solace in cinema : A vast wasteland of movies

The reason I get so excited about incredibly well made fantastical movies is because my imagination isn't vivid enough to allow me to picture elaborate, epic vistas in my mind’s eye. I love the escapism you get from a great sci-fi or fantasy novel but I don’t even bother trying to imagine all the weirdness. Movies are the obvious solution to this. Sadly, detailed and believable alien worlds are a rare thing. Star Wars nailed it and, rightly so, that series did pretty well. James Cameron is a great action and fantasy movie maker (and his last film received 11 Oscars) but he hasn’t made anything to compare to Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. But all that is about to change. After talking about it for years, and writing a treatment 11 years ago, he is going to start shooting Avatar this coming April.

Oh boy, this one’s going to be nuts. It’s a $195m fully 3D sci-fi action epic, "a futuristic tale set on a planet 200 years hence… an old-fashioned jungle adventure with an environmental conscience… [that] aspires to a mythic level of storytelling." The January 2007 press release added that "Avatar is also an emotional journey of redemption and revolution. It is the story of a wounded ex-marine, thrust unwillingly into an effort to settle and exploit an exotic planet rich in bio-diversity, who eventually crosses over to lead the indigenous race in a battle for survival."

So on this crazy alien planet humans can only survive by projecting their consciousness into genetically engineered 10 foot tall, blue, alien, bodies (a.k.a. ''avatars''). The people of earth want to exploit the planet's natural resources causing the inhabitants to revolt and a war to break out. The main guy, named Jake (played by newcomer Sam Worthington who Cameron says has “an innate strength”) falls in love with a native (another newcomer, Zoë Saldana), forcing him to choose a side in the battle. It’s going to have crazy action, amazing photorealistic aliens and alien forests with trees 1000 metres high and all of it will be in true 3D. Cameron developed his own system in which one camera has two lenses to provide depth perception much like our own eyes. And motion capture is now ready for him as he says himself:

“Looking at what Peter Jackson was able to do with Gollum, and then King Kong. And Davy Jones [from Pirates of the Caribbean] — all these examples of compelling photo-realistic, fully CG characters, in a photo-realistic world. I don't think many people are aware that a lot of the jungle scenes in King Kong were actually CG. They did a lot with miniatures, but toward the end they were doing a lot of the jungle in CG.”

This way of working makes a lot of sense for someone like Cameron who needs a lot of effects but likes directing in real time. Peter Jackson’s Weta and genius creature maker Stan Winston are on board. They are going to take their time and get it looking hyper real in time for a summer 2009 release. Sequels are mooted already.

This one will be on another level.

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 29th, 2007 at 2:05 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.