The Conical Glass: Avatar

Saturday, January 02, 2010

Avatar

When I was in high school, my class went on a field trip to the Detroit Science Center. One of the highlights was seeing an IMAX film about Mount St. Helens in the center's dome theater. At this time, there were only a handful of IMAX theaters in the country, all of them, as far as I know, in museums, so it was most likely everybody's first exposure to the amazing large-scale format. Much of the movie was filmed from a helicopter zooming around the landscape, showing where the volcano had laid waste to homes, roads and bridges. The immersive IMAX technology caused a couple of students to become motion-sick and they had to leave the theater. I was fine, though, and I found the experience exhilarating; I went on to see a bunch more IMAX movies, mostly the "educational" fare like "Mission to Mir," "Everest," and "To Fly!" I also saw James Cameron's "Ghosts of the Abyss," which was a 3D documentary about a scientific voyage to the wreck of the "Titanic."

So when Cameron's "Avatar" opened, of course I had to see it in IMAX 3D. There is only one true IMAX theater in the Bay Area showing the film, the one at the Metreon in San Francisco -- beware fake IMAX! -- and as a result, it's unbelievably popular. After one abortive attempt to see it on Thursday, we bought advance tickets to the Saturday morning (9:45 AM!) show. When we arrived at 9, the line was already around the block, and I noted that this and the next three showings were already sold out.

Unlike most made-for-IMAX documentaries, which tend to run about 45 minutes each, "Avatar" is over two and a half hours long. For those of you who have been living on a spaceship for the past month and haven't heard anything about it, the film is about a quasi-military expedition to a faraway moon called Pandora which contains an incredibly valuable mineral that is worth a fortune on Earth. Jake, a paraplegic ex-Marine, is recruited for the mission to replace his dead twin brother; Jake's DNA profile makes him a suitable candidate to take over his brother's avatar, a replica of the Pandorans that allow Earthlings to survive in the moon's atmosphere and blend in with the natives (physically, at least). You are placed into a metal box and your mind is linked to your avatar. Since human-Jake is unable to walk, he's eager to take his new, mobile body out for a spin.

During his first expedition to Pandora, Jake gets separated from the rest of his group after a run-in with some hostile wildlife, and he is rescued by a native named Neytiri. Despite the fact that Jake is supposed to be gathering intel on the Pandorans, he soon becomes infatuated with Neytiri and her people, the Na'vi. They live in harmony with nature, and after seeing the gorgeous landscape, who wouldn't? Pandora is a mind-blowingly beautiful creation, full of glowing trees, lush vegetation and magical jellyfish-like seeds that float through the air. The Na'vi travel by flying around on winged creatures called direhorses, which they bond with by means of their long braids. On Pandora, your hairstyle is not just a fashion choice, it's what literally connects you with the natural world.

After watching Jake and Neytiri run along vertiginous tree branches and swoop through the air on their direhorses in you-are-there 3D, I started feeling queasy. I looked at my watch -- we were only an hour and 15 minutes into the movie. I tried removing my glasses and closing my eyes, but it didn't work. I had to leave the theater and run to the restroom. While I didn't actually throw up, I came close. My skin literally felt clammy. I ran a damp paper towel over my face and leaned against the wall for about five minutes, wondering if I'd be able to go back in. The only other time I'd had this experience at a movie was a few months earlier at a screening of "D Tour," a documentary about a musician with kidney disease who needs to perform dialysis on himself while on the road with his band. There's a fairly graphic demonstration of how he does this, and it just about did me in. However, after a drink of water and a few minutes outside the theater, I went back and was able to get through the rest of the movie. I figured I'd try again and if I couldn't make it, I'd let Joe know I'd meet him afterward.

I'm not quite sure how I managed, because there is lots of flying in the second half of "Avatar," but I felt OK and got through it. The movie is absolutely spectacular, and I wouldn't want to dissuade anyone from seeing it in IMAX 3D, but if you think you might be at all susceptible to motion sickness, you may want to take your Dramamine first.

posted by 125records @ 5:53 PM

2 Comments:

At 12:41 PM, vallerose said…

But did you like the movie? Is it worth the hype. The avatar part reminds me of a SciFi book from the 1960's called The Ship Who Sang. Malformed babies with normal brains are put into spaceship hulls. They control the ships and interact with their human pilots.I'm old enough that we are now living in an age when Sci Fi from the 50s and 60s is coming true.
At 1:35 PM, 125records said…

It's definitely worth the hype -- it's an amazing film and the antithesis of a "wait 'til it's on DVD" movie, which is why there are so many people seeing it in IMAX -- but in retrospect I think I would have preferred to see it on a smaller screen. It is playing in digital 3D (non-IMAX) at Emery Bay and the Alameda Cineplex. Most people will be able to get through it just fine, but a Google search for avatar +motion sickness shows that I am not alone!