Avatar

I made the drive down to Alexandria today to go see Avatar. I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've ever gone fifty miles out of my way to see something in 3D. Before we get to the movie, I of course have to talk about other tangential topics.

I went to the Grand Theater in Alexandria, a place I'd never heard of 24 hours ago. The most notable thing about it is that their logo--seen on the website and on the front of the building--looks like a leonine animal about to take a wee on the big G. I have no idea what it's supposed to signify.

There's a line in the movie that attaches great importance to "our land." Let us hearken back to 2002 and the Jet Li movie Hero (SPOILERS AHEAD), which also used the phrase "our land" to support one character's vision of a united China. You can read about the exact phrase here, and its use in the film here. There has been controversy over its translation, which can range from "all under heaven" to "our land" to "the world united in peace."

In Hero, the phrase "our land" is used to convince the assassin Nameless not to kill the King of Qin, who is seeking to unify all the warring states (and leaving mountains of corpses in his wake). In Avatar, it is used to unite a group of clans to fight against the invading army. I thought it was interesting how it ended up being used in very different films to accomplish very similar goals.

NOTE: I know what you're thinking. "Hey, this killing the King of Qin thing sounds familiar. Wasn't that also the plot of The Emperor and the Assassin?" The answer is kind of yes, but with a different way of getting there, and with a much crazier emperor and grumpier assassin. On to Avatar.

It's good. At times it's darn good. There's not much point in talking about the acting, because about two thirds of the movie is the tall, blue Na'vi running around their home world. The business/army and scientist characters are fairly straightforward stereotypes (when will Sigourney Weaver ever get to work for a company that's not an evil entity bent on world/galactic domination? The story itself is pretty predictable too, but that's okay for at least two reasons.

One is that predictability is pretty easy, and it's tough to screw up too badly. Another is that audiences generally like predictability. If you're going to be unpredictable, you'd better do it really well if you don't want people thinking the movie's too confusing. One of the texts in my interpretation class last semester discussed presenting information to visitors through storytelling. It's okay if someone guesses how it ends during your presentation, as long as you give them an entertaining and enjoyable way to get there. Well, we all have a pretty good general idea of how Avatar is going to play out, but the trip is interesting enough and visually amazing, which provides a nice entry into talking about the 3D experience.

The first thing I noticed is that 3D must have changed a lot in recent years. Without the glasses, I no longer saw the red and green blurs that I used to see. I kept lowering and raising the glasses to see what the main difference was. I think you could watch a good chunk of the movie and see most things pretty well. The 3D comes into play in a couple of instances.

One is the sense of movement and position you have in certain scenes. It really looks like that bush or flower or strange object is in the forefront of your field of vision. Your depth perception is much better than in an ordinary movie. Another is the clarity and brightness of some of the scenes, which are visually outstanding. In my switching modes I found that the biggest difference came when the screen showed bright, shiny things like the inside of the lab, as well as sections with colors in sharp contrast to each other. These were more likely to be blurry without the glasses. A scene like a forested valley or sunset with more gradual color changes was more likely to look okay to the naked eye. I'm sure somebody out there can come up with a metaphor from seeing blurry technology and the clarity of nature.

The movie is fairly well written, the action is good, the special effects are outstanding, and it's kind of fun. It's not very funny, but I don't think that's why most people go anyway. An anthropologist or ethnographer would be pretty interested in a few aspects of the film, particularly the process of learning an alien culture. Militaries around the world have done what happens in the movie, which is sending in operatives to learn a culture and what's important to the people, then using that to exploit their weaknesses.

Avatar is good. If you see only one 3D movie with blue humanoids and CCH Pounder this year, make it this one.