'Avatar': Count Me Among the Smitten

I never thought I would see a movie like "Avatar." Aliens and galactic wars: not my thing. But a friend asked me to go with her, just for the "novelty," and I thought, why not? I hadn't seen a movie in 3D since "Creature from the Black Lagoon" in the 1950s.

It's funny how expectations can lead you astray. What I expected, I'm not even quite sure. What I got left me nearly speechless.

Quite simply, I was enthralled. Spellbound. Totally unprepared for the phantasmagoria that popped, zoomed, hovered, drifted and waved across the screen and right into my face, illuminating my brain before my stereoscopic eyes. This is not just another in a string of interesting computer-generated films. This is a photo-realistic, computer-driven alternate world, one that lives side by side with the real world in a way so authentic that you never doubt for a minute that other world exists.

I never expected to hear myself talk this way, but James Cameron stole my heart and mind and senses. And I'd never even seen one of his films before. Not even "Titanic." Certainly not "Aliens," "Terminator" or "The Abyss."

Many years ago, when I was in my 20s, my husband and I took our first trip to the Caribbean and experienced snorkeling. It was a mind-altering event for me. I saw this world I didn't know existed; it was brimming with the most animated and colorful array of plants and creatures I'd ever seen, all undulating in a constant cosmic harmony that had me so transfixed I watched for hours.

That's what "Avatar" reminded me of. Exotic creatures so meticulously detailed you could almost believe they might be found in the deepest, darkest Amazon: vividly colored, flying pterodactyls with gill-like membranes and fierce mandibles; sleek, jet-black, elongated leopards; horses with plumed, Roman-helmet-like manes and four front legs. The forest itself is alive with neon-lit creatures: pink whirligigs that buzz in circles, a moss-covered forest floor that lights bright green under foot; the revered Tree of Souls that looks like a great white neon willow; floaty jelly fish spores that drift as in water, alighting ever so gently on face, shoulders, arms to transmit their energy. It's no coincidence that Cameron is an avid scuba diver.

One thing I didn't expect was the conventional plot at the heart of the movie. It's so mundane, not to mention lefty political, that it seems a shame to waste all those extraordinary special effects on such a predictable trifle.

In brief, nasty capitalists in pursuit of a valuable mineral are willing to destroy the bio-botanical paradise of the Na'vi people, blue-skinned, cat-like humanoids who are nine feet tall and super-humanly strong. You can see the set-up for an action-packed absurd confrontation between helicopter gunships and pterodactyls amid a vast and beautiful landscape.

But the movie is also a love story – the main Avatar succumbs to the Na'vi way of life and falls in love with the chief's daughter. In a profile of Cameron in The New Yorker last October, he said: "Of course, the whole movie ends up being about women, how guys relate to their lovers, mothers – there's a large female presence. I try to do my testosterone movie and it's a chick flick. That's how it is for me.'' As Mia noted, however, in a piece about the movie and roles for females in sci-fi flicks, the action still revolves around the main male characters.

Cameron started working on "Avatar" back in the mid-90s but had to wait for the technology to catch up with his vision. He uses motion-capture animation, but unlike other such films, where the digital environment is added after the actors' motions have been captured, Cameron's technology uses a virtual camera he created himself. That allows the actors to interact with the digital world in real time, so he can shoot scenes as if they were live action. In three dimensions. (He also made the movie in two dimension, but you definitely want to see the 3D version.)

In addition, he improved the facial expressions of his computerized Na'vi by fitting actors with skullcaps fixed with tiny cameras attached inches from their faces that recorded their eye and facial movements, every muscle twitch, and transmitted them back to computers. According to Cameron, this allowed him to transfer 95 percent of the actors' performances to their digital counterparts. Looking at the Na'vi characters, you have the feeling you're seeing an actor in heavy makeup.

Not everyone will be as impressed with Cameron's movie as I am. In a marketing experiment last summer, Fox Studios showed 16 minutes of the film free at 3D theaters around the world. The citizen reviews were not very favorable. "Dances with Wolves in Space," some called it. "Pocahontas meets Halo." Comparisons with Jar Jar Binks, a computer-generated character from "Star Wars" films, and the "ThunderCats," an animated TV series of the '80s.

But "Star Wars" creator George Lucas told The New Yorker, "Creating a universe is daunting. I'm glad Jim is doing it -- there are only a few people in the world who are nuts enough to." Of course Lucas himself is one.

Perhaps the ultimate arbiter is the box office, where "Avatar" just grossed more than $1 billion worldwide since its opening on Dec. 18, one of only five films to achieve that distinction, including No. 1, "Titanic." The critics were vicious to "Titanic," which encountered many setbacks in the making and cost $200 million, a Hollywood first. "Avatar's" cost has been estimated as high as $300 million, plus $125 million to market. But it may be on its way to supplanting "Titanic" as the largest-grossing film of all time.

Meantime, Sony Corp. has embarked on a huge gamble that 3D television will quickly become the wave of the future and propel the giant to the forefront of global leadership in the newly revived technology. According to The Wall Street Journal, Sony has already persuaded both the PGA Tour and ESPN to begin broadcasting in 3D. And it says the top four TV makers have also committed to a big 3D push, creating intense competition that could result in a profit-killing price war.

So I'm glad I indulged my curiosity to check out "Avatar" for the novelty of it. I might never have known what I was missing.