Avatar Fails to Sell 3D

When you get a call from your boss on your day off, it’s normally bad news. When said call comes from a bed ridden, flu stricken boss, one can only assume he’s offering you an exciting opportunity to edit a 5,000 word feature. It turns out, however, that Riyad had received two late-in-the-day invitations to the world premiere of Avatar, James Cameron’s much talked about 3D spectacular, on Thursday night. I’d been looking forward to seeing Avatar anyway, so what better way to do just that?

I was joined for the evening by our News Editor Gordon Kelly who, as we walked down the blue carpet (if you’ve seen any of the trailers you’ll understand why), paused to take a photo of the gathered paparazzi on his iPhone. “For the irony,” he told me. Is that the irony of taking a photo of the paparazzi, or the irony of taking a photo of said paps (all kitted out with the finest camera tech money can buy) using a crappy, iPhone camera? As a true critic might say, it works on so many levels!

As we waited for the assembled celebs and other hangers on like ourselves to take their seats, I reflected on my expectations for the film. For a long time I’d assumed the cinema, with its big screens and surround sound systems, was the place to enjoy 3D and if any film was to take advantage, Avatar would be it. Even with this in mind, however, my view was of healthy scepticism. I’d yet to be convinced of 3D, but as the film began to run I was fully prepared to be converted.

If Avatar was to do this, it would need a good story and now seems a good time for a quick (spoiler free) summary. Avatar is the story of Jake Sully; a crippled ex-marine who, after the murder of his twin brother, is recruited to take his place as an avatar (a genetically engineered version of Pandora’s native humanoid inhabitants the Na’vi) since only his DNA will bond with it. He’s there to aid the human mining operation on Pandora, a role which he becomes more important to when he inadvertently comes into closer contact with the natives than any other avatar operator.

So that’s the synopsis, but unfortunately this setup doesn’t produce a classic piece of storytelling. As a film alone Avatar veers from intriguing in its opening movements, mediocre as its middle chapter sags along, to momentarily exhilarating as the action ramps up in the final third. On the whole, though, despite decent performances from most of the cast, it’s a story that rarely enthralls.

Anyone with even a passing interest in anime, something James Cameron is very interested in, will see the parallels in Avatar. Its overarching themes of the balance between man and nature, Gaia theory (never named, but certainly implied) and our abuses of nature are stringent throughout, echoing the sentiments made by Hayao Miyazaki in his films – particularly Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and the better-known Princess Mononoke. Throw in some mechanised fetishism, the kind Japanese animation has long specialised in, and it’s hard to mistake the artistic influences at work here.

Unfortunately, as I found, anyone familiar with such material will find Avatar somewhat shallow in comparison. It certainly doesn’t deal with the ecological message with any of the charm, tact or subtlety of Miyazaki’s best work, choosing rather to spoon feed a narrow, two-dimensional message sprinkled with the kind of references to Iraq and Vietnam that are so common as to be tedious these days.

It’s this lack of depth that makes it all too easy to pigeon hole Avatar as a piece of leftist, tree hugging sentimentality – as some people (not unreasonably) will – or champion as something more significant than it really is. As political statements go it’s more The Day After Tomorrow than Dr. Strangelove.

So it’s no great cop as a film alone, but what really sets Avatar apart is the digital animation. Make no mistake: Avatar will be the benchmark by which CGI is judged for years to come. Cameron’s world is brought to life in quite incredible detail. It would be lazy to say you forget you’re watching digitised characters, but the quality and imagination of the animation allows it to co-exist with the live action actors seamlessly. It’s quite a thing to behold.

It’s not a spectacle especially enhanced by 3D, though – at least, not in my opinion. I should add that my impressions are coloured by our less than ideal seating position - it being universally acknowledged that you need to be in the sweet-spot to appreciate 3D fully - but this positional sensitivity is just one of my problems with the experience.

My first is with wearing glasses and my complaints have nothing to do with looking like Joe 90 for the evening. No it’s rather simpler than that: they’re uncomfortable. Yes, this might sound a somewhat churlish, simplistic argument, but as someone who hasn’t ever needed glasses, wearing some for the best part of three hours felt awkward and alien to me. I constantly found myself readjusting and fiddling with my glasses, not forgetting the irritation of the occasional fingerprint on the lenses. In any case, anything that causes discomfort while watching a film is a bad thing.

More importantly, I find it hard to reconcile the commonly quoted line “it’s like I’m in the film” with my experience. Watching Avatar in 3D didn’t feel like being in the film, but rather watching a film in a cleverly constructed hall of mirrors – an analogy that isn’t a million miles from the truth. On occasion the presence of 3D did noticeably enhance my enjoyment, but these occasions (mostly in the last 20 minutes of the film) were too few and far between to make any lasting impression. I strongly suspect watching Avatar at an IMAX theatre would generate a quite different response, but that’s a pleasure only a small minority will be able to enjoy.

As such, if you do plan on going to see Avatar, I suggest you either go to the IMAX in London or settle for good old 2D. In the latter case, it’ll probably cost less and you won’t enjoy the still stunning animation any less. Or, better yet, wait until it hits Blu-ray, where you can ensure you’ve got the best seat in the house. Much as it surprises me to say it, on this evidence the home might be the place where 3D comes into its own, though as yet that's just speculation rather than fact.

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