One of the critiques I read recently about AVATAR, before I went to see it, stated that it was a “game changer.” And, never mind the story, the CGI and the 3D is so revolutionary that it will change cinema forever. I just recently went to watch AVATAR in 3D and…
My initial reaction right after leaving the cinema was simply: 3D is a gimmick, but I liked the movie…
Then, over several hours of pondering over the film, I found myself coming to more conclusions:
First, my reason for calling it a gimmick: The definition of a gimmick is:
1) a : a mechanical device for secretly and dishonestly controlling gambling apparatus b : an ingenious or novel mechanical device : gadget
2) a : an important feature that is not immediately apparent : catch b : an ingenious and usually new scheme or angle c : a trick or device used to attract business or attention.- A marketing gimmick http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/GIMMICK
I’m going to use it in the terms of “an ingenious and usually new scheme or angle” and/or “a trick or device used to attract business or attention” to define the usage of the 3D technique. AVATAR showed up in the middle of a recession, when ticket sales were low and risks were high. If he intentionally used 3D because of this fact, than he was brilliant. If not, he had some great luck deciding to do it now.
The reason I point this out is because the $300 million to produce the film had little-to-nothing to do with the 3D. Considering the fact that most of the film is in a CG world with CG characters, all they had to do was to add another camera side-by-side with the original in the software program. Ask a CG artist about it. They create the effect of 3D by having one camera for your left eye and the other for your right eye.
It cost so much because of the amount of previz, motion-capturing, and CG modeling work that went into the film. The $300 million dollar investment looks life-like, or close to it, but the average film-going audience member wouldn’t have noticed. People are not “wowed” by the realism of CG and compositing, but by fancy effects. I can put CG into a scene and make it seamless, but another person can have an explosion and make it less seamless and get a better reaction. Cameron needed a sales gimmick to get enough people into the theater to re-coop the cost of the film and justify the size of the budget. That’s where the 3D came in to play. -And it worked. But, a game changer? I’m not so sure.
To describe it to someone who has never seen it, the 3D felt like holograms pulled out of the screen and shoved into the foreground. I found it distracting. Objects, like tree branches, floating ashes and such, which should have been subtle elements for creating mood, distracted me from being able to see what was going on behind them. I felt distant from the action and drama because of that. As I watched it, I wished that I could see it in 2D instead.
Cameron wrote the screenplay to Avatar in ‘93 or ‘94, and like Lucas and the prequels back in the ‘80’s, he realized that his vision was too large to be able to be made at that specific period in cinema history. But, when Cameron saw the creation of Gollum in LOTR, he decided to use the same technology of motion-capture to create his characters. So, basically what he did was an upgrade of the quality, with an emphasis on the eyes, and multiplied it by 100 by make many “Gollums” (the Na'vi, the natives of the planet).
Some critics stated, “forget the story” and focus on the CG. Forget the story? They forget that story is the foundation of film. -A bad foundation means a bad film.
Let’s look at the story: Original? Not really. New planet, but the story followed the very similar plot lines of DANCES WITH WOLVES and Disney’s POCAHONTAS. The ending also felt similar to the conclusions of LOTR and NARNIA: THE LION WITCH AND THE WARDROBE.
Three things that stuck out as storyline flaws were:
The fact that the Na’vi arrows can not penetrate the windshields of the enemy aircraft when the humans destroy the gigantic tree, but later on they can pierce not just the windshields, but also go all the way through to kill the people inside. I know we can say that the Na’vi just needed to be a little closer to the aircraft in order to penetrate the windshields and that they weren’t close enough earlier in the film. But, there needed to be a line sometime before the last battle that acknowledged the necessity of close proximity for the arrows to work on the aircraft.
Another stand-out was that some of the lines just felt “odd” and out of place. Especially a lot of the profanity. Now, I’ve seen films with military figures that utilized a multitude of profanity, and it felt real and natural. But, somehow, the profanity in this film felt like a priest or a nun swearing. Cameron had an obsession with “female dogs” and had many of the human characters say it. It felt unnatural and shoved into the script to make the characters sound tough. The film’s beautiful world may have helped make the “odd” feeling as it seemed almost too beautiful to be desecrated with any bad language.
At times there was too much explaining and other times where there should have been more. At least 10-15 minutes of the beginning could have been cut and I wish that they replaced that time with a scene about Jake Sully (the handicapped ex-Marine) losing his legs. I had a hard time connecting with Jake Sully’s character and would have connected more, on an emotional level, with his excitement about the possibility of walking again. The middle of the film could have been tightened down with quicker series of montages to push the story forward. The biggest dilemma of trying to solve the problems between the military humans and the native aliens seemed to become a side issue while the expansive development of Jake Sully’s initiated into the tribe and reminded me of what fell flat on Pearl Harbor.
My concern is this: On the trailer for the film they list all of Cameron’s films except for one: THE ABYSS. Why? Because it was considered a failure by many. And, an expensive failure at that. At the time, it was the most expensive film ever, then TITANIC topped it. AVATAR has beaten TITANIC as the most expensive, but… unfortunately, only 2 out of 3 of these films were a success. All three also have another common denominator - they’re long. The ABYSS was so long that Cameron was forced to cut necessary things out and the worry is that this length issue will become a trend. CG only “wow’s” people so much. Then, you have to up the quality or add 3D. 3D will only impress audiences until that novelty wears off. If we continue down this treacherous path then our films will end up like the Titanic, with a captain that yells, “Full steam ahead!” straight into iceberg territory. -We all know how that ended.If I were to grade the film, I would give it a C+ for story and A+ for the CGI. The story didn’t warrant the budget. They needed more time on the script and they wouldn’t have needed the 3D.
