A movie 10 years in the making, from the legendary director who brought us Titanic and the Terminator series, a movie that promise it will change how people make movies, can Avatar in any way live up people’s expectation? Luckily for the film, I wasn’t expecting much at all. I guess because the premise of the movie is so familiar – military-industrial vs. nature – that i really questioned can this movie show me anything new, concept-wise? and to my surprise, actually it did!

Before we get to that, we just can’t ignore the technological achievement of this film. Most motion-capture characters in other previous films from Final Fantasy to Polar Express fell short because they are trying to be human as much as they could, there will always be imperfection that make them doesn’t look right. Only Gollum from LOTR managed to be a living breathing character, but he’s not quite human~ In this film, Cameron manage to create these blue cat people Na’vi that are human enough for us to believe they are real. Then there’s the environment of Pandora, which I am pretty sure everything is CGI, but yet they are so realistic looking that you can actually believe it might exist somewhere out there! Every rock and tree and rivers are computer generated, so are all the exotic creatures in that world. And yet the photo-realism, the depth of vision, everything make you believe it is a real environment and yet you in the back of your mind you know that most of the scenes were film inside a studio with nothing but a green screen.

Another big technology used here is 3-D. Most 3-D films tend to over use the effect to the point that it is distracting to the movie experience. While some others are so badly used that you just wonder does the filmmaker use 3-D for the sake of it. Avatar instead is the first I have seen that does not distract you from the movie experience. it is just a part of the movie, the only time you notice the distraction is that stupid 3-D glasses. I wish they can develop 3-D films without the glasses, because those are seriously bugging me, especially this is an almost 3 hours movie.

One concept that the film has that make it standout in terms of the depiction of nature is how interconnected the world is. The world of Pandora might look primitive, but it’s far more advance than anyone thought, especially if you counted that ************* Spoiler alert ***************************************************************************** the trees act as information superhighway, that it is a giant interconnect network of every living creatures in that world. Imagine all your information can store in trees and earth instead of the cloud! lol~ That concept is way too awesome for me.

Avatar is a well made film that you can see every dollar spent on the screen for you. A movie that you know you have to see it in the theater, so go ahead, it’s well worth your money just to see the living world of Pandora.

Related posts:

1. The Movie 9
2. Zombieland
3. How To Train Your Dragon
4. Golden Compass
5. The Nines

Tagged: Movies · sci-fi