I knew it was a bad sign when, halfway through the film, I started regretting not going to Maplin’s. That’s not how it should work if you put the cash down to go and see the latest Hollywood blockbuster; you shouldn’t have the urge to stifle a yawn halfway through, let alone think about checking your emails, or going shopping for obscure electronic parts.
Avatar is, as I’m sure you know, the latest film from James Cameron. His previous works are mostly massive hits, with a strong sci-fi flavour, and Avatar just happens to be his most sci-fi flavoured yet. It’s about blue aliens on another planet, but it also happens to be in 3D.
Most of the computer animated films that have come out recently have been available in 3D and regular 2D, so it’s not so unique for a film to be in 3D. And, at the start of the showing (after the trailers, so you knew it was important), there was an advert for Sky TV, which promised to deliver 3D television to your living room, starting later this year.
Take away the uniqueness of being in 3D, and Avatar becomes a slightly silly retelling of Pocahontas. The film is designed to be seen in 3D, almost as a textbook of ‘filmography using 3D techniques’, and thus we have a lot of very crass shots that utilise the new techniques for changing perception of depth.
Cameron’s previous sci-fi work used urban locations in a sinister way, reflecting the future from darkened streets, giving us paranoia about the urban and suburban surroundings of everyday – but Avatar’s computer-generated forest removes any skill needed to compose a shot using existing locations. Between the lack of mise-en-scene and the need to force three-dimensionality into every shot, this film become the most visually boring blockbuster that I’ve seen in a long time.
This isn’t the first time that Hollywood has become obsessed with 3D filmmaking. The late seventies and early eighties saw a bunch of movies made in three dimensions using the old red/blue glasses technique. And then, later on, all those movies were de-3D’d, so that they could be released on video and DVD, because people didn’t want to sit around and watch Amityville 3D whilst wearing stupid glasses.
The new technique for 3D also requires stupid glasses, which come in different styles depending on what cinema chain you go to. Mine were uncomfortable, and gave me a bit of a “Buddy Holly/Hoxton twat” look (see above). After about an hour I started occasionally slipping them off to relieve the pressure building up around my eyes – badly designed glasses give me weird face-ache – and found that watching Avatar without the 3D-enabling devices wasn’t that bad. Not great, but not that bad.
The idea of this new wave of 3D is to make watching a screen an unbelievable experience, but it’s misguided because it’s just a a screen. When you’re in a cinema, you might be happy to wear an odd pair of glasses to get that special effect, but at home? With the kids and the dog and the dinner on your lap? If you do invest in the ultra-swish home 3D cinema system, at some point you’ll be bound to end up watching 3D programs without the special glasses.
And that’s when you’ll find out that it’s not that much different. A little less focused, a little less worth watching – the fuzzy backgrounds of 3D films without the special glasses on make the craft of cinema inaccessible.
Avatar’s great failure is that it thinks 3D is important enough to overcome plot and pacing, and whilst it is visually impressing, it’s not visually stunning. But it was a film that could not fail – too much money had been poured into it. Perhaps backing was secured because 3D films would be impossible to pirate, or because the new technologies would sell thousands more flat-screen TV’s. The film obviously lies at a pinnacle of complex capitalist network, with layers of merchandising, advertising, and even advances in technology behind it. It is a great spectacle to behold.
But it’s failure is it’s function as entertainment – it’s so slick, so perfectly presented that there’s almost nothing for you to wonder over, after you leave the cinema. And I literally mean wonder, in the sense of wonderment, because the crass materialism at play behind Avatar leaves nothing fantastical in the film.
Endnote: While I was deeply disappointed in Avatar, I have managed to sneak in two SF references in this blogpost. There’s no prize, but feel free to drop me a line (or leave a comment) if you spot one.
