Sorry about the title – I needed to find an M word. It’s not a missed mindless movie, because we saw it in theatres. But it’s not the first time it came through theatres, so it wasn’t just a mindless movie. And I couldn’t think of an M word synonymous with second-chance. I settled on Momentous, because Avatar made the most money in box office history, and that’s momentous.
I’ve seen Avatar before, on my computer. And while I have a nice, large screen (24”), and usually only sit about two feet from it, it wasn’t in 3D, nor did it match the sheer size of a movie theatre.
We got there fairly early, thinking that many people would want to pay more money for a movie most of them had seen before. How foolish. There were maybe 25 people there for the show. The theatre itself didn’t bode well. There were seats missing their bottoms, there weren’t any magazines to read, and the seats weren’t tilted back enough – I felt hunched over for the entire movie.
Nevertheless, the experience was incredible. It was better than I remembered. More jokes, more action, more everything. I particularly liked the sound system that made my oesophagus vibrate. Awesome! The 3D was pretty good. Not great, though. There are still some kinks to work out. Things are blurry wrong. That’s about the best way I can describe it. I think the problem is that if there’s enough distance between what our eyes focus on and either the foreground or the background, whatever we don’t focus on will be doubled. As an experiment, hold up your index finger about a foot in front of your eyes, and focus on the wall behind your finger. You’ll see two (blurry) index fingers. Until they completely solve this problem, 3D will still feel wrong.
There are a few solutions – keep everything in focus, or have the foreground close enough to the background that it only appears a little blurry, but not doubled. Anyhow, they had a lot better 3D in the latter half of the movie, or maybe I just got sucked in/distracted by all the explosions that I didn’t notice as much as I had in the first half.
I paid attention to the music as well, and I may have to buy the score. Except for one specific theme (the “Hey, it’s a tragedy” theme) that annoyed me, it was pretty good. Well, the random pop song at the end was a little surprising, but I think it was their Oscar hopeful. Many films with only a score will have a song at the end by someone famous/almost famous in an attempt to win an Academy Award for best song, since choosing one from the score would be too hard (I guess). And then the score will be nominated for best soundtrack or something. I guess it’s a way to double-dip, as well as another blurb the movie company can put on their DVD. “Oscar Nominated” doesn’t imply which category. It could be sound editing (Here’s looking at you, Transformers), for all we know.
Of course, a lot of the hype for the movie was about its technical advancements. And it was a technical masterpiece. But that’s like saying Dikembe Mutombo should’ve been MVP of the NBA because he blocked the most shots. One aspect does not an Oscar make. The plot is fairly generic, and the message (while good) is simplistic. White People = Bad. Natives = Good. I could go off on a rant about both the correctness and incorrectness of that statement, but let’s just say there’s more to it than the movie conveyed.
Still, the movie is a marvel (hey look, an M word) to behold, especially in 3D, no matter the problems. It’s definitely a theatre movie, so I’m glad I got the chance to see it in the theatre. Not a momentous theatre, but the movie made up for it.
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