Tuesday

A second post on Avatar. I want to focus on the 3-D aspect of it, especially since I'd never seen a 3-D film before (I didn't know you got proper plastic glasses, for instance). I have to admit that I was astonished before the movie even came on, as several of the trailers gave us a taste of what 3-D was like (Alice in Wonderland and How to Train Your Dragon). Avatar, though, being ostensibly 'real', was a step up. The first shots in the cryo-chamber were just incredible. However, the images did occasionally seem simply like layers of 2-D images, rather than a full 3-D picture. What also disturbed me was the out of focus parts of the image. As with a normal film, there is only one bit in focus at a time, but with 3-D, because you feel like you are watching real life, your eyes have a tendency to wonder over the image, and you expect it to be in focus when you do. This, perhaps, is the next big test: for everything to be in focus when you want it to be. Several times during the movie I had to stop myself and say: 'none of this is real'. The film throughout mixes real with CGI in different proportions, but you would find it very hard to tell exactly what these proportions are. The CGI is so realistic now that you don't even notice it any more. I used to always feel myself pulled away from a film by bad CGI (even Lord of the Rings and King Kong), but now the connections are seamless. The greatest achievement of this is CGI characters that you believe in and empathise with (remember Jar Jar Binks?). I bet George Lucas is kicking himself that he didn't wait ten more years for his Star Wars prequels. Avatar is what his new films should've been.