Feature

Avatar footage: first impressions

Ali

24th August 2009

The entire internet and their cyberpets have been blogging about the Avatar footage all weekend. Now it's my turn.

So, being the super-connected industry freewheeler that I am, I was invited to the impenetrable roundabout fortress that is the BFI IMAX cinema in Waterloo to see 15 minutes of new Avatar footage. The footage consisted of five short scenes, each about 2-3 minutes long, plus an intro from a gigantic James Cameron, espousing the wonders of his own movie. A confident man.

Might he well be. Let's not beat around the bush: Avatar looks amazing in the flesh. I leapt to defend some of the harsher criticisms of the trailer (apparently it looks like, among other things, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, World Of Warcraft, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and -shudder- Delgo) but the difference between a small Quicktime window and a gigantic 3D screen cannot be over-emphasised.

[gallery]The first scene eases you into the 3D, albeit in that slightly queasy way where you'll have to readjusting your eyes to take it all in. Stephen Lang's badass military instructor Col. Quaritch (complete with Future John Connor claw-mark scar) gives his men the worst motivational speech ever. "It is my job to keep you alive," he barks. "I will not succeed." Now go get 'em, team!

Tellingly, this scene featured no CG and no flashy 3D effects: the extra dimension is just... there. Cameron's addition of 3D is not a gimmick: it is present to add an extra layer of depth that simply can't be achieved on a flat plane. There are no people waving guns around theatrically; there are no characters poking the audience with sticks. You become accustomed to the 3D environment almost immediately without being aware of its existence.

The second scene introduced Sam Worthington's paraplegic Jake Sully, tootling around a military base on alien planet Pandora in his wheelchair. Here we meet Sigourney Weaver's Doctor Grace Augustine, who talks him through the procedure that'll zap his conciousness into that of a synthetic Na'vi - the indigenous species of Pandora.

There's a definite frisson between the two; when the Doc is told of sarcastic Sully's busy brain activity, she replies: "Go figure." When Sully is locked into the avatarisation chamber (name made up), we hear him tell the Doc to "kiss the darkest part of my big white a-" before the lid is slammed shut.

The next scene sees Sully in his alien avatar. This was the only scene shown that featured the Na'vi interacting with humans - though it didn't look quite as goofy as the trailers suggest, it still needs a little work. Now 7ft, hairy and blue, Sully swings around his tail and breaks free of his table constraints while the doctors urge him to stay calm.

When Sully's avatar cracks a smile and he utters "This is great," you realise just how far facial animation has come in the past ten years. There is definitely a performance to be eked from this technology - the Academy might not recognise it, but audiences will.

Then, we zip forward in time, where Sully is hunting in the jungles of Pandora alongside Weaver's own avatar. This is where we get our first glimpse of some of Pandora's other native beasties. Sully stands off against a giant rhino with a hammerhead protrusion and peacock-like feathers, plus a giant snapping mammal, like a giant mutant puma with elongated jaws. The chase scene, though frenzied and hard to assimilate immediately, cracks along at a furious pace.

It's worth mentioning too just how beautiful the planet of Pandora looks. Too often, science-fiction adopts a dull palette of gun-metal greys, clinical white and gloomy blacks. Not so here. Pandora is a lush and verdant planet, full of interesting flora and fauna. You really do get sucked in to Cameron's world quite easily - you could spend ages picking apart the small details in these scenes.

Later, we're introduced to Zoe Saldana's native Na'vi, Neytiri. This is where the cornball element of Avatar becomes apparent - just as Cameron tried to convince us Titanic wasn't really a disaster movie but a love story with a boat crash, he'll likely insist Avatar is an epic love story first and an action movie second. Hmm.

We're not won over yet, but the way the two characters interact is completely convincing - it really is easy to forget you're watching two computer-generated creations react to one another. The fact that the scene occurs at night, where the Pandora forests hum with a neon glow, suggests that there will be plenty of eye-candy to distract from any shortcomings in the story.

The final scene was by far the most impressive. With Sully now seemingly ingratiated with the native Na'vi tribe, he's taken a treacherous route up a mountain where he must tame a dragon-like creature. Dialogue here left a lot to be desired (at one point, Worthington calls the dragon his "bitch") but the visuals were genuinely and literally jaw-dropping.

It's worth mentioning that what you see here is almost certainly 100% computer generated, but the effects are so engrossing you'll hardly notice. The 3D is put to good use, too: the cliché of grabbing a cliff ledge gets a run-out, but the depth perception with the 3D glasses on is quite the stomach-churner. The subsequent flight scene is nothing short of majestic.

And then, nothing. Back to the real world. Damn.

At the very least, Avatar looks set to be the most visually arresting movie ever made. It will certainly get people talking in that respect if the gasps and coos of the assorted journalists in attendance were any decent measure.

From the brief scenes I saw, the dialogue needs a little work, but I'd no more judge a script from snippets of dialogue than I would judge an entire film from an online trailer. It'll be interested to see how the human and CG characters interact in other scenes too, as that'll be key to selling the tech to stubborn punters. But we'll just have to wait until December 18th to see.

Will Avatar change the world of cinema forever? Probably not. But I can certainly vouch for its visual intensity and stunning design work. If Cameron's screenplay comes across a little less like Dances With Wolves In Space and more like its own animal, then there's every possibility Avatar could be a front-runner at next year's Oscars - and not just in the technical stakes, either.

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