So hey I was thinking – that new movie “Avatar” directed by James Cameron looks pretty fancy eh? For those of you who don’t know who James Cameron is and/or haven’t heard of Avatar, Cameron wrote and directed the popular 1997 action/horror/comedy-blockbuster Titanic, and Avatar is his new 400 million dollar project (making it the most expensive movie ever made – thats right, more expensive than Waterworld). Now, I can say that I’m excited about this movie – partly because Leonardo DiCaprio isn’t in the film, and partly because it’s a movie about 10ft tall blue cat-people. Awesome right? The film promises to deliver the most visually stunning and technologically advanced 3d graphics anyone has ever seen. Sweet.
hint: not real
James Cameron wrote the story more than a decade ago, but couldn’t make the film because it wasn’t technically possible at the time. Apparently he had to invent most of the techniques and technologies to make it possible. Most notable of these technologies is advanced motion capture and stereoscopic 3d cameras. His new cameras capture two different images at once – kind of like our eyes do. Makes sense right? Whats crazy about this technology is that it tricks your brain into believing you are part of the film. With a regular 2d movie both eyes pick up the same image; in 3d each eye sees a different angle of the scene (with the aid of polarized 3d glasses). The result is twice as much information being processed by your brain – which according to Time Magazine actually stimulates memory creation. Woah.
So along with serving a giant truckload of eye candy, Avatar promises to deliver solid characters and storyline. Cameron is no slacker; I would expect any film from him to be well rounded and emotional. Remember Terminator II? I cried during the whole second part of that movie.
heartwarming
Despite Cameron’s good reputation Avatar has gotten some flack for its storyline. Apparently it shares some similarities with the family classic “Dances with Wolves.” The main character of Avatar falls in love with a native of the planet Pandora, and all kinds of mischief ensues. The similarities between the two stories were poked fun at in a recent episode of South Park – aptly titled “Dances with Smurfs” To quote Eric Cartman: ”Oh god @#$% Son of a #$%& idea stealing $%#holes.” Now don’t get me wrong, South Park is a brilliant program…but I think this was a bit unwarranted – classic stories get recycled and retold all the time. For example: the 1994 animated masterpiece “The Lion King” mirrors Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” Every character is exactly the same and the plots are identical. No one noticed that? I guess Cameron figured he would follow the same formula: tell a classic story but replace all the main characters with cats. It worked for Disney.
Check out some monster high-res images from Avatar here.
