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My eyes were sore after 2 hours 40 minutes -- I think this is going to be an issue with this kind of cinema
Nitpick: it's an issue with the specific projection technology. 3D isn't necessarily the problem, it's more the way that the projection technology that your local cinema uses.
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I just got back from it and I thank Graham for his recommendation - I don't usually go to the movies in these days of BluRay and MySky and endless downloads. But this one struck me as one not to miss.
Firstly, the 3D side of it was brilliant . It's been an extremely hard thing to bring successfully to the big screen for a lot of technical reasons, but more importantly a lot of non-technical reasons - the film craft was not there to fully use it. Cameron managed to make a 3D film that wasn't all about the 3Dness. In fact, a number of times you just forgot about that, and fell into it, and that's the mark of a good movie, IMHO. It was immersive. It was like being the avatar, and that, if anything, was the point of the technology.
My eyes did hurt, but I've heard that most people feel that way about every new medium. Film, television, using a monitor. Hell, reading a bloody book hurts the eyes, because you have to learn to use them in a different way. Driving a car, operating a sewing machine, all of these things challenge our sight because the require of it something that it's unaccustomed to. I quickly realized that you simply have to shift your mind to different norms when watching 3D - you have to follow the focus a lot more, where in 2D film I look at the background a lot, that's not something that works so well in 3D, because you can't 'draw it into focus'. Also, the whole idea of 3D is an optical illusion, your brain is fooled into seeing a flat image as 3 dimensional, because it is presented with 2 images, one for each eye. But when you look around in real life, the convergence of your eyes is not the only thing that shifts - your focus does too, whereas when watching a 3D movie (or any movie for that matter) the focus has to remain fixed on the screen. So of course the brain is going to be a little confused and disoriented. But you can learn to see it, and the pain goes away. In fact, I think, to be honest, that my eyes felt less worn out afterward than they usually do after a movie, because the level of convergence shifts backwards and forwards, giving the eyes a much more natural kind of movement. They were sore, but in a different way, it was more that my visual sense was basically bombarded and overloaded and my brain was blaming that on my eyes.
I did think it was a mistake to put a voice over giving crucial plot information right at the start of the film - I pretty much missed everything he said, because I was trying to adjust my eyes. But then again, it did force me to stop thinking about the eyes and just use them. And I guess the presumption is that you'll watch this movie more than once. I will, I want to see if Digital 3D compares well. For some reason, I found my left eye slightly blurry towards the edges of the screen. Could have been bad glasses.
</spoiler warning>
Secondly, regarding the message and plot, seriously, why would anyone particularly care about that in a fantasy/scifi story? The point is immersion, not reality. Not even a mirror of reality. If there were political messages in there, I could not care less, except in so far as they may have added to the immersion a little. There never has been, and probably never will be, a successful violent defence against massively technologically and numerically superior alien invaders, in the entire history of humanity. That plot belongs entirely to fantasy and its sister, Scifi. So frikken what? It still stirs the emotions to see a such a eucatastrophe, for whatever reason. It's a nice idea, even if it's total bollocks. Guess what, the idea that there is a planet full of blue giants that look much like us, who can ride on big flying reptiles, is bollocks too, it's someone's imagination. If you don't like fantasy and/or scifi, don't watch this.
Yes it would have been more realistic if the aliens all got slaughtered and ended up as boozers and whores in some sleazy spaceport. Or if the humans had negotiated a treaty with them, and assimilated them progressively over a 100 year period. Or if the aliens had turned out not to be noble savages, but more like human savages, full of internal rivalries, treachery, greed, oppression of the weak, etc. Or if the future of humanity isn't on a remote planet mining for something in an anachronist play on humanity's colonial past, with space exploration outsourced to thugs, rather than tiny little robots fronting a huge team of scientists for no profit other than exploration, the way it is now.
Originality? There's always a case to answer for that. I imagine Homer was told his version of the Iliad was totally derivative, and it surely was. As far as I'm concerned Avatar was an old, old story, told in a new, beautiful and immersive way.
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Yeah it's interesting that some critics seem to want the storyline to be Shakespeare or something - and are therefore finding it wanting. Seems to me you don't need Shakespeare in this context at all.
I didn't get sore eyes - and I wonder if, as Jack pointed out, it has something to do with the projection technology itself - and perhaps also to do with where you were sitting in relation to the screen. We were bang in the middle of the row, in the front row of the back section (so maybe 10 rows from the front).
The screen filled my field of vision perfectly, without having to look right and left in order to see the whole thing. Perhaps if the screen is wider/higher than your natural field of vision and you do have to keep looking from side to side to catch everything, your eyes do get tired and sore after such a long movie. I'd be interested to hear where the sore-eyed amongst us were sitting.
Maybe also it's related to one's normal eyesight. I need reading glasses these days, and I notice my eyes get tired when I'm working on my 'puter all day, especially if I'm not wearing my glasses. Perhaps my eyes were glad of the change from a small screen to a big one!
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Maybe if I had been sitting elsewhere (we were in the second row from the screen)? Still have a crick in my neck.
I did love the foliage but will remain a dissenting voice in the general chorus of enthusiasm. So, I will say no more about Avatar.
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1. Reviewers who complain about the story are really looking for something to whinge about. Yes, it is composed of familiar tropes, but it's a mass-market family movie.
The desk has just taken out a non-molestation order against my head... Pixar doesn't do "Shakespeare" either, but it has been eye-wateringly successful making "mass-market family movies" that still manage to play the oldest of tropes with style, grace and respect for their audience's intelligence. Cameron, in my not at all humble opinion -- not so much.
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The desk has just taken out a non-molestation order against my head...
Uh, okay ... I was just saying it didn't suck. The narrative is fairly simple, but it makes sense and the script is well-written.
I do hope you enjoy seeing it now that you've reviewed it ;-)
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I do hope you enjoy seeing it now that you've reviewed it ;-)
Woah!. Now that's gotta hurt more than Desk/Head.
Go Russ. -
I still want to hear what Geoff and Craig have to say on it. Geoff has seen it. Craig has said he will, and will cream his jeans over the effects. No need to be scared off just because others are raving. There's still plenty of room for criticism. I did feel it was light on comic relief, for starters.
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I was sitting 3 rows back from the front too, could account for some of the difficulty. Usually I actually prefer this spot, but I think the more immersive technologies like 3D sound and projection typically have a 'sweet spot', most likely the very middle of the theatre. The blurriness at the top left corner for the left eye may have been a consequence of leakage of polarized light on account of riding close to the crossover angle in those spots.
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Surely it's okay to not like this film on spec? I saw the trailers and thought they were awful, surely that's the whole point of promoting a film. If you don't like the look of it and the look is what is being marketed, then avoid.
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Surely it's okay to not like this film on spec? I saw the trailers and thought they were awful, surely that's the whole point of promoting a film. If you don't like the look of it and the look is what is being marketed, then avoid.
And yet a bunch of people who aren't fools have actually been to see it and their responses range from impressed to rapturous.
I think Ben and webweaver are right -- there's a sense of a new medium about what's been done with this film, and people are going to exalt the way they did when they first started hearing sound and seeing colours at the movies.
You could, of course, see the non-3D version, but I'm not sure why you'd choose to -- it's all about the immersion. But it's a lot better than certain family blockbusters I've seen this year -- Where the Wild Things Are (laboured, preachy) or Transfomers 2 (wtf?) .
I'd cerrainly debate Geoff's contention about the only message being "might is right" -- unless you'd say the same is true of of the first Star Wars movie.
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And yet a bunch of people who aren't fools have actually been to see it and their responses range from impressed to rapturous.
I'm not saying it's a bad film, just that not everything works for everyone. I assume that you and the others who liked it weren't put off by the trailers.
And just for the record, I spent a substantial amount of the year anxiously waiting for the release of 2012, which I fully planned to enjoy un-ironically. It's not always snobbery when you don't like the look or in fact the idea of something. Performance capture just gives me the creeps.
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I would debate it bigtime. There was no impression that the destruction of Home Tree was a good thing to do. The only message that I might take issue with is that tendency in "The Last Samurai" to exalt death cults, which slipped in there subliminally by virtue of the fact that a warrior was they only human who could truly connect to these aliens. But unlike the Samurai, they weren't just sticking to their old ways for the sheer honor of it. They were defending against a massive full scale assault on their home. It's something I would most likely do, if it ever came to it, but I doubt it would have a happy ending.
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Okay, here's what I want to know. My son and I both have quite severe astigmatism. Are we going to get anything other than a nasty headache out of this?
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I do hope you enjoy seeing it now that you've reviewed it ;-)
So do I, dear -- and to be fair, I might just be having a severe allergic reaction to the hype-krieg and the film itself turns out to be utterly transcendental. I don't expect the damn thing to a jet engine intake's worth of suck, but I'm not read any evidence that there's much in the way of engaging storytelling either. That's not being a hater just fishing for something to bitch about, but someone who has a sense of where Cameron's strengths lie.
And yet a bunch of people who aren't fools have actually been to see it and their responses range from impressed to rapturous.
Fair enough, too. I certainly liked Inglorious Basterds a lot more than many other PASers -- and I don't think the contrary opinions were offered by prudes or fools.
If you want a family movie that doesn't regard visual splendour and storytelling as a zero-sum game, I'd still rate Coraline as the big winner of the year, and if you want green sentiments that don't hit you like knee to the crotch, Ponyo is Hello Kitty cute and strangely moving.
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Nice to see Pirating and general Downloading is driving the industry to take the next step in "Value Added" media releases. Up until this point the only advantage the Big Screen had over downloaded content was that it was... erm... bigger.
Take that Copyright Thread.
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Okay, here's what I want to know. My son and I both have quite severe astigmatism. Are we going to get anything other than a nasty headache out of this?
There seems to be some prospect that the digital 3D will work for you, but I think you won't know without trying.
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Nice to see Pirating and general Downloading is driving the industry to take the next step in "Value Added" media releases.
As I might have pointed out in one of the copyright threads, it's exactly what happened when people started watching films at home on their tellies - films at the cinema became more spectacular. More spectacular doesn't mean better, however.
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Hmm. Maybe I am turning into one of those film bods I used to-not-greatly-admire. Or it could be because I now teach a World Cinema course, with an agenda of introducing students to films they might never otherwise encounter (films from Finland, Iran, Israel, France etc). I do love film-as-immersion but I think my need is more now about floating in a thought bubble, rather than bodily experience. I liked Where the Wild Things Are, for example, because it is not a children's film, but an adult discourse about childhood. It is also rather sad, and without a pat resolution. On the other hand, going to Inglourious Basterds was a joyous occasion, largely because it was a shared experience with my 16 year old daughter--just when I thought our worlds were diverging. We both loved it.
Still, it has been a mixed year in film. I keep a record of films I go to; last year it was 52 (what symmetry!), this year I have only just cracked 40. Not sure why, but we did miss out on the film festival (except for tor the trips I took to Auckland).
I would be interested in how many films other folk get to in a year.
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My son and I both have quite severe astigmatism. Are we going to get anything other than a nasty headache out of this?
My wife has the same, wears glasses. No more issues with it than I had, and the 3D certainly worked for her. If you see in 3D normally, you'll be able to see it. My own son would get nothing from it because he does not have binocular vision.
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I would be interested in how many films other folk get to in a year.
I'm sitting on four.
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Maybe I am turning into one of those film bods I used to-not-greatly-admire.
Don't sweat it. You like what you like, and I'm sure what you do like is mostly good.
More spectacular doesn't mean better, however.
Other things being equal, I disagree. If the other aspects suffered because of the spectacle, then maybe. But something being spectacular isn't really a negative. I like spectacles, anyway.
It's not always snobbery when you don't like the look or in fact the idea of something.
No indeed. It's only snobbery if you insist other people are in some way lacking because they do like it.
Performance capture just gives me the creeps.
They gets the creeps does they, Precious? We wonders, are they crunchable, are they sweet?
I do sort of agree though to an extent. One of the many things that I don't think is cool recently is martial arts scenes that don't actually involve any martial arts talent whatsoever. At least in the old days, guys like Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, and yes, even Chuck Norris were actually superb athletes, even if they're shockingly hammy actors. Seeing Uma Thurman being played 90% by Zoe Bell did feel quite off. But I still liked that movie, it was, again, a visual treat.
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Films-in-cinemas?
This year, 3 (all in Oamaru.)
Films watched on dvds? About 2 a week.
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Other things being equal, I disagree. If the other aspects suffered because of the spectacle, then maybe. But something being spectacular isn't really a negative. I like spectacles, anyway.
I'd enthusiastically agree, if other things were equal. But seeing as this was the decade of superhero movies and prequels (and prequels of superhero movies) it's hard not to see a direct relationship between the increase in spectacle and the infantilisation of taste.
But hey, Roland Emmerich fan here, etc.
__Performance capture just gives me the creeps.__
They gets the creeps does they, Precious? We wonders, are they crunchable, are they sweet?
That's an excellent example, Gollum made well sure that LOTR dated in about twenty minutes. It's already all but unwatchable I find.
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Digital 3D shouldn't be a problem with astigmatism; I have very odd, very poor eyesight and it was absolutely fine. The main thing to watch for is where you are in the theatre. As close to the centre of the theatre as you can get is where you want to be. As you get further out, the divergence between the apparant angle of the 3D projection and the angle you're actually watching it at can make some people uncomfortable.
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