Last night I went to see James Cameron's much hyped movie, Avatar. I am convinced that, visually, this movie is the future of cinema, at least until we invent hologram projectors so we don't need those funky hard glasses. This movie had a budget in the millions, but not much was spent on writing, as I expected. 3D visuals, 1D story.
However...wow, was that 3D ever pretty. The "female lead" was indeed 'sexy'. That's certainly something I never thought I'd say about a giant blue smurf, but it's true. It all feels so real, especially that final scene where Jack touches her face with his frail, dying human body. Oops, spoiler? Nah, you saw that coming a mile away. The flying creatures were all pretty good too, so much above all those IMAX 3D documentary dinosaurs that it's not even worth putting in the same league. I could go on and on about the prettiness of it all...since that's all there is to it. If only some brilliant filmmaker could combine District 9's story with Avatar's 3D. Maybe the one to do it will do it in Spanish?
The video I've embedded below was made on a $300 budget, and subsequently got a $30m contract with Sam Raimi. Here's hoping they put some of that money towards writing as well. The future of cinema looks bright, but the writers are still on strike.
Interesting that you post this today. I'm going to see 'Avatar' on Sunday at the IMAX theatre. He saw it last week and loved it. When I brought up the point that the story has been described as 1-dimensional, I was told that the story didn't have to be.
I disagree with him and I'm still going to see the movie on Sunday, but I, too, wish there were better writing. Secondary to that, there hasn't been a strong space-opera-style science fiction movie in recent memory.