Avatar, thoughts.
What can I say about James Cameron’s Avatar, that hasn’t already been said. Avatar is a phenomenal movie. It is a movie filled with passion in front and behind the screen. To devote 4 ½ years to a film, one that he wrote around 1997, to spend 2 years, prior to starting principal photography, developing the technology that would be used in order to be able to bring this audacious vision to life is nothing short of extraordinary. And then another 2 1/2 years shooting and in post-production. A linguistic professor from USC even worked with Cameron to create an entirely new language for the world. As if that wasn’t enough, Cameron asked frequent composer collaborator, James Horner, to take a year or so off, to focus on this movie and to create a pure score.
The emotion that they were able to get through performance capture is stunning. This the process, previously called motion capture, is where an actor wears a body suit with many markers/dots on it. The sound stage is then filled with infrared cameras that can see and recognize these dots. The image is then interpreted in the computer. This process allows an actor to drive an animated character. The beauty is that the character can literally be anything – a man, woman, child, alien, Gollum, King Kong or even an AMP suit. The term motion capture later became performance capture. Robert Zemeckis, in The Polar Express, was one of the first to use performance capture with Tom Hanks driving about 5 characters including a little boy. It was great seeing the finished product, but it lacked something – emotion, the subtle facial ticks that people make to convey feeling. Avatar has solved that problem now, and I guess the term can now be called Emotion Capture…I wonder what this term will evolve into next.
But I digress.
When asked during an interview what James Cameron believes in, he said he doesn’t really believe in anything, however, if you can prove it to him, he will believe. There was a scene in avatar when Jake Sully went up to a tree, which was holy to the Na’vi and said, “I might just be talking to a tree but…” then he prayed and asked the ancestors for help. Jake Sully knew that he had nothing to lose by praying to what the indigenous people believed in, but if it worked, Jake had everything to gain. So I ask James Cameron to believe in God and pray. You have nothing to lose, only answered prayers to gain. I bring this up because for a man that doesn’t believe in anything, he sure put a lot of spirituality into the Na’vi way of life. These people are one with one another, the animals and the plants.
I have witnessed a giant leap in cinema, and I am glad that I was there on opening day. James Cameron talks about how he saw Star Wars in 1977 in the theatre and became inspired to do his own. Well, he has certainly made history with Avatar. Amazingly visually stunning images in every part of every frame. There is always something to be amazed about, both in Pandora, and in the human world.
Critics have generally given this film praise, yet some have said the script is weak. The script is not weak. It will not be considered for Best Screenplay at the Oscars, but it is good. The film certainly has a very well thought out structure. At 2 hrs and 40 mins, I felt like the movie was rushed. This is coming from someone that saw the movie at midnight Thursday before it was released on a Friday. Before the movie began, I felt hungry and tried to extract as much nutrients from popcorn and water as possible. Yet, I did not think the movie was too long. If the movie had a weak script and just eye candy, I would not have had a good time. This means you Transformers 2.
The cast did a great job also. Zoe Saldana especially who played Neytiri, the Na’vi queen’s daughter was a revelation. Even though we do not see her real human skin on screen, her performance deserves an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role. The conundrum that will be faced is does the Academy nominate her, or the team behind the technology for the same award, or both? When they say Avatar is a game changer, when the tv spots say, “movies will never be the same”, they are correct.
Even the marketing for this movie was unprecedented. You could download an Avatar Desktop App from the official website, that fed in real time twitter updates, about cast interviews, making of clips, reviews. It also had an interactive trailer. The most impressive was the partnership with McDonalds called McD Vision which is an augmented reality (AR) experience that uncovers characters and scenes from the film, and immerses players in the world of Pandora.
I have never recommended anyone to watch a movie in 3-D because I have always felt that you get the same experience watching them in 2D (regular viewing). I recommend seeing Avatar in 3D, and if possible, IMAX 3D, in which I saw The Dark Knight. Why? Avatar was shot using actual 3D cameras, and they’ve created a new 3D system that immerses you into the movie like never before. As you are sitting in the audience, if you move your body slightly sideways, you can see someone behind another person a little bit more in the movie. It is really impressive. I listen to many critics reviews, and almost everyone recommends the 3D also.
James Cameron’s last movie, Titanic, held the world record of the most successful movie of all time. Even Mr. Cameron admitted that it would be tough to break that record, but he did with Avatar when it grossed $2.78 billion, the only film in movie history to make over $2 billion. Avatar is also considered to be the most expensive movie made up till this moment, costing somewhere around $237 million, including marketing costs.
Avatar was nominated for 9 Critics Choice Awards and won 6, 4 Golden Globes and won 2 before the movie was released. It was nominated for 9 Oscars and won 3.
Avatar nominations and wins.
Academy Awards
Best Picture - nominated
Best Director - nominated
Best Art Direction - Won
Best Cinematography - Won
Best Film Editing - nominated
Best Original Score - nominated
Best Sound Editing - nominated
Best Sound Mixing - nominated
Best Visual Effects - Won
Golden Globe Awards
Best Director - Won
Best Film - Drama - Won
Best Original Score - nominated
Best Original Song - nominated
Critics' Choice Awards
Best Picture - nominated
Best Director - nominated
Best Action Film - Won
Best Cinematography - Won
Best Art Direction - Won
Best Editing - Won
Best Makeup - nominated
Best Visual Effects - Won
Best Sound - Won
James Cameron and his team of engineers, scientists, linguists, actors, stunt team, etc, have certainly raised the bar for technical filmmaking. Avatar joins the ranks of poignant cinematic landmarks in film with, 2001 – A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, The Matrix, and maybe the Lord of The Rings.
