The Martyrs of Uncanny Valley

There is a small film due to be released next week in theaters worldwide, and needless to say, I have been keeping a very close eye on its development. That film, if you are not aware of it already is James Cameron's Avatar- his first fiction feature film since Titanic. Cameron had been in the previous years developing a 3d camera system along with Vince Pace which could do a few things that no other system in the world could do. 3d films, up until recently has been mostly been used either in animated feature films, or been used in gimmicky horror or adventure films. The whole perception of 3d has been the age old 'boo! coming at you' routine, where either the monster, or shrapnel, or hero, or most recently a ping pong ball in monsters vs aliens. What 3d cinemas actually lacked was utilization of 3d space, with actual focusing , in shot, while being rendered in 3d. The variable depth of field , in any environment was woefully underused , up until now that is. Another amazing thing that the Pace-Cameron Fusion camera does is to give a real time, live view of the end picture. Since most of Avatar is motion captured, when Cameron was on the sound stage giving orders to his actors, he could (and did) hold on to a device, which is basically a big hand held screen. This screen acts as a virtual camera giving Cameron the view from that point , in real time, and it does this without even showing the actors,but shows him the end picture, i.e, in this case, the animals of Pandora, the 9 feet tall Na vi. Lastly the film's aliens and Pandora's creatures have been rendered to such a photo realistic degree that my words fall short.





Cameron is infamous as a director, being known to be a heartless slave driver, and has what can only be termed as a hate hate relationship with the media. Over and over again, his films have been lambasted before their release as a stupid mistake(this happened before the release of Aliens, The Abyss, T2(which was considered ridiculous for having a 100 million budget) and most prominently Titanic, which was dubbed as the costliest mistake of Hollywood) and time and again he has proved his detractors wrong. The negative press seems to be working full time against Avatar, along with the mounting pressure of expectations that the film will break even the record of Titanic, which to this day holds the highest box office gross in history- 1.8 billion Usd. The closest anyone ever came to that was Lord of the Rings : The Return of the King, which still fell a good 750 million usd short. I do believe that Avatar wont be able to come close to the box office of Titanic, because lets face it, thematically its not as universal as his previous film. Titanic got such a massive income because teenage girls went a dozen times to see the film. That , i doubt will happen in the case of Avatar, their hormone addled brains are busy with the inaneness that is Twilight, and science fiction action adventure might just be something they are entirely willing to miss. As I mentioned earlier, the negative publicity has been for lack of a better word, substantial. Articles, entirely based on hearsay, emailed from random people who apparently saw advanced screenings when no such screenings were even done have been posted on a lot of fan sites. Entire posts have been dedicated to deconstructing the effects work and dubbing it as 'no improvement over Jurassic Park'. I was quite surprised to see so much hate for a film people haven't even seen, and I could not fathom the reasons behind it.Most of my friends have been aware of this film,and everyone who has seen the trailers, i.e , everyone I know of has has had the jaw-hitting-the-floor reaction, which is entirely justified considering the spectacular work done. While thinking about the inexplicable hatred towards Avatar, I remembered an article I had read many years ago, and that, I believe is the main driving force behind it all- The Uncanny Valley.





Very simply put, we humans subconsciously would reject anything that approaches too near to human likeness.This theory was first suggested in 1906 and has been significantly modified since then. In the world of cinema at least there has been quite a few examples of films which has faced weak box office collections, bad reviews and general comments about how the FX / motion capture was just too bad. The greatest example I can think of is Final Fantasy : The Spirits Within. Granted, the film was quite different from the hugely popular game franchise it was adapted from, and that obviously contributed to its bad box office, but the motion capture, the effects was far ahead of what everyone else was doing,but it was such a huge flop that the producers Square Enix had to sell their own company to recover the cost. Roger Ebert at that time was one of the few critics who gave the film a good review, and mentioned Uncanny Valley as the possible prime suspect for its abysmal results. Other films, such as Polar Express had better results, but considering its subject matter, it was pretty insulated from becoming a flop. The last movie to face such unfair criticism was , my personal favorite of the lot- Beowulf. A wonderfully dark reinterpretation of the otherwise straightforward epic poem, Beowulf had it all. Amazing motion capture, great action, and one hell of a film directed by Robert Zemeckis. But still it performed way below expectations. As a matter of fact, it didnt even recover two thirds of its entire budget. Anyway, whether you believe in Uncanny Valley or not is not the subject matter of my rant. Nowadays entire movies are made or destroyed on word of mouth, something which Twilight has proven. Even before a single shot of the film was released, the film was a guaranteed hit. The internet has become a rallying point to either make or break a film. Some of the fan websites have a huge influence on how many people see the film, and in Avatar's case, Cameron seems to have pissed off quite a few of the internet bigwigs. Needless to say, their websites have gone full steam in their rant about just how crappy Avatar is. I am not going to try and make any points about how good or bad Avatar will be, but I will leave you with a few screenshots from Avatar, and you can decide for yourself. As for me, December 18th, first day first show , at AerenR Imax, I am there with my 3d glasses on. If you plan on watching it, please do see it in 3d and in IMAX if possible. One humble request to James Cameron though, please, PLEASE make Battle Angel Alita before you touch any other project. If there ever were a graphic novel and director destined to be coupled together, then its you two.
P.S.- See the photos in its full HD resolution. Click on the thumbnails to see them in hi res.