Off to See Avatar, Finally | ChinaLegalBlog.com

2010-02-03

Off to See Avatar, Finally

I wanted perfect (dead center, 8th row) seats, so we're going to a Wednesday showing of one of the 3D IMAX screenings at 10:00 am. I have a one-hour subway ride and a 15-minute walk ahead of me.

Let's hope it's worth it. I've already heard that the story itself is kinda lame, derivative, and preachy, and the 3D has me nervous 'cause my wife is prone to motion sickness.

But I'm a sucker for peer pressure, and the damn thing is ultra-popular.

I will update later with bitching and/or raving as is appropriate.

UPDATE: No raves, some minor bitching.

Thumbs up on the motion capture and overall graphics tech. Very well done but hard to describe. My best compliment here is to say that I "bought into" the reality of Pandora immediately and never thought about it as CGI. Same with the blue people. I'm not sure I've ever been able to say that for another heavily-CGI movie.

On the other hand, I kind of feel that using that powerful tech just to make ten foot tall blue people is kinda lame. You could have used real actors with body paint and CGI tails, although I understand that integration with the rest of the CGI would have been more difficult.

I guess my point is that I expect some future creative genius to use this new tech in a much more creative way.

Also, I was pleased to see that the 3D was unobtrusive. I think my last 3D experience was Captain Eo at Disneyland (Google it) in the '80s. Back then, 3D meant having things pop out at you to justify the tech.

OK, the bad stuff. The story wasn't horrible, just incredibly boring. The movie was shot in 3D, but the story was 1.5D at best. Character development was sorely lacking.

This was a classic Noble Savage type of story (the genre is centuries old in the West). I don't like the genre even when done well (absolutely hated Dances With Wolves), and this wasn't done particularly well. Character development was nearly nonexistent (the main character is supposed to have some sort of conversion regarding the native folks).

The whole rite of ascension bit was a yawner. The only good thing I can say about it is that riding a dragon looks like more fun than hitching a ride on a huge Sandworm. (OK, this movie was a hell of a lot better than the film version of Dune.)

The movie was painfully politically correct from a Lefty point of view. You had the Noble Savage genre to begin with, then there was some environmentalism, pop spiritualism, lots of negative stereotyping of technology, corporations, the military. You had a hero who was in a wheelchair, a US Marine enemy, and a nature deity as the deus ex machina. I even caught a reference to the current US health care debate early in the movie!

As a strong Lefty myself, this movie was way over the top even for me. I guess I just have a strong aversion to the Noble Savage thing. I'm too much of a geek to picture a society without technology, and let's face it, these kinds of movies do not dwell on the fact that these wonderful blue people don't have flush toilets, a written language, or modern dentistry. I can't make fun of the fact that the blue people prayed to a giant tree, since in Cameron's Pandora, the native deity is actually real. (Most Noble Savage genre pieces include natives who practice some form of animism, or something like the Force in Star Wars.)

Conclusion: I look forward to the adoption of this new tech on future movies where it will no doubt be used to much better advantage. You think a crappy vanilla story like this was the only way Cameron could get financing for this? Just wondering.

Final note: the theater was packed with people, and not all of them were kids.

Tags: China News