Avatar: Let’s Pretend, But Better

On December 18th, James Cameron’s new film Avatar will hit film theatres worldwide.

You’d think the whole world would be in a lather. And it was, until the first trailer came out.

Yes, bucketloads of top-quality CGI. In fact, James Cameron has been waiting for the last decade for the technology to make this film – and it’s in 3D. It’s going to be enough eye-candy to give your brain indigestion for a year. But…does it look real?

Admittedly it’s a tall order to make a blue-skinned 8 foot tall cat-faced alien look convincing. But that’s beside the point. Look at the scene where Sam Worthington rolls his wheelchair off the ramp of his jumpship. Stunningly detailed, but there’s something unmistakeably….computery about it.

Typical reaction online? “It looks like a video game.”

Even Hitler is unimpressed.

The second trailer was released at the cinema at the weekend. It’s not yet officially online but the Web is already awash with nasty-quality bootlegs (of course) and from watching one, it’s clear that the dialogue is video-game quality as well. Lots of marines shouting “you want some of these apples?” at the enemy, that sort of thing.

“But it’s a James Cameron film”, say some – it’s about the spectacle and the story, not the dialogue. Let’s not forget this is the man who made Titanic -  a somewhat ludicrous script elevated to greatness by special effects work so effective it makes the pit of your stomach drop away. Titanic is two films – the one that can be sent up by bunnies, and the one where you see a real ship sink in front of your eyes. This is what James Cameron can do. He can take a cackhanded plot and weave an unforgettable spectacle around it.

But here’s the problem. We’ve gone beyond the point where special effects have to look this clever to be successful. It’s not enough. Computer games can look this clever. No – to be the best, a special effect has to be distinguishable from reality only because it’s impossible.

Image: Universal

I recently watched Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men for the first time. Good story -  and an incredible piece of film-making. All the way through, impossible things happen with dizzying regularity. The protagonist (played by Clive Owen) is in a car travelling at speed, being attacked by two guys on a motorbike – he opens the car door, slamming it into the side of the bike, and then you see both bikers tumbling over at a speed that would break every bone in a real stuntman’s arms.

Watch it here. (Be aware, it’s brutal).

And note this is all one take.

Later, Owen hits someone across the face with a half-brick – and there’s just no way he could have done it with a real one. There’s a baby born prematurely, so very wondrously tiny. I was shocked to learn afterwards that the baby was CGI. Gobsmacked. All through the film, you’re convinced – and because of that, you hardly question anything. Disbelief is suspended, sometimes utterly.

Image: SyFy

Special effects have moved on so very very far. Even for television shows, the bar is astoundingly high. Take the work of Zoic Studios, formerly working on Joss Whedon’s Firefly, Battlestar Galactica and now Galactica‘s spin-off Caprica. Watch this scene from Caprica. That’s what TV effects are now capable of, on a relatively limited budget.

The best effects teams can do anything. If they can digitally age an actor’s face and map it onto the body of another, flawlessly, they can do anything. That’s the bar you have to clear to make an effects shot that adults will buy. Or…your other option is to aim for hyper-reality, an obviously stylized, clearly fabricated vision – realworld Anime, if you like. And by doing so, you risk turning it into the next Star Wars prequel.

Is this what James Cameron is aiming for? Or have we got it all wrong, and Avatar is going to look a lot better than expected as the latest stills suggest?

For now, I remain…unconvinced.