bedofbrass33 said:
Seems like all the technical folks with industry ties like you always say Avatar completely changed the whole movie industry.
However, I don't recall another movie like Avatar with the "photorealistic" animation. Also, if memory serves, you still rail against overly CGIed movies (which I completely agree with) so that tech obviously hasn't improved.
I'm dead serious and not trolling. How, exactly, did Avatar completely change the movie making landscape with tech no one else has used and a ripped off plot? How will four concurrently filmed movies with the same tech and probably more borrowed plot lines once again change the movie landscape?
For one... 3D. In 2009, there were hardly any movies in 3D.
Avatar came out at the end of that year, featuring quite possibly the best 3D audiences had ever seen (and the only movie I've ever felt actually benefitted from it), and suddenly every blockbuster and IMAX movie from then on had to be in 3D. It completely changed the movie-going landscape in that regard, just not for the better in my opinion. It started the whole 3D conversion craze, and basically ruined the blockbuster movie going experience for years to come in terms of the biggest/best theaters only ever showing blockbusters in 3D. And I still hate Cameron for that. We're only now finally started to see that trend dip.
That said, Cameron is attempting to pioneer glasses-free 3D tech for the sequels. I doubt he achieves it with the first two, but that's one way the final two sequels can be more advanced than the first two. By 2024, I could absolutely see this franchise being the first to introduce such tech. And if Cameron does manage to pull it off, that'll go a long way to making up for past transgressions in my book.
Further, it wasn't just 3D, but
digital 3D that he pioneered. Sure, digital projectors were in use before 2009, but they were few and far between. After
Avatar, theaters across the country began replacing their film projectors and switching to digital in mass. That change would have happened eventually, and much more slowly, but
Avatar essentially sped that process up by years. And honestly, I like digital projection far more than film projection anyway. I still prefer movies
shot on film, but digital projectors eliminated the scratchy, bouncy, unstableness of the image you'd often find in lesser theaters with film projection. So points for Cameron in that regard.
Beyond that, many of the advancements were under-the-hood, so to speak, from motion capture techniques to the effects themselves, just maybe lesser so with the latter. So when I say "changed the landscape," I don't mean just effects-wise, or in ways that Average Joe movie goer can necessarily quantify on the surface. Mainly, he changed the ways certain movies like this are filmed (being able to see rudimentary effects in real time, while filming, was a big one), and more importantly, changed the way all movies are shown and distributed. And I image he's going to do the same yet again.