Avatar

[Chris Hurd]

Finally saw it on New Year's Day. Agree w/ Steven and with Stelios, above.

It was easily as good as Iron Man but definitely not in the same league as LOTR in my opinion.

The 3D (in RealD process, at least) was very, very well done and sets a new standard.

This will probably be the first 3D title I'll buy for our household once we have a 3D HDTV.

[Eric Emerick]

I was going to see Avatar in IMAX 3-D, then remembered my problems with viewing motion i.e an IMAX film of a helicopter going over a volcano, I had to leave the room! So I settled for plain old 3D. Had a few problems but nothing that made me turn away for too long. Great 3D, average story ( Matrix meets Dances w/Wolves meets District 9 meets...you get the idea.) Oh, I hate 3D glasses, they are never comfortable on my head. Until that's solved, no more 3D for me. I say it's still little more than novelty, and is never needed to tell the story better. Just my opinion, time will tell.

[Rob Evans]

Saw it last night - was actually very impressed with the use of 3D - it didn't feel overplayed at all. What would take it to the next stage would to have some form of periphery fill-in, like a more complex version of the ambient lighting on some LCD sets. There were a few moments, particularly with "deep" shots where the edge of the screen was highlighted by the use of 3d. As a film, I enjoyed it a lot but felt a little cheesed out in places. I was stood waiting for my better half on the way out and I can't remember the last time I saw an audience so talkative about a film.....

Also, any other Squaxx dex Thargo in the house? I felt it had more than a passing resembleance to Firekind, a 2000AD strip from about 15 years ago - a LOT of story parallels and ideas!!!

[Robert Turchick]

My short review...Spectacular movie. Story is predictable but still very good. Visually...this is the next level of entertainment. Beautiful and seamless live-action and CGI. Every scene has so much detail it's ridiculous. The 3-D is subtle enough through most of the movie that I forgot the glasses were on. Some of the scenes could have done without 3D or at least toned down...like the video-logging scenes. The outdoor scenes are jawdropping! We saw it at an IMAX theater and I didn't have any issues but my wife got a little motion sick. I've heard the same from several other people and I wonder if that will impact 3D's success in the future.

[Noa Put]

Just saw it and even though the story is something I have seen before and nothing special but the visuals, wow, never saw animated characters show this accurate expression in their faces. I totally got carried away by the joy and pain that you could literally feel and I still find it unbelievable that most of what I saw was made by a computer.
usually I'm not so keen on CGI movies, the last star-wars trilogy I saw was a big disappointment and one of the worst movies I ever saw, it was just an empty shiny shell but Avatar shows what difference it makes if the cgi is applied right and they managed to give animated persons a soul and more depth then George Lucas not even could achieve with real life persons.
The 3d experience took some time to get used to though, especially the real-life scenes where there was quite some depth of field did feel like my eyes were having troubles adjusting to it. The cgi scenes were better balanced. One particular scene were Colonel Miles was giving a speech to his troops half-way the movie the "3d" experience was very real, as if I was standing inside the room, impressive.

[Sherif Choudhry]

Like many of you I was astounded and astonished by Avatar. I simply forgot the technology and was just living in every aspect of Pandora - Cameron should feel proud at creating it.

But the story line I notice took a panning in some quarters - I saw it with my daughter and she has been studying the conquest/elimination of the Inca's by spaniards and she totally felt she emotionally understood from Avatar what it must have felt like to be wiped away by another race. The books just don't convey that.

It is surprising how anti-colonial, anti-corporate or anti-exploitation a message it provided. Nice to think it might change the views of a generation, but not sure it will... especially when it was funded by a mega corporate ;-)

[Marty Welk]

Watched it IMAX 3D diagonal polarisation glasses.
Let me first say amasing, epic, well worth the price for watching, love that 3d, enough action. 3d was well done without being overdone.

that leaves me with issues of the technology itself, Frame rate not high enough for fast action.
Polarisation is not seperation Enough, long ago Imax used shutter lcd and it was a little bit cleaner.
Out of focus stuff in background and foreground is not effective for 3d WHEN there is already a blurring going on via the glasses/brain assembly.
Let me explain:
when trying to bring to the humans eyes what they would see themselves WITH thier eyes in reality, human eyes do not have such rotten focus, human eyes can keep up with motion, and human eyes dont normally get headaches from watching life in front of them.
When the technology is trying to bring us a sureal reality in full stereo 3D , it needs to do so with as much reality as possible.
Seems to me, that Much and much Vast effort is put into the scenes and time and work and personell, and work and work and days on end, then displayed in technology that needs to Work on a few aspects of itself to bring it to us. Increase the frame rate, fix the eye seperation issue, and for the 3D stuff avoid the out of focus stuff and let the 3D do its thing of setting the "depth".

Did i say great movie, yes go watch it if you have not , you wont be dissapointed, even if your not a Sci-Fi and cheezy romance fan.

[Brian Drysdale]

Having just seen the film in 3D in your average multiplex, I can't say I was that wild about the 3D. I say this having seen one of the Pace 3D rigs based on the F950 and a demo video at the same time at the Pace LA office & workshop. That had a slight hyper 3D effect, which seemed to get carried over into film for some shots.

The film works without the 3D, if a bit long for the story, however, the glasses etc seemed to degrade the image below what I'd expect - the highlights on faces looked odd for a start and everything has a slight video game quality.

Never mind having a slight headache at the end, which could be due to how the projection system was set up.

[Perrone Ford]

I finally saw it last night. In IMAX 3D.

The underlying story was a bit heavy-handed at times and maybe a bit preachy, but honestly, the movie worked for me. I thought I'd get lost in the technicals, but it was absolutely engrossing at times. I went with a friend and don't think I looked at her for the last hour of the movie.

Visually, it was a feast. Rich, nicely done, and the 3D worked for me. I have a parallax issue with my eyes that sometimes causes depth problems, but I tested things during the previews and I saw the 3D just as cleanly as I would have liked. Certain scenes used it more than others and I was ok with that.

Having watched the mo-cap stuff before I saw the film, I must say that Zoe should be up for best supporting. She was utterly amazing in that role. I thought Weaver's role was a bit weak and over the top. She didn't sell me at all. The top jarhead was just icy. As the saying goes, you can't have a great good guy without an even better villain.

I'll certainly see it again on second run, and I have a feeling it will become THE new reference BluRay when released.

I gave it my highest rating on IMDB and Flixster.

[Vito DeFilippo]

Saw it on IMAX 3D today.

The 3D was an interesting addition to the whole experience, but I'm not sure if it added overall, or if its distraction was just enough to negate what it gave.

The story was predictable, we've seen it before, but still worked for me.

Visually, it was stunning. What an imagination from the people who builit Pandora. And the CGI was the first time I've ever believed in the look and movement of computer generated animals, people, whatever. It was incredibly well done, and will change the way movies are made, I'm sure.

Worth every penny. I'd like to see it in 2D, though, to compare the experience.

[Brian Drysdale]

Having spoken to someone about 3D and indeed digital projection at this particular multplex, that this is poor compared to another digital theatre. The normal 2D trailers didn't look good (although they're not usually of the highest quality compared to release prints), so if anyone was using this particular theatre as an example for going for digital projection I'd say forget it. Unfortunately, this suggests that digital projection could be of variable quality depending on the investment the owners are prepared to make. I suspect nothing new in that.

Speaking of quality, the Pearl & Dean 35mm projected ads looked terrible, you used to get stunning quality (usually drinks) commercials.

[Warren Kawamoto]

Adding to what was already said, the really cool thing was that a lot of the shots were hand held. Very realistic camera shake and bobbles, I've never seen that in any other CG flick. You may have not noticed it because it was so natural.

I saw "The making of Avatar" and the most impressive feat was that the camera operator and director could monitor live actors interacting with the animated world in real time as it was being shot!

[Brian Drysdale]

Hand held shots have been used in films with CGI effects, I seem to recall "Twister" being first feature film where hand held cameras shot the live action plates.

In a more traditional optical printer effect, a helicopter hovering aerial view (before the days when gyro mounts were more common) was created in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" when the characters run out of the mine to find themselves in the wall of a deep river gorge; that combined a painting, a river painting and the live action actors. VFX people have been pushed to do these real camera effects in a number of films, Cameron would have been coming from that tradition.