John’s Movie Musings

James Cameron’s last film was Titanic.  You  may have heard of it.  It made a few bucks at the box office.  Can you believe that was in ‘97?  Since then, Cameron took his new fortune and invested in 3D technologies.  He dived into the Atlantic Ocean and shot 3D footage of the real Titanic and explored the nuances of filming with two cameras. All of that knowledge and experience?  He put it into Avatar.  He just had to wait until the technology in the theaters could catch up with his vision.

Cameron just wasn’t learning about 3D this past decade.  He was also developing a process to animate believable, human expressions on CG characters.  That Uncanny Valley is too great of a challenge to just sit there, I guess.  WETA (The Lord of the Rings guys) mirrored real, full body performances of the actors onto blue, ten-foot tall CG aliens.  Before Avatar’s release, there were plenty of doubts about if this could work.  If it didn’t, you could bet there would be drinking games around all of the Smurfs and Thundercats jokes.  Fortunately, it all came together perfectly.

So there’s two paragraphs of me gushing about the technology in this movie.  The plot?  Wellll, it’s a story you’ve heard a few times.  But that’s not to say it’s bad.  In fact, other movies who have used it have won Oscars.  None of them had blue aliens, but neither has anyone created a world so amazing as Pandora (the planet).  The Discovery Channel could film a sequel to Planet Earth, call it Planet Pandora, and it would be just as good, or better than the orig- our real planet.  It’s an incredible feast for your senses.  And the best part?  No time is taken to explain the marvels of this planet.  It just exists, yet retains the wonder and mystery.

Avatar is meant to be seen in 3D.  But even if you take a trip to Pandora in 2D, go.  You’ve never experienced anything quite like it.

Grade: A