AVATAR DAY / hype retrospective: I don’t think so, Jim

“James Cameron”: the man’s name is synonymous with large-scale action blockbusters. His sci-fi actioners reigned supreme from the mid-80s till the early 90s, giving us a string of classics: The Terminator (1984), Aliens (1986), The Abyss (1989), and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991); the common theme among them? Ordinary, complex, flawed human beings dealing with utterly foreign, incomprehensible sentience in extraordinary circumstances, running the gamut from space travel to time travel to life at the bottom of the ocean. Cameron then flipped around and casually spun out True Lies (1994), a romantic comedy / thriller espionage / action flick starring Jamie Lee Curtis (the 80s queen of scream) and Arnold Schwarzenegger (the 80s king of, er, everything). Entertaining as it was, it found Cameron in unfamiliar ground, and was a minor disappointment after the decade of pure science fiction gold he’d been consistently delivering.

And then there was Titanic (1997), Cameron’s last feature film for over a decade, and also the highest-grossing film in the history of everything that has ever existed, ever (although if you adjust for inflation I don’t think it’s still the highest–why don’t these record-keepers ever adjust for inflation?): a three-hour epic on the high seas with the kind of pioneering, state-of-the-art effects we’d learned to expect from Cameron during his 80s run as king of action, as well as a complex, remarkably human story interwoven with the inevitable tragedy of the whole ship-sinking affair. Again it was Cameron breaking new ground thematically and visually, and being a slave to historical accuracy isn’t fun for anyone, filmmaker or audience, but Cameron tapped into a vast and varied well of emotion for the film–there was something for everyone in Titanic.

After the records were smashed and the world wept in theater seats when Jack finally let go, Cameron fell off the cinematic radar. He churned out a few curiously dull documentaries about expeditions to research sunken ships (Bismarck and Titanic) and a couple documenting deep-sea exploration and some of the unique life forms that live down there in the deep. It seems Cameron enjoys the high pressure and responsibility of being in command of such dangerous ventures as exploring the deep sea, so it comes as no surprise that he’s come back to cinema to change the way we view movies forever.

This finally brings us to Avatar. Cameron supposedly wrote a treatment for the film in 1994 (so, around True Lies) but held off on filming it because it was too ambitious–the technology for realistically depicting an alien planet was beyond us circa 1994. And so he continued to hold it off, spent some time underwater yelling at people (Cameron is a perfectionist, so I assume he yells a lot in everyday life), held it off some more, discovered that digital cameras were capable of shooting stereoscopic images around 2000, realised two years later that digital projectors being rolled out world-wide in the next decade would be able to support the kind of digital 3D format he was interested in shooting with, possibly met up with pal Robert Zemeckis (whose awful 3D mo-cap uncanny valley extravaganzas have been disappointing audiences for years) and suddenly decided not to hold it off any longer.

So here we are. It’s 2009. December 10th. A week before Avatar unspools (or unpauses, as it will be showing mostly on digital screens), we are finally getting to the pointy end of the hyperbolic timeline. Despite my faith in James Cameron as a visionary, trend-setting director, I now have some doubts about Avatar. But before I get to now, let’s go back a bit: in August, Cameron held a worldwide 15-minute 3D Imax preview of the film to kick the marketing machine into gear. Cameron made a lot of promises leading up to Avatar, and this was his first chance to deliver on his many, numerous, varied guarantees. Here’s a brief rundown of his biggest promises:

January 2007 – James Cameron states that filming is pretty much finished, and that the next two years will be spent exclusively on attaining ‘photorealism’ in the animation. Photorealism means ‘as though taken by a real camera’–animation indistinguishable from real, live-action shots. There are no degrees of photorealism. It’s either photorealistic or it’s not. There hasn’t been a single visual effect in the history of cinema that people haven’t subconsciously registered as not being real, and if they deny that they’re lying. Claiming photorealism is a big call–and a big turning-point in cinema. Cameron goes on to claim the performances are 95% acting, 5% animation–ears and hair and whatnot are dealt with by hand, the rest automatically translated by electronic programs; and explains that the film was shot with stereo HD cameras.

April 2008 - James Cameron states that in 10 – 15 years, all display devices will be stereoscopic–3D TVs, computer monitors, phones and, of course, cinemas. This is a big call to make because to date there hasn’t been a single movie that’s compelled the audience to get behind the new tech in a big way–Cameron’s implying Avatar will usher in that support. (Incidentally, this interview is fantastic for filmmakers curious about the performance, lighting and technology of 3D photography.)

May 2008 - Cameron claims the captured performances will be photorealistic and as emotive as real, live-action performances.

August 2008 - Cameron states the film will be 60% computer-generated, 40% live-action.

September 2008 - “[Avatar] makes Titanic look like a picnic.”

Mid-2009 – Empire ran a print article on Avatar in which James Cameron claimed the ecology of Pandora, the fictional moon on which the film takes place, was designed from the ground up: geography, biology, ecology, history, and the native society. Cameron implied that the biological, evolutionary, and ecological realism of the film was unprecedented, and claimed that the ecology was fully-functional and self-contained, as a real alien ecology would be.

August 2009 - Cameron compares the plot of the film to that of The Matrix and The Wizard Of Oz, claiming Avatar’s plot will take people by surprise and draw them in immediately.

This is a brief run-down, incomplete at best, of the claims Cameron made of which I was aware before Avatar Day. Hearing these things from the genius who brought us Aliens and The Abyss, I was inclined to take these claims seriously. So, with much anticipation, I sat down in the quarter-full Imax theatre (Imax is short for ‘image maximum’–eurgh), put on the polarised glasses, and felt my anticipation rise as the 4K double digital projectors whirred to life above and behind us.

Then–there he was! James Cameron himself, in 3D! Live-action! Wow, just watching him talk to us is amazing! I thought at the time. Look at his nose! It’s like I’m in the room with him! James finished his brief introduction, asked if we were ready to go to Pandora, and then the 15-minute preview began.

The first scene we saw was live-action. So far, so good: boots and uniforms and scars in 3D look fine, just fine. I could live with watching movies this way (except for the dullness of the image, caused by the polarised glasses). But then we saw a chopped-up version of the scene where hero Jake Sully first takes command of his half-alien, computer-animated Avatar. The first thing I thought was this: in this lighting, that doesn’t look like a real creature. The lighting was realistic, the skin textures were high-resolution and semi-transparent, but the blue thing lying on the table in front of me just didn’t look real. Maybe it was the subtle movements of the face / hair that didn’t jive with my perception of reality, but something was off, something was heading for the uncanny valley.

And then we were plunged into the jungles of Pandora, where most of the rest of the preview took place, and it was here that the disappointment really set it. The rest of the characters we saw were all mo-capped, and having already established that mo-cap is still somewhere in the uncanny valley, I was desperate to see a real, 3D human face somewhere, but instead all I got were avatars and pure na’vi (the Pandoran natives). Sure, the technology is further along than that of Zemeckis’ films–light shines realistically on their faces and a myriad of subtleties have carried over very nicely–but you still know you’re looking at a digital product: it’s in the eyes, mostly.

But the worst was yet to begin–the ecology of Pandora is ridiculous. If you ever studied biology casually in high school, or even if you’ve ever been to a zoo, you’ll agree that the creatures of Pandora are bullshit. Four eyes on a creature the size of a small lorry? Evolution would have shaved that adaptation from the bloodlines millennia ago. Six legs on a horse-sized / shaped creature? Four legs are all creatures that size can manage on land–six is unnecessary, a waste of resources, and would get in the way of locomotion, causing the rest of the animal’s anatomy to be unnecessarily contorted in such a way as to accommodate the utter bullshit adaptation of an extra pair of legs–this is not the way evolution works. There’s a reason that dinosaurs, lizards, amphibians, mammals and even fish have a quadriplegic design–efficiency of locomotion.

And then there’s the na’vi–if predators bigger than my car have four eyes they can presumably see better than your average lion or tiger, so if you evolve in a dark green jungle, how the hell do you expect to wind up with electric blue skin and survive to have children, let alone kick off a civilization?

Add to this the fact that there are two massive, completely different, hulking carnivores in the same patch of territory and Cameron’s claims of ecological realism go straight out the window along with his claims of photorealism. The above paragraphs may seem nit-picky to you, but James Cameron promised me something. He promised realistic, intelligent portrayals of extra-terrestrial life, not the same stock-standard Hollywood bullshit monsters we’ve seen a million times in Star Wars and Star Trek. Sure, the gas mixture on Pandora is sufficiently different from ours to cultivate different forms of life, but if there are green plants, yellow sunlight and blue water involved, there would almost certainly be some oxygen; and if the life-forms end up evolving into humanoid forms, the would almost definitely be a lot of oxygen, because body plans like ours are likely arrived at by the evolutionary accommodation of oxygen transfer and utilisation.

Plus of the 15 minutes we saw, I’d say the ratio of animation : live-action was about 9 : 1, trampling Cameron’s earlier 6 : 4 claim. This is important because immersion is broken or interrupted by things that look fake, especially in 3D movies, so if your whole movie looks fake, you’re up the creek, mate.

The bulk of my disappointment is a direct result of James Cameron’s bullshit. I challenge you to read the linked articles, watch the trailers and clips, and not feel the same way as I do. If you’re going to change the face of cinema forever, at least be cautious and humble about it at first, don’t start bragging before the cat’s even out of the bag.

So Avatar Day was, for me, a complete disaster. The story was lame and familiar, the animation was merely good and not fucking perfect as Cameron promised, and the ecology and realism of this alien world were pretty poor at best. My faith in the almighty genius of the Cameron was shaken that day, and I’m sad to say it hasn’t recovered after watching all the yawn-inducing stills trickle through over the months. The only shining light in the dark is the second trailer for Avatar–we see a lot more humans in live action, and the plot seems to be a little more involved than just ‘infiltrate the natives, realise they’re better than you’ plot we were rolling our eyes at six months ago.

What do you think of the Avatar hype? What was your initial reaction to the first trailers / clips that filtered online the last few weeks? Any hope left for Cameron as a director?

Stay tuned for Captain Howdy’s take on the hype over the weekend.