The Avatar in China headlines show no sign of letting up: now we're told 2D is bad for us.

In Shanghai, tickets for the show have become harder to obtain than legitimate working visas. When the film first opened, on January 4th, you could only book IMAX tickets a few days in advance. Faced with overwhelming demand, the Peace Cinema in People's Square released tickets for the rest of the month; and stayed open through the night on January 10th to let people buy them. The entire month was sold out by morning. This is the story of one man's quest that night.

The pictorial evidence from the night is decidedly non-3D. In fact, it's made up entirely of grainy cellphone images, for which we (and he) apologize. You get the idea though: a very long, very carefully-regulated wait, very early in the morning (he began lining up at midnight and didn't get the tickets until 4am) in very cold weather for a handful of tickets in three weeks time...

We make no such apology for the title of this post*, which was the subject line under which we were sent these photos. Frankly, we'd quite like to see "People going crazy for the Avatar" take off as a worldwide phenomenon.

 *It was that or, with a nod to the last time James Cameron caused a stir in China,  "My Heart Will Go On (But Not If I Have To Stand Outside For Much Longer)." Midnight: The wait begins.

 

Block Party.

 

It's 2010 already. Shouldn't my Avatar be standing here instead of me?

 Damn you James Cameron. You spent 12 years making this film. Would it have killed you to wait until summer to release it?

 Strange, non-human lifeforms detected...

 Sure, I'll give you the ticket that proves I've been standing in line. When you take it from my cold, dead hands.

 Who'd have thought? You need a ticket to buy a ticket.

(Note that the screen shows the ticket price as 150 RMB. This was a day or two after the cinema raised the ticket price, first to 180 RMB then to 200 RMB, to capitalize on demand. Such was the uproar they quickly reverted back to the original price.)

 "Hey man, I heard Avatar was overrated." "Me too - wanna try and get tickets for Iron Man 2 now that we're here?"

 Great Success! If success is standing in line until 4am for tickets to a showing in three weeks' time.
 

If you're still not convinced of the maelstrom of hype surrounding the film in China, there's more pictures and videos on the Youku Avatar page.