My coursemate and I took a trip to Birmingham's IMAX cinema last week to see the highest grossing film ever (that's now a fact), James Cameron's Avatar. I was extremely sceptical about the whole thing to begin with, more excited about the spectacle of an IMAX theatre than the film itself. In the end I was more impressed by the latter and considerably disappointed by the former. But I digress.
The most impressive thing about the 3D aspect of the film is that rather than the objects and people coming out at the audience, it's that the screen is given a depth which makes everything seem so much more real. Saying that, it took me until at least forty five minutes in to truly appreciate the superiority of the technology thrown at making this film. The 3D works, boy does it work, but some background/foreground blur does occur too often for my liking and some of the details are lost through lack of focus for want of clarity on bigger things- the Na'Vi's capturing eyes for example.
Before going to the film, too many people had told me “it’s got not story, the plot is rubbish” but while actually in the cinema I realised that the film very much does have a plot, a classic story in fact: Boy arrives in new place, Boy meets Girl, Boy decieves Girl, Boy and Girl reconcile and live happily ever after. Avatar is a LOVE story. It’s Tarzan meets Die Hard, or more accurately perhaps Pocahontas meets Star Wars. And I quite liked that. Cameron has taken the best bits from all previous sci-fi, fantasy and war movies, added a bit of romance and merged them to make one brand new, all killer, spectacular genre of it’s own kind.
That’s not to say I want a sequel. According to MTV.com Cameron has a trilogy arc worked out in his mind, and if that’s what he ends up shooting then I think he has a Star Wars phenomenon on his hands. If he sticks with just an “Avatar 2” I think he’s in trouble. Sequels are tricky subjects and the end of Avatar doesn’t really leave you begging for more. Well, it certainly didn’t me.
I’m not going to try and join the Anti-Avatar bandwagon, because I really quite enjoyed the film. I just wouldn’t necessarily go out of my way to watch it again soon, it’s not my thing. It certainly does live up to the hype technically, but I prefer my films with a little more love and devotion put into them, rather than a fancy money-making, crowd-pleasing number. See Burton’s Alice In Wonderland for an example of a technological dreamchild. Not that it’s out yet, but the trailers show me all I need to know. Speaking of which.... the IMAX let me down. Not enough money has been spent on aesthetics for my liking: I want trailers, fancy tickets with images intergrated on them, whopping great posters and a true movie-going experience. Otherwise I’d have waited until they released the DVD and popped over to my dad’s to watch it on his HD 48 inch TV.
Over & Out
Charley
"No Mister Bond, I expect you to die" Goldfinger, 1964
Friday 12 February 2010
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