Finally as a late birthday present went to see Avatar with my other 1/2 – the first chance I had to see a movie with her in at least 4 years. I was not surprised or disappointed at the wooden acting in Avatar having read the reviews but I hadn’t realised that battle sequences would be quite as dominant a part of the film as they were – not really a very peace and love-y experience. And I thought from the reviews I would have a chance to see an alternative world beautifully realised but I found (perhaps again unsurprisingly) that the ‘alternative’ was only lightly alien-ized with faux horses, rhinoceroses and dragons rather than anything dramatically different.
It was my first experience of the ‘new’ 3D and while I wanted to like it I concur with Mark Kermode – when it was noticeable it was annoying, it seemed to encourage the director to play to it with lots of things exploding into my face and once I stopped noticing it I am convinced I had the same sense of depth as I would have had had I watched the film in 2D. The human brain does a lot of filling in by itself – that’s why it’s perfectly possible to enjoy a film on one’s iPod Touch.
Lastly, all the exploding gave my wife (who is more sensitive to noise and sitting in a chair for 2 3/4 hours) a splitting headache and thanks to living in one of the world’s most expensive cities the whole experience set us back in the neighbourhood of £50/$75 each. Next time I will just go to the opera…
