I haven’t seen either of them.
This thread really doesn’t make me feel like I’m missing anything.
An extremely beautiful cinematic movie with an extremely mundane “Man goes native, saves natives from his own people” plot. The ‘took me out of the movie’ moment was when he was raising up the natives and gave a speech saying something about saving the planet “for your children, and your children’s children” - to rousing cheers and a big grin on his face. Pure roll-eyes on my part.
Welcome to Cafe Society, Mr. Cameron.
“Nobody will ever need more than 640K RAM!”*
- Yes, I know it’s apocryphal.
I thought the 3-D was used better in Tron Legacy.
You’re not. I am honestly baffled at the love for Avatar.
I am honestly baffled at the love for current 3D technology.
The 3D made Avatar pretty to look at, but did nothing to make it a better or more compelling story.
Nor does color.
Now that I heartily disagree with. Color movies can show color in almost precisely the way the human eye sees it. This adds a dimension of realism to the story telling that does indeed enhance it. Adding descriptions of color even in novels can add to how compelling the story is.
The problem with 3D movies with current technology is that they’re not really 3D in the way our eyes actually view the world. Limitations of focal depth of field and inflexible viewing angle in current technology are the culprits. The latter is mitigated somewhat if everything in the shot besides the actors is CGI, but that causes non-realism in other ways, and leads to cluttered shots (which Avatar is full of). Thus current 3D does not do realism, it’s just a gimmick.
Maybe it’s possible someone can use current 3D technology to enhance the realism and story telling of a movie, but it hasn’t happened yet, in my opinion.
These same general attributes can also be said of 3D. 3D movies can show depth in almost precisely the way the human eye sees it. This adds a *dimension * (heh) of realism to the story telling that does indeed enhance it. Adding descriptions of depth, even in novels, can add to how compelling the story is.
2D movies aren’t really how our eyes view the world either. Those “limitations” you cite (as argued by Ebert, and successfully rebutted here) are clearly not a problem for most people, as ticket sales suggest. 3D works for me, and I suffer no side-effects; I’m not alone.
When color film was introduced, it was first a novelty for blockbuster movies, then became commonplace except for cheap B movies (and this was back when they had literal B movies), then ubiquitous for everything except as a deliberate stylistic choice in a few arthouse movies.
I seriously doubt 3D is going to follow the same path, with generic rom-coms and buddy comedies and TV commercials shot in 3D. The obvious problem is the glasses. It works OK for a movie theater, where the expectation is that you sit down for 2 hours and watch the whole movie from start to finish, and don’t pay attention to anything else or get up from your seat. It’s not going to work for home TV.
The problem is that 3D does add a certain amount of realism, but it’s actually misplaced in the giant epics, because our brains really only use parallax to process 3D for close up objects. Like, within a few feet. The farther away something is in real life, the less pronounced the 3D effect. By the time you get 20 feet away your two eyes are seeing virtually identical images. So what that means is that action pictures and epics are actually least suited to 3D, because you’re not looking at a lot of close-up detail.
And there isn’t that much added realism from 3D anyway. As proof, close one of your eyes and look around. Does the scene seem unrealistic when viewed with only one eye? No, it looks about the same, it’s when objects are very close that you miss the extra detail from binocular vision. A color photograph usually looks utterly realistic, your brain doesn’t really notice the lack of 3D information.
And this is why 3D will be a niche product and never become standard, like color or sound.
Couple more points:
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I mean the 3D as used in the original theatrical run of Avatar used special projectors and required theaters to use a higher lumen (as mentioned in the Ebert article.)
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You can get Avatar right now on DVD/Blu Ray and watch it on a 3d TV. However, it’s not the same as #1.
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New movies which are advertised as “3D” used a post-production method rather than 3D cameras to make the original print, and they are not shown on 3D projectors.
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The method that Cameron used allowed for the 3D effect to appear about 10 meters or more from the surface of the screen, causing (what I call) the “cat toy effect,” where people would be waving their hands in front of their faces because they think the object is a few feet away from them. Current 3D efforts can barely get past the old pop-up books.
That being said, if you didn’t watch it in the original run in the theaters with the right equipment at the right setting, you’ll never be able to see it, ever…or ever again.
And TV won’t require the glasses at home forever. The upcoming Nintendo 3DS doesn’t require glasses, and while that technology isn’t ideal for being scaled up, there are already alternatives in the works that work better. It’s only a matter of time.
3D is better suited for certain types of films, who knew? Black and white is also purposefully chosen by some directors, as it too works better in some situations.
Black and white photos look pretty damn realistic too; and while I might “notice” the lack of color, that’s not necessarily a negative.
Of course there will be 3D movies in the future. I just think they’ll never be mainstream. We’ll probably have more 3D movies than black and white movies, but we’re never going to have 3D rom-coms.
If it were a negative, then it would be a white and black photo.
You know, I totally knew this was coming the moment I saw what portion you quoted 
What took me out of the moment was thinking about why the humans would bother with all of that crap, assuming they were all evil and stuff, when they could simply drop big rocks on home tree and be done with it. I mean, we are talking about an interstellar race with the capacity to fly between the stars…and they have to land troops on the ground or fly shuttles in with improvised carpet bombs to get the job done?? No matter how you rationalize the movie, most of the second half of it just makes zero sense.
That said, I loved the movie and I really like the directors cut extended version, since it answers a lot of the gaps in the movie about how the situation got the way it was before Sully showed up…plus it gave some cool additional back-story on other stuff and some cool visuals (the first hunt after Sully gets his flying mount was pretty cool, for instance).
I’m wondering what the sequel will be like. After all, assuming a pissed off humanity, it will take something like 20 or so years for them to be back…and unless they are total idiots, all they have to do is go back to the ‘drop big rocks’ thingy and there would be nothing our valiant natives could do, no matter what a brilliant tactician (heavy sarcasm here, considering the cavalry charge instead of having the masters of concealment do something as prosaic as an ambush) does, or how many tribes he can get together.
-XT
I was personally blown away by Avatar, but I do have to say that it was the first 3-D movie I’ve ever seen. And I saw it on an Imax screen.
I’ve never been shy of the cheap joke!
Indeed yes, normal 2D is not how our eyes see, either. My point is that current 3D technology is far enough away from how we really see that it does not add realism (to what would have been 2D) in any way remotely comparable to color. It’s a gimmick at best, at least with every 3D movie I have seen. It is certainly VERY far from “almost precisely” how we really see.