I’d never been to an IMAX screening before. They’re massive screens aren’t they? Almost like an entire wall…a tsunami-like wave…where images threaten to pulverise the audience. And this seems to be James Cameron’s intentions for the 3-D release of his latest film Avatar. It is pure Cameron: loud, brash, macho, stupid and occasionally breathtaking. A publicity representative gave a little speech before the film and completely stone-faced said: “This could be the greatest film of all-time.”
The entire audience laughed. Quite audibly.
The fifteen minute clip introduces the character of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) on a spaceship with a startling, albeit, much more expensive-looking set design reminiscent of Aliens (1986).
There’s even cryogenic sun-bed-type thing. And Sigourney Weaver plays a doctor!
The rest of the preview footage is set on the alien planet, Pandora and introduces the Na’vi beings who look, quite frankly, like they belong in an Xbox 360 game…or something like that. There are also dinosaur-type beasts and flying dragons too. It is all remarkable looking and yet strangely distancing. Asking the audience to emotionally invest in a story of cartoon-looking giant blue aliens…it is a bit mad, and I’m sure Cameron is holding some wonderful stuff back for the big release. Yet the creeping fear that this is little more than a computer game on a giant screen is hard to shake.
The Na’vi have an Apocalypto-vibe about them…certainly elements of primitivism…that actually comes across as a bit racist… or unimaginative at best. Are they truly alien if they have such identifiable human ethnic traits?
Cameron has been banging on about the technology behind his new flick, and making all kinds of claims about an new era of photorealism. I also remember Joel Silver bragging about bar-raising for The Matrix Reloaded. And we all know how that turned out.
And the dialogue, or should that be, dire-logue? To quote Harrison Ford and his response to the nonsense George Lucas wrote in Star Wars: “You can type this shit, George but you sure can’t say it.” Whereas Ford was complaining about the gobbledegook aspects of Lucas’ sci-fi talk, Cameron has his characters in the few scenes in which there is dialogue talking like they are from Brooklyn…will people in the future really be saying such things as “What you got?” and “That’s what I’m talking about, bitch?” In the future? Really? And the Na’vi speak in a silly broken-English: “You like a baby. Ignorant.”
Of course, this is only fifteen minutes of mad footage designed to impress and perhaps cause illness…it is a gleeful assault on the eyes and ears of the audience. There is the feeling that Cameron’s supposed glorious return to filmmaking is going to be met with a shrug. Of course, one needs to wait to make a final verdict. Avatar is also going to be released in 2-D for those who do not wish to sit through a film wearing something akin to giant sunglasses in an IMAX screen.
The 3-D, I found to be quite stomach-churning. One can equate it to a kind of “sea-sickness”. The camera is constantly moving and Cameron seems to be taking much delight in throwing all kinds of digital tricks at the audience. Do we really need to see Sigourney Weaver’s head in 3-D? Is this the future of cinema? A cinema that is cold, aloof and technological. Where’s the humanity?
2 Comments
As always, I’m leaving my opinion of the film for when I exit the theater in December. However, I was pretty disappointed by the character designs of the aliens, which look like something an 18-year-old “Furry” dork would come up with. Whether or not the movie is good, I smell a MAJOR financial flop for FOX. Serves those ass-wipes right, too.
The trailer looked bloody awful, and the creature design laughable. This will bomb big time. It’s just a shame Stephen Lang is in it, he never deserved it.