Andy Mangold

Tonight, I had the pleasure of seeing Avatar, in 3D, on the IMAX at King of Prussia, and I must say it was quite the experience. I believe that I have witnessed the beginning of a massive shift in film and the experience of the cinema, without doubt.

While I wasn’t exactly dragged into the theatre kicking and screaming, I was skeptical of many things about Avatar: the dominance of computer generated graphics and 3D technology, chiefly. I was worried the CGI would feel like fake and the gap between what is real and what is not would be too obvious; I was worried that the 3D would be gimmicky and bothersome, if not uncomfortable. Neither was the case. Avatar is the first film, in my opinion, in a long time, to take the experience of going to the movies to a new level. It has changed the game.

(What follows may technically require a “spoiler alert”, but I don’t think being aware of any plot points will detract from the significance of this film.)

CGI

I was looking for the CGI to fall short of the impressive hype it received leading up to Avatar’s release, but I must confess I was totally lost in the world that James Cameron created. Even on the huge format of the IMAX, notorious for exposing the smallest idiosyncrasies of CGI, I could not hope to guess what in the film was real and what was created by computers, and I don’t care to know. Yes, obviously for logical reasons the human actors were real and the elaborate planet of Pandora, with all it’s complex and bioluminescent flora and fauna, was created by computers. However, the seamless integration of the two left me wondering just how much was enhanced and what was built as a tangible set. Long story short: the CG is a non-issue. It blends into the background and becomes another element for telling the story, for immersing the viewer in this distant world. The only reason I know certain things were computer generated, is because I know them not to not exist. I, a skeptic, was completely sold.

A huge advantage of the CG for this particular film is its ability to truly make full use of the IMAX format. While filming something for the IMAX requires an elaborate and expensive camera rig, the complex and delicately crafted graphics are right at home on the huge screen, filling every inch of it with beautiful detail for the whole duration of the film. The attention to the little things was staggering. Even in the vast stretching shots of airfields filled with soldiers, airships and vehicles, every tiny little radio tower had people busting around the windows. On more than one occasion, I was taken aback by the detail I noticed in a certain element of a certain shot.

The CGI, like good typography, became invisible and allowed me to more fully experience the world Cameron created.

3D

With the prevalence of home theaters and high definition television these days, the cinema needs something new to attract an audience. After seeing Avatar, 3D seems like it may be the thing to give cinema the edge. I quickly got over the unwieldy 3d glasses; the dimension and perspective they gave the film felt totally natural. It does take a bit of getting used to, and for awhile I found myself trying to explore the complex depth of field the 3D created. Once I trained myself to pay attention to what was in focus, the effect was really staggering.

The 3D is effective because it seems Cameron almost paid no mind to it when directing the film. It has to work in both 2D and 3D, so there are no gratuitous shots of people pointing guns at the audience or anything gimmicky like that. It just feels natural and real. I knew with certainty that Cameron had done it when halfway through the movie I had completely forgotten that what I was watching was in “3D”. It’s like when you made the change from VHS to DVD; you noticed a difference, but after only a short bit you didn’t feel like you were watching something of much higher quality. However, when you go back to that VHS, the change is astoundingly apparent. Such it is with the 3D in Avatar; halfway through the 3D has lost its initial impact, but my next trip to the cinema, inevitably in 2D, will be an underwhelming experience. For this reason, I think 3D will gain a lot more prominence in films to come, if they can do it as effortlessly and naturally as Avatar did.

Plot

Ok, so the plot was not groundbreaking. It was predictably epic and covered all of the expected bases: love, sex, war, violence and extended, drippingly apparent metaphor. However, I think it is important that the story was so accessible. This movie did so much visually and technologically that it almost needed a packaged, hard-to-hate story with wide appeal. As much as I hate to say it, I am glad I was not distracted from the visuals by some difficult to follow, mindfuck plot. This movie has set the standard for what can be accomplished visually, and the one-stop-shop story will insure that lots of people will get to see the film.

Don’t go see Avatar for the story. If you want a good story, read a book; if you want to have your mind blown, go see Avatar.

Gripes

While I obviously have many good things to say about Avatar, there are a few small issues that have stuck with me and bear mentioning. Firstly, the use of Papyrus for the subtitles, and movie poster for that matter, was downright offensive. The fact that it is a badly drawn, overused, terrible typeface is not even really my issue, I am just upset that with three years and 300 million dollars, the attention paid to the typography was so poor. While I think it would have been wonderful if the people behind Avatar had commissioned a custom drawn typeface to associate with the Navi (the humanoid race inhabiting Pandora), I would have settled for them simply shelling out a few bucks for a reasonable, well chosen, readable font. Instead, a bunch of people decided Papyrus was good enough, and that bums me out. It just would have been so nice to see such a huge film like this go the extra mile and really pay attention to the design and typography more carefully.

My much bigger issue with Avatar however, is the name of the mega-valuable substance found on Pandora, the one that causes humans, in all their greed, to try and wipeout the Navi: “Unobtainium”. Really!? “UNOBTAINIUM”!? (And yes, that is pronounced un-obtain-ium.) A bunch of intelligent and creative individuals sat around a table and decided “unobtainium” was the best name? It sounds like a bad joke, and really did shatter the world that Cameron spent so much time and energy creating. Thankfully, the name of the material is only mentioned once. It, along with the name “Pandora”, are the two instances where it is all too apparent that Cameron wants everyone to “get” this movie. I understand why he didn’t want to take many plot, or nomenclature, risks, but honestly any gibberish+ium would have worked. It did not need to be “unobtainium”.

I do also think that there are still some revolutionary things waiting to be done directorially with CGI. Despite the boundless opportunities for camera direction, shot length, etc. presented by CGI, the cinematography in Avatar was mostly forgettable, or at least overwhelmed by the content of the visuals. In the early years of film, the camera was a stationary object, like an audience member in a theatre. It took many, many years before someone experimented with moving the camera while shooting, which of course changed the manner in which things were filmed thereafter. I still believe there is something great and new that has yet to be done with cinematography in CGI.

However, I am nitpicking. Overall the film was groundbreaking and astoundingly well done. It is one of the only times I felt as though the inflated ticket price was worth my money (even though my ticket was a gracious Christmas present from Josh) and I would highly recommend this to anyone, especially if you have the option of seeing it in 3D on the IMAX.