I feel it'd be somewhat remiss of me not to mention some crap about Christmas and New Year in here, although for all that compulsion I know that reading someone's festive hyperbole just makes me all the more dead inside. So, in passing, I shall say that New Year topped most in that nobody ever thought to include a drum kit in the whole New Year set up before, and why not I can't imagine, since in reflection it's as traditional as Jools titting Holland and passing out in a gutter soaked in your own piss. Oh the auuuuld lang syne...
Yesterday I finally reneged on my 3D vow and went to see Avatar. This was largely on the basis that it'd apparently been designed with 3D in mind, so it'd give it a better chance to state 3D's case than, say, Alan Titchmarsh's Celebrity Biscuit Auction.
I was a little befuddled at first, unsure whether to criticise in advance either the gimmicky 3D, Cameron's desire to weld big explosions and vague spiritualism onto the reclaimed plot of Fern Gully, or the blatant goodie and baddie moral extremes.
I have to admit though, I was impressed - not by the 3D, which gave me headaches and made me go cross-eyed until apparently my depth-perception just fucked off home - but the facial tics and idiosyncrasies of the CGI-rendered, but motion-captured Na'vi characters. Apparently, rather than being seen as special effects, it's more something that's superseding makeup and all that crap, saving studios approximately 5.6 million tons in latex. The rubber industry mourns a loss.
Also, it struck me that the crux of 3D's glittering takeover rests not upons some wondrous, digital HD world of perfectly-rounded, lifelike dewdrops, but on one simple concept: throwing shit in people's faces, REALLY FUCKING FAST. People flocking rapturously to the nearest multiplex to pretend that they're going to be hit by something. Kinda like hysterical quasi-masochism. Or something.
I suppose I could complain about the lazy naming (the rare mineral 'unobtainium' anyone?) but, I have to admit, the child in me couldn't honestly look far beyond the sheer 'ooh' and 'ahh' factor of the CGI, or at least it couldn't detach itself objectively from it long enough to properly critique the script. But is this a bad thing? Well, probably. But neither was it a straight-up, dumbo tits and guns flick. It was, at times, delightfully weird, especially with the Na'avi's propensity for plugging their hair into the local flora and fauna for a bit of a telepathic chat, or the Alice in Wonderland-esqure crack-addled fantasies of nature. Obviously coming from the creator of the abortion known as Titanic it's not subtlety itself, but thankfully, neither is it a drawn-out drama with the word 'harrowing' in the blurb and hordes of vacuous, pale women in it making pouty, existential faces.
