Avatar Review

“3D is as much the future of cinema as roller skates were the future of shoes - and Avatar demonstrates why”

Right, everyone grab your hearts and swallow them again, it is here now. James Cameron's multimillion dollar, three dimensional, record breaking, billion dollar grossing behemoth Avatar is now in the public domain. People seem to be divided quite strongly on this, I would say the majority are in the "outrageously brilliant" camp and a minority in the "waste of money" clan. Both, I feel are exaggerations.

Avatar is a good film, it is certainly recommendable. Yes, the dialogue is, for the most part, hideous and the story may be slightly clichéd but I think anyone who had an ounce of interest in it before its release always knew it was going to be Fern Gully meets The Matrix in space. This does mean that the plot is predictable almost to the very scene but surely that can be accepted and put aside so that everyone can enjoy the good ol' fashioned story of the underdog's battle against the stronger, mass corporate evils. After all, we love that stuff, don't we!

However this particular story never really reaches its peak. Fern Gully actually has a much more moving story using the same concept, despite being primarily aimed at children. There was a hell of a lot of potential here which has not all been exercised and the reason for this is one word - 3D.

That's right, what I am saying is that 3D ruined Avatar. "But the visuals!" I hear you scream, "That's what it was all about, the 3D, the popping out!" Well yes, but primarily any film is about a story and Avatar sacrifices storytelling for 3D action set pieces - and it does this a lot. For example, the two main characters, Jake and Neytiri have a love interest and whilst it is believable the viewer is never engrossed in it enough to care that much when they have a little falling out midway through. The relationship was not built up enough because that precious time was used instead for set pieces of some alien dog/rhino like things chasing Jake through the Pandorian forest.

What is more is that the 3D visuals are better suited to the slower segments where you could sit back and marvel at the different layers of pretty objects around the frame. Most notable are the scenes where Jake and Neytiri are walking through the glowing salad at night which are immensely beautiful. I would like to stress the word "walking" in that last sentence because when they are running through the trees, the film could be shot in any of the theoretical ten dimensions and I wouldn't have noticed the difference.

Another example of story meat that had to be cut in order for 3D fat is how quickly Jake gets accepted into the Na'vi tribe. I was all geared up to see the troubles this new guy would have to overcome in order to woo his way in and bugger me, he seduces the whole bloody tribe in about nine seconds flat. Surely the Californian accent would have rung alarm bells to at least be wary of him. At that point I was thinking they must be called "the Na'vi" because they are as naïve as a new born baby. Compare Dances with Wolves to this, and think how much more believable and therefore emotionally engaging his relationship with the native Americans is to Jake's with the blue folk. These are little subtleties that could have made Avatar not just good but brilliant and it is because of its obsession with 3D that it never achieves this.

However, even though I admittedly enjoyed those neon branches sticking out of the screen, I would still sacrifice the 3D for story any day. Furthermore, I am not convinced that the extra dimension was all that wonderful. OK, so it was interesting to look at with all the pretty colours but that would still be as dazzling in 2D, their facial expression would still be beautifully animated (I hear Oscars clinking), and the vistas would still be awe inspiring. Your brain does all the distance judging work for you, you don't need some Buddy Holly glasses for that! In the end I almost forgot this was in 3D. Was it not simply interesting because of the novelty value?

If every film will be like this in the future as Cameron suggests I doubt we will all still be oohing and aahing at every daisy seed that floats across the cinema. It's not even 3D anyway! It's simply layers, that is why flat objects such as computer screens and graphics looked the most believable in the film and not three dimensional objects like helicopters because we are still in cardboard-cut-out land. True 3D is about perspective and changing that perspective (see the video below for an amazing example of what I mean, and you don't need glasses!) and as you well know in Avatar it doesn't matter if you sit on the right, left or centre of the screen, it will always look the same. Like little bits of cardboard at different distances from you.

Is this really the future of cinema? I can hardly imagine the next Pulp Fiction benefiting much from it. In fact who in their right mind would prefer to see a three dimensional version of Pulp Fiction (rape in 3D, anyone)? This demonstrates the point very succinctly; 3D is as much the future of cinema as roller skates were the future of shoes. Yeah, its fun the first time you try it, but after a while you realise the original style was better at its job. Because you can have all the fancy visuals and high tech gadgetry you want - you could have fireworks coming out the screen, rumble chairs and the protagonist telepathically talking to you inside your head, but in the end there is one thing that matters most and that is the story. For that reason, Avatar demonstrates precisely why 3D is not the future of cinema.