The Avatar (2009) Potpourri: Medium Is Not The Message

Avatar (2009) needs no intro­duc­tion. The most expen­sive movie ever made is a tes­ta­ment to James Cameron’s coura­geous vision of an immer­sive cin­e­matic expe­ri­ence to out-Lucas the Star Wars leg­end – an ambi­tion he har­bored since he watched it in 1977 as a truck-driver. Avatar Poster

Cameron has uplifted the bench­mark for Hol­ly­wood block­busters and cre­ated a new level of enter­tain­ment. Sus­pend dis­be­lief and enjoy the ride. It will be an unfor­get­table experience.

The Medium

3D

Should You watch it in 2D if 3D tick­ets are not yet avail­able? No.

It’s like this. Let’s say you’ve never flown in a plane before and are given a choice of fly­ing busi­ness class in the flight next week, or econ­omy today. You will enjoy the econ­omy ride, but you will miss the com­fort of busi­ness class. From another, more impor­tant per­spec­tive, it’s a ques­tion of expe­ri­enc­ing an art form as the artist wished it to be expe­ri­enced. If artis­tic integrity mat­ters to you, watch Avatar as Cameron intended you to watch it.

Cameron has likened 3D to the addi­tion of color in cin­ema, which reveals how inte­gral it is to the Avatar expe­ri­ence. He invented a new gen­er­a­tion of high-resolution, maneu­ver­able, 3D cam­eras for Avatar and per­suaded Sony to man­u­fac­ture it. Read more of the back­ground story here.

The use of 3D in the film is extremely sub­tle. It never dis­tracts, but sim­ply adds to the immer­sive experience.

Uncanny Val­ley

Cameron and Weta Digital’s great­est achieve­ment in Avatar in my opin­ion is con­quer­ing the uncanny val­ley. The evo­lu­tion from motion-capture to performance-capture is a mile­stone in film-making. It took Weta one full year to per­fect its algo­rithms to map the actor’s expres­sions onto the ani­mated char­ac­ters with­out cre­at­ing the uncanny val­ley revul­sion and actu­ally mak­ing them empa­thetic. You can read more about this behind-the-scenes tech­nol­ogy here.

The Mes­sage

The Pot­pourri

Sci-Fi? Yes. Roman­tic Adven­ture? Yes. Action/War Movie? Yes. Polit­i­cal State­ment? Yes. A Green State­ment? Yes.

The movie is all of these packed into a 160-min block­buster. Leave your fine cin­e­matic sen­si­bil­i­ties behind if you want to enjoy the immer­sive expe­ri­ence. Avatar was not made for art film crit­ics. It was cre­ated to awe and it does that exceed­ingly well.

The Sci-Fi, Romance, and Action-War gen­res are given full treat­ment beyond your wildest expec­ta­tions and imag­i­na­tions. An alien civ­i­liza­tion with its own lan­guage, inter-species romance, and futur­is­tic bat­tle space­ships in com­bat with aliens rid­ing on mon­sters will leave your appetite for Sci-Fi, Romance, and Action fully satiated.

Anti-War

A moral mes­sage of anti-war under­lies the movie, but is ren­dered impo­tent as the movie uses full-blown action war sequences for the intended pur­pose of enter­tain­ment. Artis­tic integrity? No. Hyp­o­crit­i­cal? Yes.

One line in the dia­log on “answer­ing ter­ror with ter­ror” almost made me feel that Michael Moore was involved in the script-writing. There are actu­ally only fleet­ing pas­sages in the movie that actu­ally evoke an anti-war sen­ti­ment, the rest of it is where you actu­ally enjoy the thrill of war.

The Green Bal­ance of Life

The only per­sonal review I had read before watch­ing the movie was by Nita, who was moved by its green mes­sage that stressed the Bal­ance of Life. I found the green mes­sage quite far-fetched, unsub­stan­ti­ated, and unsci­en­tific. I’ve argued before that we need to pull reli­gion out of envi­ron­men­tal­ism and take a sci­en­tific approach if we’re to care about our planet.

The nature-worshipping alien civ­i­liza­tion on Pan­dora prac­tices an occult envi­ron­men­tal­ism that harks back to mys­ti­cism. Such a mind­set is actu­ally harm­ful not just to planet Earth, but to human beings as well. Learn­ing to live with nature requires sci­en­tific obser­va­tion of nature, inven­tion of med­i­cines to treat nat­ural dis­eases, the inven­tion of disaster-response infra­struc­ture to deal with nat­ural calami­ties, and so on. It doesn’t mean relin­quish­ing sci­ence to live in har­mony with nature in caves or under a mys­ti­cal tree as the aliens do on Pandora.

This nature-worshipping mes­sage is deliv­ered to us via a medium of extreme hi-tech engi­neer­ing. Does the mes­sage over­rule the medium? In Avatar, the mes­sage fails, the medium tri­umphs. In this case, the medium is not the mes­sage.

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  3. Blog­ging High­lights of 2009, Chal­lenges & Thoughts for 2010

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  • Fast Dots

    Hi Mahen­dra,

    I saw the movie over the week­end, and had a slightly dif­fer­ent take. I do agree that its extremely well done; I have never been so amazed by the imag­i­na­tion of the writer / direc­tor / cin­e­matog­ra­pher that has also been exe­cuted bril­liantly. Thanks for the links to the pop­u­lar mechan­ics arti­cle — will check it out.

    I agree with you about the green mes­sage in the film as well — re: mys­ti­cism vs sci­en­tific inquiry. To me, Pan­dora seemed like a man­i­fes­ta­tion of Gaia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis). While I agree with the need to main­tain a sym­bi­otic rela­tion­ship with ones sur­round­ings, I dis­agree with the motive (def­er­ence to some mys­ti­cal power).

    Your assess­ment of the 3D ver­sion is where I dif­fer with you. I saw the movie in 3D, and have to say that 3D didnt add any­thing to the story telling at all. (OK, I havent seen it in 2D yet). The dif­fer­ence between fly­ing coach and fly­ing busi­ness is an order of mag­ni­tude in com­fort level, whereas the impact of 3D was mar­ginal in my opinion.

    Happy New Year!

    • http://skeptic.skepticgeek.com Mahen­dra

      Hey Fast Dots, thanks for the feed­back and the link to the Gaia hypothe­ses. Yes, that per­fectly describes it (the Gaia arti­cle on Wikipedia also includes a ref­er­ence to Avatar the film).

      Regard­ing 3D, I agree it didn’t add to the sto­ry­telling at all. It sim­ply added to the immer­sive expe­ri­ence. If it was any­thing more than that, I wouldn’t watch more than 1 such 3D film in a month. Because it is so sub­tle, I can watch 3 films a week of this kind. My point, and I guess Cameron’s objec­tive, is that 3D shouldn’t be dis­rup­tive to the cin­e­matic expe­ri­ence we are used to, it should sim­ply aug­ment it.

      • Fast Dots

        I think peo­ple who wear glasses are less likely to enjoy another pair on their noses — thats lit­eral immer­sion ;-) . My point is that I want stuff com­ing at me in 3D (star­tling me and so on) for me to bear the pain of another pair of glasses!

        • http://skeptic.skepticgeek.com Mahen­dra

          Ah, yes. It must be painful for those with glasses.

          I under­stood your expec­ta­tions from 3D. For­mally referred to as “break­ing the fourth wall”, casu­ally referred to as 3D of the “Chhota Chetan” vari­ety. I under­stand that you need that to make the dis­com­fort worth­while! :)

  • http://thekarmacallingblog.blogspot.com Dot­tie

    Your title summed it up for me!! The 3-d was sub­tle, but did not add to the nar­ra­tive, the sense color can. I am still wait­ing for a true 3-D nar­ra­tive to come along. Apart from that, the imag­i­na­tion, the crea­tures.. the forst.. all very sur­real and beautiful.

    oh I see the hus­band has already left a comment!!

    • http://skeptic.skepticgeek.com Mahen­dra

      Hi Dot­tie, thanks!

      A true 3D film that adds to the nar­ra­tive would be nice as a dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence, but I wouldn’t want it to be part of every movie expe­ri­ence. :)

      Beau­ti­ful, surreal…an absolute won­der! Cameron is truly a king of royal blood, eh?

  • Anony­mous

    I know I will cer­taínly NOT WATCH this movie. I refuse to have my intel­li­gence insulted by such a pathetic attempt of brain­wash­ing my mind.

    Why pathetic? Because Mar­ket­ing Strat­egy is the key word here. Green is en vogue in the recent times.

  • http://gaurigharpure.blogspot.com Gauri Gharpure

    hello..
    no, i haven’t seen Avatar and while i ws in two minds till now, i will def­i­nitely see this after read­ing your review. regard­ing 3D– due to my headaches, i have avoided see­ing these films so far even when the mul­ti­plex is right next door. let’s see :)

    • http://skeptic.skepticgeek.com Mahen­dra

      Gauri, def­i­nitely watch it. :)

      3D glasses can aggra­vate your headache, so either skip the 3D or wait till you’re better.

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  • http://bentalman.blogspot.com Jenif­fer Karper

    I like the Avatar 3D film, par­tic­u­larly the story line, not only it brings a very new feel­ings how­ever inspir­ing ideas of human­ity. I heard the New Avatar 2 is com­ming soon, can’t wait to see it again…!