cellio | Avatar

We finally saw Avatar today. Because we dallied, our only options were 3D (digital or IMAX). To see the plain old 2D version we would have had to head off to the wilds of Bridgeville or Tarentum or the like.

Consensus on the Google-indexed parts of the Internet suggested the the odds were better than 50-50 of the glasses for digital 3D fitting over my glasses, so we opted for that. (Almost everyone agrees that you can wear the 3D glasses over glasses; they'd be crazy not to consider that need. But my glasses are thick and I didn't know if there'd be enough room.) This concern was easy to mitigate; we asked to try out the glasses at the ticket counter before buying. The other unknown for me was whether the 3D effect would work for me: do my eyes work together well enough, or would I just see a blurry movie? Only one way to find out. (The cheapo red/blue 3D glasses of yore never worked on me, at least for 3D comic books. I've never seen a 3D movie before.)

I could in fact see the 3D effects, yay. The glasses would have been annoying if they'd had any weight to them; on the ears they were perched on top of my regular ones, and there wasn't a lot of room on my nose to support them. Since they were made of light-weight plastic that was ok; I just sort of wedged them in place, and I'm not sure to what extent they were even in contact with my nose. If they'd been heavier that wouldn't have worked.

As for the movie itself...

The point of the movie was clearly the visual effects, which were generally well-done. It was a pretty movie. Some of the 3D effects seemed gratuitous to me but none were annoying and some were very nice, so I'm glad we saw the 3D version (even if they did jack up the ticket price substantially for that). In terms of the 3D, I thought they did better with the slower-moving delicate effects, like those floating things that looked sort of like dandelions in seed, than they did with the bigger effects (like large animals running toward you). A few times the 3D-ness was disorienting, like seeing computer screens in the foreground. Yeah, ok, you can do that, but it didn't add for me.

The plot and characters were not very 3D, though that didn't surprise me. The writers played fair in that they never pulled something out of their hat; every significant plot point that hinged on something about this world or these people was set up in advance. They were set up pretty blatantly, though, so I was never surprised; in fact, during most of the set-ups I found myself thinking "ok, set-up; this probably means that..." and I was right. This isn't a point against the movie; it's just a different kind of storytelling than some others. Think of this movie not as a conventional plot that might have some surprises but rather as a morality play where everyone knows the point that's going to be made up front, and you'll be fine.

Because this movie is really about the special effects and not the plot, I suspect it won't age well. In five years it'll probably be passe, having long since been superseded. We'll see.

I noticed that there was a credit for the language and that the name had a "PhD" in front of it. Linguist, I assume? Neat to see if so. I wonder how a linguist goes about landing such a gig. And while I wasn't paying a lot of attention to details of the language during the movie, at the end I found myself wondering: was that an ungendered language? I don't think I heard any differences in pronouns between male and female objects. (I'm thinking in particular of the pair of group-chant scenes, which I'm trying not to spoil for the three people reading this who haven't seen the movie yet.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

We went to see it in IMAX last week. Fred had seen it in 3-D non-IMAX over the holidays; I hadn't seen it yet.

I was concerned since both IMAX theaters and 3-D stuff kick in a "perfect storm" of visual+mobility issues for me and leave me very vulnerable to falling when I have to leave my seat. One of the things I did to mitigate this was to double-up on my fatty acid supplements ahead of time, since that seems to help my visual processing (it's a brain thing....) I'm sure it didn't hurt. I'm not sure how much it helped, but I didn't get headachy or carsick, which is a good sign.

I got a handicap seat, right on an aisle with no steps between me and the main walkway steps. After the movie ended, I waited until the theater was mostly empty to get up, and was able to work my way up and out by a route that had a handrail the whole way (except for the part where you actually went through the doors.) I had to take it slow but didn't come close to falling although it was scary, as IMAX theaters are for me. The 3-D definitely disoriented me. It was actually easier for me, afterwards, to know where I was in space with my eyes closed than with them open.

The 3-D glasses fit more or less comfortably over my regular ones and the only problems I had with the 3-D (aside from the aforementioned aftereffects on my real-time visual processing ability as it relates to relative motion) had to do with having to sit fairly close to the screen, due to needing the handicap access seat. I can have similar problems without 3-D, so it probably wasn't that much of a factor.

The movie: visually gorgeous, morality play yes, the only surprise for me being that the natives eventually prevailed. Although I agree with Stefan, it's also true that "Dances With Wolves" came out a generation ago (yikes and double yikes!!) I think it's healthy to re-interpret these semi-mythic scenarios anew in ways that folks who haven't encountered them before can relate to.

Also, I can relate directly to the mining-by-utter-devastation scenario, due to watching it happen in my native region, southern WV. The opening scene had me cringing immediately. It is a human rights issue. Or an alien-rights issue. Whatever interpretation will help a broader audience "get it," no matter where in this world it's going on, is good by me.