James Cameron's Avatar is a Visual Masterpiece. Saw it on a standard non-3D, non-IMAX screen last weekend, to a relatively packed house at the local theater. Graphics are amazing. Plot is a little hokey. My buddy Ryan said he read a review where it said Avatar combined Cameron's "Big 3": Aliens (Corporate Greed & Evil) with Terminator 2 (former enemy turned savior) with Titanic's love story. My son summarized it as "I saw this movie before, when it was called Ferngully". But to compare Ferngully and Avatar, is like comparing Castle Wolfenstein to Quake 4, or comparing a jug of Carlo Rossi with a 1995 perfectly stored Château Margaux.
It's not a perfect film by any stretch of the imagination. There's several plot errors and discontinuities. It's quite predictable... but the journey is an enjoyable one, even with all the telegraphed notes laying around. I thought of many ways to have more effective battle scenes / higher carnage ratios, but Cameron's more of a story teller than he is a shootem-and-blow-em-up director. For taking 12 years to put together (and 12 years for graphics to mature to the point where such rendering is possible) it's not a bad movie.
If you don't get a wee-bit motion sick from large IMAX films with rapid motion and flying sequences, or have severe asymmetrical astigmatism as I do (that renders 3D glasses un-focusable, and the 'Magic Eye' Sunday Comics images an annoying blur) then be sure to see Avatar on a massive screen.
8 years ago
Interesting. I'm on the fence on seeing it. It looks pretty stupid on the one hand but stunning on the other. Guess I should see it on the big screen. Not 3D, though. 3D annoys me.
ReplyDeleteThe flying sequences are amazing. The colors, and the imaginative creations, are indescribable. Suspend disbelief for 90 minutes, and enjoy the visual, detailed, graphic smorgasbord. I recommend it.
ReplyDeleteHBO's been playing this over the last 6 months. Really strange to see it in my own living room on a 42 inch HD TV...
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