In the autumn of 2009, there were a lot of reasons to wonder if James Cameron had flown too close to the sun. After emerging from a troubled production with the biggest movie of all time, the disaster-weepie phenomenon Titanic, the blockbuster maestro had once more secured enormous investment in pursuit of a bank-breaking special-effects spectacle to rule them all. The movie looked like a sci-fi fantasy about a species of lithe, ocean-blue, vaguely feline aliens, prancing through a tropical paradise. The first trailer caught the attention of thechortles. The last laugh would go to the man.
The skeptics were silenced by the movie, similar to Titanic before it. It vindicated the ambitions of the creator, at least from a commercial point of view. It was impossible for him to surpass the box-office success of his last movie. Everyone had to attend the big-screen event of the film, which was a mix of science fiction and fantasy. It became the biggest movie of all time when it was released in China, but lost the title a decade later when it was released in the US. The movie is close to the top of all time charts.
The ultimate F/X eye-candy experience was promised by CAMERON, and he delivered on that promise. The big screen version of the movie was as good as advertised. No blockbuster before it had better justified the upcharge of 3D, making the most of that fad and extending its life span. The movie opens with its hero, the disabled military grunt Jake Sully, awakening from cryosleep, and as he emerges into a zero-gravity hull, using the latest in stereoscopic technology to create the impression of vast depth, reaching back almost infinitely. The movie was already making usTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkiaTrademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia,Trademarkia.Trademarkia
It was necessary to sit in theaters that became cathedrals devoted to his vision and watch the original run of the film. The movie was able to marshal impossible resources to make a new one. His own imagination was where the money was going to be deposited. 20th Century Fox couldn't afford to buy the most advanced computers, so he built a replica of the movie's location, the deadly but beautiful outer space nirvana where the movie takes place, from a supercut of past sci-fi visions.
Audiences will have a chance to get to know him again this weekend. The movie is back in theaters, where it belongs, to add a little more to the mountain of money the movie has already amassed, and to drum up fresh interest in the sequel, which opens this December. The rerelease is a good excuse to revisit an epic that a lot of viewers, even admiring ones, may know only from their first screenings, during the film's magical run into the early weeks of 2010 Today's technological advances, but not as clearly indebted to any other aspect of the movie, how does this phenomenon hold up?
It's better than you would think. The amount of time between the first all-time smash and the second one is just a little longer. The curse of computer-generated imagery is that its wonders are always doomed to degrade as our eyes adjust to the constant, ongoing refinements of the technology. The state of the art is going to get old.
It is relatively easy to fall under the spell of the magic of the film if the Na'vi are less convincing. The director's decision to push the entire film into the digital realm saved it from a full plummet into the valley. There is no tension between the real and fanciful elements of the film because they have all been fed the same amount of zeros and ones. The human characters aren't rendered realistic by the makeover, and the foliage still glows brilliantly.
Even as he has moved away from the practical shock and awe that elevated his earlier works like Titanic and Judgement Day, he has never been one to simply farm out the duties of enchantment to his technicians. While plenty of modern green-screen epics devolve into weightless previsualized action (it's hard to see many hints of directorial involvement in the firework displays on which most Marvel movies end), the work of a filmmaker devoted to guiding our perspective from shot to shot is the work of The basics of visual story telling are cared for by CAMERON.
It is a matter of narrative storytellers telling their stories. Time has thrown them into sharper relief, as they have never been able to smooth over their failures in that area. It is impossible to ignore the limitations of the movie, which is a piece of myth making.
The patchwork nature of the vision has never been denied by the man. A bit of candor that accounts for how much it feels like a mélange of other stories, mashing together spare parts from his own filmography. There is a critique of military occupation and colonialist atrocity in the mix. The movie may have been successful because of the crazy-quilt construction. By drawing on myths and popular stories, he made an epic that was sure to travel well. It was like he tapped into a mighty oak of shared storytellers.
Even though it has a lot of craft and grandeur, it doesn't have the magic that characterizes timeless fantasies. Its themes are pre-digested. The movie is about Jake being opened up to the beauty and purity of their way of life and being forced to switch over to the side of the Na'vi. The depiction of that world is mostly a romanticized caricature of indigenous culture, with the high tech version of rubber antenna placed on top. The love story, so crucial to Jake's conversion, is star-crossed and try as they can.
None of these criticisms are new. The most withering reviews didn't make a difference in the film's dominance at the box office. It was easy to ignore the plain flaws of the time. They were overshadowed by the creativity of the production. The movie's spectacle redeemed itself. The ooh-and-awe factor is always gone with technological groundbreakers. The novelty of its looks propped up the thin drama in the film. The less impressive it becomes over time.
Many people think that the all-time blockbuster with no cultural footprint is now. It isn't hard to wonder if it touches people the same way that it has done before. The dreamy-doomy melodrama of its love story is what keeps people coming back to it, even though it isn't state of the art anymore. It is possible to buy that the film becomes one to audiences.
Maybe not for some time. If reports are to be believed, the sequel, The Way of Water, will be a technological game-changer, just like the first one. It will impress the large crowds it attracts. It remains to be seen whether or not Cameron has invested more deeply in the soul beneath the dazzle, and created a story that is worthy of the wonders of the ancient world. Don't give up on it. In the past, the writer, director, and self-proclaimed king of the world has made some big sequels. It isn't usually a good idea to bet against him.
The movie is playing in some theaters. You can find more of A.A. Dowd's writing on his Authory page.
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