I think there are two reasons for cinema-going: you want to see a long-awaited film as soon as humanly possible: Harry Potter & the Half Blood Prince, New Moon… perhaps; or the scale of film itself demands the dimensions of a big screen: The Dark Knight, Watchmen, Avatar. There are many many films falling outside these categories for which a trip to a cinema is a waste of time, unless you’re on a date and it doesn’t really matter what you see. I’m far beyond dating so there aren’t many films that motivate me to drive the ten-or-so miles to our nearest big screen.
We saw Avatar today.
RT says:
It might be more impressive on a technical level than as a piece of storytelling, but Avatar reaffirms James Cameron’s singular gift for imaginative, absorbing filmmaking.
Which pretty much sums up everything I was turning over in my head on the way home. Avatar is huge: cinematography on a massive scale. ‘Pandora’ is not simply a made-up world – it’s an eco-system on a global scale: the environment gives the impression of being fully realised, which is a monumental achievement for a film, monumental budget notwithstanding. Somehow Cameron has created a world, a culture, a language that one can believe exists. (As an aside, the language does exist…) The creatures seem evolutionarily plausible, even though the dominant species is blue and a lot of the dog-like creatures have extra sets of legs. Have you played Spore?
The obvious subtexts dealing with the assumed superiority of occupying forces and the destruction of the natural world aren’t preachy enough to mar ones enjoyment of the film. Neither is the flimsy plot, which begins middles and ends exactly as you already know it will. This film has nothing new to show us in terms of its narrative or its characters, rather its appeal is in its imaginative context and the overwhelming, all-absorbing spectacle of the thing.
I’ve seen 3D films before, and films with 3D sequences, but none of them even come close to Avatar. Cameron’s use of computer generated imaging is flawless; the 60%/40% divide between live action and CGI is seamless; the 3D format is an enhancement not a sneaky distraction. But this is a film you need to see big, because it is big (if not clever), and it has definitely opened up a universe of possibilities for film-makers begging for funding for 3D format cameras.
It’s not a perfect film, in spite of my excitable review. Some of the editing seems a little heavy-handed and there is a quick zoom technique used repeatedly just before each fight sequence that is distracting, but none of these things detract from the iconic nature of this film. See it big before it’s over, you’ll be glad you did.
