FILM COLUMN: AVATAR PREVIEW
The New Cinema Is Here: But Does It Have A Heart?
In what 20th Century Fox hyped as “Avatar Day,” 20 select minutes or so of James Cameron’s new film, Avatar – his first in 12 years and his first since the motion picture Titanic that was Titanic — were shown to a select audience in a select set of IMAX theaters around the world at select times.
Selection is a word to be thrown around here, because Avatar is supposed to be the next evolution in filmmaking…or so Mr. Cameron has been saying. The “Avatar Day” stunt itself is the next step in a constantly evolving marketing game that is far beyond the days of just catching a trailer at the theater or seeing a movie toy in a Happy Meal, which has become such a big part of the movie business.
Nowadays, movies are a sprint and not a marathon. The opening weekend is everything, and the opening weekend is more often than not now dictated by fanboys and girls or other such rabid filmgoers. “Avatar Day” was a bid to make sure their (our) butts are in the theater when Avatar opens come December. It was a preemptive strike on the audience to create the kind of word-of-mouth buzz that a studio can’t pay for. Also, thankfully, tickets to the screening were free but had to be reserved, again, at a select time on a select day on a select website for a select theater this past Monday.
But when studying this new “evolution” in film, I tried to approach it with the eyes of not a fanboy. After all, it wasn’t fanboys or film enthusiasts that made Cameron’s Titanic the biggest film of all time. And it wasn’t even fanboys or film enthusiasts that made The Dark Knight a runner-up on that list last summer. For these types of movies to happen — for a film to become an event — it takes a gripping on the mainstream culture as well. It’s the difference between Watchmen‘s 50 million dollar opening and its second weekend plummet of over 60% this past March.
I have this feeling that, in December, as we watch box office numbers, Avatar will be more Watchmen than Titanic. The plot concerns a wheelchair-bound Marine a couple hundred years from now who explores the alien planet Pandora with his legs under him after his mind is downloaded into an alien body — one of the native Na’vi, an avatar. This is high-concept sci-fi — there are spaceships, mecha suits, alien monsters, gattling guns and all that good stuff. The scenes shown as part of “Avatar Day” involved the transfer of the mind to the alien body, an encounter with a couple of alien monsters, some character stuff between Jake — our hero — and one of the alien natives, and a montage of action and drama. It was all in Cameron’s new 3D technology too. While the film was sleek — the cinematography almost having a Teflon quality — and the 3D impressive — more immersive than a gimmick, which should service the film — there was still something askew. I don’t mean to sound not enthusiastic, but…well, maybe I’m just sad.
See, there are some wonderful-looking things in Avatar: the alien world of Pandora is a beautiful painting of all kinds of lush greens and blues and purples. Even the dangerous alien beasts resemble rainbows. The action looks lean and tough. But if Fox wants this movie to be the end-all-be-all of this decade, I think they’re at a loss, because the story seemed a little tepid, if not un-relatable to the audience.
Titanic and its romance is something everyone could understand, even if not everyone enjoyed it; The Dark Knight hit something of a zeitgeistical (yes, that’s a new word) chord and was a recognizable property. Here, Fox is trying to market Cameron as the franchise. The thing is: I’m not so sure how many “normal” people know that Cameron even directed Titanic, and of the people that loved Titanic, how many would actually enjoy something like Avatar?This article is largely approaching this movie from a business standpoint, which is a bit cynical. I know, I know, what about the art?
Well, that’s just the thing and why I’m a little saddened. I will see the crap out of Avatar. I will be there in the best IMAX screen I can find to bask in its new 3D tech, maybe even at midnight this December. But will I enjoy it, really? The art here does appear, but it is a painting. It is an avatar. Nothing here is real.
Avatar is the next evolution of film, but that ancestor film is Who Framed Roger Rabbit? — the difference being today, when we see cartoons on celluloid, we’re no longer supposed to, as an audience, say, “Oh, there’s Bugs Bunny the Looney Toon!” but “Oh, there’s Bugs Bunny the real rabbit!” Or, similarly, “Oh, there’s Jake the Marine in a real live alien body!” But even if it looks better, it is still not a real live alien body. And now that celluloid that’s being reeled out to us probably isn’t even real either — it’s digital and 3D and IMAX sure, but is it better? I think the audience is being strained as we’re asked to flip our expectations.
A cut scene in a video game can be enjoyed when it’s marveled at for how close to life it looks, but it’s still admitting it’s animation. The suspension of disbelief, the bigger leap now is trying to convince ourselves not that animations are lifelike but that these effects are simply not animations at all.
It’s startling to me that Cameron — the man that so expertly gave us practical effects that still dazzle me today in T2 or Aliens — is painting with his current brush. Aliens is thrilling because, when the alien rises out of the waters to attack an unsuspecting Newt, that motherf*cker is real. When we see a computer-rendered Jake battling a computer-rendered hammerhead rhinoceros in 3D, it’s titillating because it’s pretty…because it’s in 3D.
James Cameron’s Avatar will be the most expensive animated movie ever made. There’s just no sense calling it anything else. And at the end of the day, it still might be the most successful of all time. But even if I enjoy it come December, I’ll long for those days where I believed T-Rexes might still be alive in Costa Rica, for ’70s Star Wars where the Death Star and Yoda were made of real, tangible parts, where Arnold Schwarzenegger was a robot. These poor kids today, when they go to the movies, are not encouraged to believe that there’s no limit to what they could imagine — they’re convinced there’s no limit to what they could render.
James Cameron's 'Avatar' comes to theaters in December 2010.
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