mad). He's refusing to watch any Guy Ritchie films at this point.”

The new action-oriented Holmes is played by Robert Downey Jr. (“Iron Man”), now well into his rebirth as an A-list talent. Jude Law co-stars as Dr. Watson, Holmes' best friend and assistant. Rachel McAdams appears as Irene Adler, known as the only woman who ever truly challenged Sherlock, intellectually or otherwise.

The movie is Ritchie's first attempt at truly mainstream fare. Judging by the preview — full of fistfights, fireballs and humor — he's got the basics of popular cinema down.

The question is, can the movie be both popular and Sherlock-y?

Live up to the hype and box office hopes?

For all of these movies, only time will tell. So mark your calendars.

Contact the writer:

444-1339, wesley.taylor@owh.com