James Cameron / Avatar / IMAX 3D
The best facial animation on the big screen that I've ever seen was shown to audiences last night throughout the country. Twentieth Century Fox and Jim Cameron (yes, in an introduction, the famous “Titanic” director told us to call him “Jim”) shared several clips of “Avatar” in IMAX 3D. Having just suffered through “X Games 3D” this week, I was already weary of the new format. But with “Avatar” I suspect that our appreciation of 3D, IMAX, and animation will change.
Conceived by Cameron some 14 years ago, “Avatar” follows a paraplegic war veteran named Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington) who travels to a far off moon named Pandora. Once there, Jake's mind is transferred into a cat-like creature that is part of the Na'vi, a tribe that lives on the moon. From what I could tell from the scenes shown to us in Cameron's presentation, the story will likely have several conflicts, one will be between the humans seeking to inhabit Pandora and the Na'vi. And the other conflict will be Jake's internal struggle between his partially paralyzed human self and his new full functional life as part of the Na'vi. As Jake finds love as a Na'vi, he may want to permanently abandon his damaged life as a human.
The scenes shown to us clearly established that Cameron's four years of actual production work have visually paid off. The price tag, some $250 million, may make “Avatar” the most expensive film ever made. And if the story is half as good as the animation, there is no reason why James Cameron (I just can't call him “Jim”) isn't sitting on another world wide hit. But if the story doesn't measure up, a failure here would make the bomb that was 1980's “Heaven's Gate” look like a blip on the radar screen. Back in 1980, director Michael Cimino, who had found amazing critical and popular success with "The Deer Hunter," was given great latitude with his next project, "Heaven's Gate." And similar to Cameron, Cimino took a perfectionist approach, even tearing down entire sets and rebuilding them. This perfectionist bent seems to have been adopted by Cameron while making "Avartar." I've heard Cameron built one version of Pandora and then reconstructed it because his technology changed for the better.
Still, there's no way that James Cameron could become another Michael Cimino story, but given the fact that it has been more than a decade since “Titanic,” let's hope that whatever happens with “Avatar” won't send Cameron into another self-imposed exile for another decade. In fact, his next project, “Battle Angel” is reportedly in pre-production now and possibly slated for a 2011 release.
The cast of “Avatar” is exciting. Besides Worthington who plays Jake, Cameron reteams with Sigourney Weaver, the two worked together on 1986's “Aliens.” Weaver plays Dr. Grace Augustine, one of the doctors involved in transferring Jake's human self into his Na'vi one. I also noticed filmmaker and actor Joel Moore (see “Spiral” and “Hatchet”) in the cast. And a trusted source mentioned to me at a party that veteran actor Wes Studi described working on the project as the most amazing sets he ever acted on. Apparently, the green screen effects were shot with a series of monitors that simultaneously showed the actor the environments in which their animated selves would inhabit.
Just seeing a few minutes of “Avatar” in IMAX 3D was enough to make me wonder whether describing it as an animated film is fair. My girlfriend, who accompanied me, asked whether it was even animated. Sure the characters and environments are out of this world, but they all look so real that it's easy to believe that some sort of makeup or practical effects were employed. Of course, I would imagine practical effects were used, but the facial animation and skin tones and look of the humanoid or cat-like Na'vi struck me as the most authentic I've ever seen. The animation powerhouse Pixar, by comparison, often takes a cartoon approach to their characters and worlds which may, in fact, be aimed at hiding, even for Pixar, the inability to sell convincingly purely animated actors made to look live-action. Of course, Pixar's audience demands a certain amount of cartoon-type surreal animation to appeal to its younger demographic. But what Cameron has apparently pulled off, story excepted, has been to bridge the gap between the real and animated seamlessly. But the nagging question is: can this level of realism be maintained over a feature running time?
“Avatar” will make money, sure, but to truly be a success, it must become a phenomenon. And the already tiresome gimmick of 3D (even the IMAX variety) will not alone be enough to create the kind of groundswell necessary to make the film a sensation. From the limited press materials available, the promise is “a fully immersive cinematic experience of a new kind, where the revolutionary technology invented to make the film, disappears into the emotion of the characters and the sweep of the story.” If that promise is kept, the legs for “Avatar” could extend well into 2010, the film hits theaters on December 18, 2009.
