There's been plenty of hype around Avatar, so I was both excited and a bit skeptical going in.
For those not familiar: Cross Vietnam with Endor, add a bit of Dinotopia and a dash of The New World... Create a conflict over natural resources between 8' tall, blue natives, and the slash and burn humans... Let James Cameron work on the thing for 15 years... Spend around $300 million... And you get Avatar.
Being a filmaker, I am constantly critiquing the shots, the music, the sound, the lens choice, the color grading, etc... 10 minutes in I forgot about all of that.
When I'm not critiquing the picture, I'm half-consiously figuring out how they shot the scene. Lighting placement, camera movements, etc... I usually have a pretty good idea of how things are set up. But, for the entire 240 minutes, I was asking myself "HOW THE HELL DID THEY PULL THAT OFF??"
The answer of course, is CGI. Did it look like CGI? Hell no.
Go see Avatar. The best part about watching 8' tall, blue, aliens being chased through the jungle by dinosaurs... Is that you believe every second of it.
Now I need to figure out if I'm the most excited about moviemaking I've ever been... Or if I need to rethink my career path, and leave it too the professionals.
