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iPad; but do iWant?

January 28, 2010 in Technology with 3 Comments
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So, that’s the long-awaited Apple tablet, then? Hmmm. I think I’ll file that under “Interesting, but …”

On one level you have to feel sorry for Apple – there’s so much frenzied anticipation ahead of their product launches that the details can’t help but leak in advance and then get multiplied dozens of times over by the hyperactive Chinese whispers building upon one another. By the time the product finally makes its début it’s hard not to be left with the overriding feelings of “is that it?” and find many of the features that were by-now expected to be missing. So let’s start with: it’s really just a large iPhone. Is that a game changer; is it going to be a huge success?

It’s hard to tell with Apple products – I always think that you really have no idea whether you’ll want an Apple product until you see it in the flesh. Products I’ve been very ‘meh’ about when I’ve seen pictures or videos of, I’ve ended up falling in love with then I actually see it in the store. My original PowerBook G4 for example, or the current iMac range. But sometimes it doesn’t work, and an example of that is the white iMac from about 4 years ago, that was too thick and plastic-looking and looked cheap and rather like a Fisher Price toy rather than an expensive piece of hardware. Or the current Mac Pro range, which are just too big, starkly industrial and domineering for any real domestic setting, no matter how stylish that aluminium casing looks.

No, you have to sit yourself in front of an Apple product to know whether you’ll fall in love with it or not. The new iPod nano might not look very different in photos, but you compare one of them side by side with its predecessor and lust instantly sets in. And of course, the iPhone is proof of this – on paper it’s just a phone with a touch screen, but spend five minutes in the company of someone with an iPhone and you’ll be as addicted to it as you would be if they had been feeding you crack cocaine.

So putting the “iWant” lust factor to one side for a moment, I’ll address the bigger concern I have with the iPad. (And no, it’s not the name – you can titter if you want and make smirking references to Tampons, but that will quickly pass. Remember how stupid the name “iPod” sounded for a music player all those years ago? And yet now people struggle not to say “iPod” when they talk about mobile music players, and the name has entered the word and the concept of “podcasting” to the English language. We smirked at iPod, but it worked; I’m betting the same will be true of iPad.)

Nor is the big problem any teething problem about things such as data plans, product availability, or how robust it will be (will the screen scratch easily? What if you drop it? Will it bend if you’re carrying it in a bad? What sort of case will you need for it to protect it from all these hazards? Will a case bulk it up so much that it’s no different to carry around than a netbook or small laptop?)

No, the biggest problem with the iPad is: I’m not really sure what it’s for.

It’s been a question that’s been nagging at me for the past year or so, as speculation mounted and Apple gradually got closer to confirming that they were producing a tablet computer. I never saw the point of tablets when Microsoft tried to tout them as the Next Big Thing either, and while those were heavy, ugly, ill-conceived things, I still don’t “get” them today even with the beautiful, shiny gloss of an Apple design added to the mix. What’s it for?

I think that’s what I expected – no, needed – Apple to provide an answer to in this product launch. Give me a reason to want one, to think this is will be an inevitable, invaluable part of my life. Teach me, open my eyes, show me what I’ve been missing.

Big ask? Certainly. But nothing Apple hasn’t done before. It was crystal clear what the iPod was for the minute it was launched – a music player. That it’s grown so much bigger in the intervening years doesn’t change the fact that it’s still basically a music player. That’s a basic function that we can understand, see the need for, and which then directly taps into the “iNeed therefore iGet” circuit in our consumer brain.

Similarly the iPhone for all its functionality can still be boiled down to “it’s a phone. With an iPod!” That was the equation that led to my rationalising the expenditure (I needed to replace an antique mobile phone and an even older iPod, therefore the iPhone was an obvious purchase.) Looking further afield, the business case for a laptop is also just as evident: you need to take your computer with you and not just leave it at the office, hence the explosion in the laptop market.

But a tablet? What does it offer that my current set-up doesn’t? If I’m at home or the office, won’t I use my desktop computer? If I’m on the move won’t I stick with the fully-featured laptop rather than the cut down features of the iPad? Or if I can use a limited feature set, just stick with an iPhone?

I simply can’t see the point of getting one right now. It might fit into the gap between iPhone and laptop very neatly, but is there actually a user/market need in that tiny sliver? I’d expected Apple to sell me the concept by, say, making the iPad the de facto book reader for people on the move – the saviour of the book, magazine and newspaper, and the slayer of the Kindle and the Sony e-Reader just Apple brushed aside Sony Walkman and “ordinary” mobile phones in the past. Instead the launch seemed to oddly sideline the e-book aspect: yes it’s there but it’s no a core reason to buy the iPad. If anything, it looks as though it is the gaming aspect that will rise to become the main selling point of the iPad, and the problem there is that I’m really not much a gamer. At all. So I just don’t see why I would want one of these, even if I do end up walking into an Apple Store in a few months time and falling in lust-at-first-sight with one of these.

One undoubted triumph however is the pricing – just $499 for the entry level model? Even with an aggressively anti-UK conversation rate that should make it no more than £450, which for something so much bigger than the entry-level, lower-spec iPhone is really amazingly good value. In fact – will it undermine sales of the iPhone? Is the iPhone due a pricing revision?

But of course this is just iPad 1.0. The first version of the iPhone was rather uninspiring too, and critics predicted it would be a major failure. Now it’s merrily on its way to taking over the world (okay, I exaggerate. A little.) The iPad may well do the same, especially if it builds a comparable ecosystem of App Stores around it, and in two years time the laptop market might be in freefall as the iPad takes over and we’re all carrying one around with us.

That’s especially when and if it gains some of the features attributed to it by the overcranked pre-launch gossip – things like cameras for video conferencing, which seems so obvious a use for a tablet of this kind that its omission does seem rather odd. But maybe Apple like stocking up all this feverish speculation so that they can capture all the fanboy expectations, and then take them away and package them into the v2.0 user requirements speculation.

In which case, 12 months from now could prove to be a far more interesting and significant moment in the history of tablet computing. But 27 January 2010? Not so much. I’m just not that sold on it, not yet. Even if I’m seen salivating at the Apple Store in months to come, I’m going to need a lot of convincing before iLust turns into iPay.

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Writing Dr Who: final thoughts

January 17, 2010 in Television, writing with Leave a Comment
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Just some quick final thoughts on Doctor Who – or more specifically, some final thoughts on the Russell T Davies era of the show.

The final chapter

Attentive readers of this blog may remember a post (from 16 months ago! Yeesh) in which I wrote about and praised a book called “The Writer’s Tale” written through a series of email and text exchanges between Davies and journalist Benjamin Cook over the course of a year, and giving an insight not only into the Doctor Who show itself (it’s sort of a “Doctor Who annual for grown-ups” in that regard) but also into the mechanics of making a 21st century television show and – best of all as far as I’m concerned – a really honest, uncensored look into the art and craft and science of writing.

It’s a brilliant book, and last week it got even better with the publication of the paperback version, “The Writer’s Tale – The Final Chapter“, which added an entire second year’s worth of material to make it as much a follow-up/sequel as just a “paperback edition”. Where the first book covered the writing of the show’s fourth series, this new edition takes us through the writing of the specials – right through to the final words Davies writes for David Tennant’s Doctor – and also how the show handled breaking the news of Tennant’s departure and the new Doctor’s unveiling. In a nice post-modern touch the book even follows the authors as they promote the first edition of the book and the reactions to it, and the effect that it has on the writing of this edition and of the show.

It really is terrific stuff, I can’t recommend it highly enough for anyone interested in Doctor Who, writing, or television. If nothing else, you’ll simply enjoy the company of Davies and Cook’s often witty, searingly honest, and always insightful repartee over the course of two years.

If nothing else can persuade you, how about the following brief teasers:

  • Want to share the exact moment, read the very email, where Davies worked out exactly how the Doctor would die?
  • Want to know who nudged and cajoled Davies into the spectacular return of Gallifrey, even as budget concerns threatened to result in the axing of an entire special?
  • Wondered who The Woman played by Claire Bloom was in “The End of Time”? There’s a definitive answer.
  • And how about the postscript casually mentioning that new boy Matt Smith had just done to dinner at Steven Moffat’s (Davies’ replacement) house with Peter Davison and David Tennant? How Dr Who fandom didn’t implode at that moment is still a mystery.

A brilliant book, please do buy it.

A final review

The problem with reading a book like “The Writer’s Take – The Final Chapter” is that you find out, understand and empathise with what the writer went through creating something like “The End of Time.” It then becomes very hard to critique the finished work without feeling harsh, that you’re wounding someone who has sweated blood producing the script that you’re casually throwing barbs at. I wasn’t exactly kind to Part 1 of “The End of Time” in my review and I now feel bad about it, even if I meant every word of it and was honestly trying not to be harsh. At least I can be happy that I was positive about Part 2.

The trouble is, after reading in the book how the script evolved and how it ended up the way it did, it’s impossible not to think better of it. You get sucked in, you take a swig of the Kool-Aid, and objectivity gets kicked into touch. You can see how successful writers (and CEOs and politicians) quickly get surrounded by yes-men – not because everyone’s sucking up to the boss, but because once you’re on the inside and see what’s gone into this sort of endeavour it’s hard to stay one step removed and say “No! That’s a bad idea. Cut that!” You get swept along and everything in the garden is rose-tinted.

But even before I read the new parts of the paperback edition of the book, I’d started to realise that Russell T Davies scripts need more than one viewing – especially Doctor Who ones. The first viewing comes with all sorts of expectations, packed with “oh, he shouldn’t have done it that way” moments. Doctor Who fans are too involved with the show just to sit back and be uncritical so it’s hard to just enjoy the episode without judging it and wanting it to be better.

The thing is, when you can go back some time afterwards and just watch an episode without all the hype and expectations, you suddenly realise just how good it was. Case in point was “Partners in Crime”, the first episode of season 4, which was burdened at the time by being the first of a new season and the start of Catherine Tate’s stint as a companion (a controversial move at the time, now universally lauded as a masterstroke and Tate as Best! Companion! Ever!) Against that the alien threat was a daft, throw-away CGI collection of “fat monsters”.

We watched this episode as a way of coming down from “The End of Time”, just a bit of light relief that we could talk through. Except we didn’t: we ended up really watching and enjoying it. I’d remembered certain bits I’d liked: the early ‘farce’ scenes where the Doctor and Donna keep missing each other; their first meeting done in superb mime through office windows; the stunt sequences hanging from a window cleaner’s platform off a tall office block. But the odd thing was that all the things I thought I hadn’t liked so much suddenly seemed so much better, from Sarah Lancaster’s deliciously performed Supernanny villain to the cheerful little CGI Adipose blobs. Dammit, I was even moved to wave at the little critters by the end. I was totally sold on it.

And then mid-week I caught most of the reshowing of “The End of Time” Part 1 on BBC3 one evening. I hadn’t intended to watch, but I did, mesmerised by how well the show had been put together, the terrific John Simm doing a Heath Ledger Joker-inspired villain, and of course David Tennant being generally magnificent, dammit. Somehow the problems with the episode seemed far less important than the triumphs.

I suspect that Russell T Davies’ episodes of Doctor Who are the kind of productions that get better with age and repeated viewings. Maybe that’s just a different way of drinking the Kool-Aid, but it’s suddenly made me think how wonderful it is to have the DVDs of a show that does get better each time you watch, rather than some of the flashy US shows (like CSI for example) which are fantastic when you watch them but which have exactly zero re-watch value.

All at once I’m suddenly thinking that it’s not the end of the Tennant era at all: just the start of the opportunity to go back and watch the Tenth Doctor properly as a completed piece of work at last.

Finally finally

Oh, and for some reason, having been unconvinced and a little anxious about the show post-Tennant, I suddenly find that I’m also completely optimistic about the new series coming up in the Spring, and about Matt Smith. Whether it’s seeing him at “The End of Time”, or the new season trailer shown on BBC TV, or the publicity shots, or reading the first interviews and articles about the new era I’m not sure: all I know is, I’m suddenly convinced that the 2010 Doctor is going to be every bit as good as his predecessor. (Even – whisper it gently – better?) I’m genuinely excited about it.

How fickle am I? The minute Tennant and Davies walk out and I’m lauding Smith and Moffat. That’s showbiz.

Blu-ray: moving upscale

January 17, 2010 in DVDs, Technology with Leave a Comment
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So I finally took the plunge into high definition this week, some eighteen months after I got a new TV that proclaimed itself “HD-ready!” It might have been; I wasn’t.

In truth I’ve been rather unconvinced about the whole high def thing. I still marvel at how incredible the DVD quality is let alone high-def, and when I’ve seen demos of high def in stores I’ve been wholly underwhelmed, thinking that they looked not really much better than upscaled DVDs to me. Besides, the last thing I need is another excuse to go out and buy a whole lot more shiny media discs. However, I was starting to notice that the DVDs were beginning to get shunted to one side by the ever-expanding racks of Blu-rays at HMV and that increasingly the studios were holding back their best special features for the high def discs, and I was starting to feel a little left out at not having the choice of being able to buy whichever I wanted.

Also, my old DVD player (£29 from Amazon.co.uk years ago, if I recall correctly) is showing its age and tiring – sometimes quite literally powering off in the middle of a film – and so it was time to buy a new player. Since I wanted one that would do the best upscaling job of standard definition DVDs as possible, I figured that a Blu-ray player should be the expert in producing the finest HD-quality output. The Blu-ray facility was almost a postscript.

Naturally, however, once there was the option to try Blu-ray discs, it had to be tried at least once – it would be impolite not to. And I figured I’d start at the absolute top, with Pixar’s Monsters Inc.: if Blu-ray couldn’t convince me with a CGI cartoon from the very best studio then there really was no hope for it. Plus it’s one of my all-time favourite films.

Somewhat to my embarrassment, therefore, I have to report back and admit that I could indeed tell the difference between upscaled DVDs and Blu-ray. Or to put it more emphatically: Monsters Inc. on Blu-ray left me totally stunned. It was quite astonishing to see a film that looked brilliant on DVD suddenly look so many times better, to the point that there was so much more detail that it made going back to the original DVD suddenly feel like watching the film through a thick sheet of plastic. I truly hadn’t expected it to be so extraordinary.

Screen caps from Pixar Talk blog

Of course, the advantages of high definition depend very much upon the source material: I also picked up (as part of an HMV offer) the Blu-ray of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and while some parts of it were similarly sharp and vivid (the African savannah; some of the model work; inside the Jupiter mission spaceship, and the “guest suite” at the end) other parts just looked really quite ordinary. Plus there was a noticeable picture judder on static shots: it was on the DVD as well and hence almost certainly on the master print caused by the motion of the film through the cameras of that era, but it particularly undermines the point of having a high def copy.

So I guess the moral of the story is: check the reviews more carefully than you would normally have done for DVDs, because while it’s spectacular when it works, sometimes the Blu-ray is just more expensive for little return. But for the right film, it’s brilliant – I’m thinking Avatar will be perfect in Blu-ray, in exactly the way that it wasn’t in 3D.

Oh, and the DVD upscaling’s very good too, by the way.

December film reviews

January 17, 2010 in Films with Leave a Comment
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Christmas is a great time for watching DVDs as there’s so little on TV. (I’m not kidding – save for a few well-publicised specials, the Xmas schedule is filled with light variety that doesn’t interest me, and films that I’ve already seen.)

So here, very briefly, are some capsule reviews of recently-watched DVDs in order of viewing and oddly in reverse order of rating:

Next

The FBI forcibly enlist the services of a man who can see several minutes into the future, to face the threat of nuclear terrorism. Starring Nicolas Cage.

A film with an interesting premise (courtesy of Philip K Dick) let down by some very poor writing. The film lurches from the quirky (Cage as magician) to low key to romcom to all-action adventure film without really getting a grip. The pace is jerky with some scenes really dragging, so much so that even at 92 minutes this feels overlong – although at least it does give us some quality time against the spectacular backdrop of the Grand Canyon. Moreover the characters are totally non-formed, with the honourable exception of Jessica Biel as the romantic interest. Julianne Moore, the FBI and the terrorists are horribly malformed, while Cage as usual is his blank self, no different from being bored in his act to fleeing the FBI to meeting the love of his life. The plot development is all over the place too, with Biel suddenly falling into bed with the man she’s been wary of, Moore carelessly allowing her prisoner to escape after spending half the film tying to catch him. But the biggest problem is that the film uses it’s “shock moment/rewind” several times too often, and then throws in the ultimate “it was all a dream” twist to leave the film seemingly in search if a quick sequel that never materialised. While the precog scenes start to go off the rails toward the end (the “splitting into multiple selves” might look flashy on film, but it’s confusing and misleading), there are several excellent scenes that almost make the movie – the chase in the Vegas casino and the shootout in the shipyard in particular, while the avalanche sequence is eye-catching but succumbs to the usual overbaked CGI FX along the way. All in all, a disappointing mishmash that has a few moments but ultimately disappoints.

Rating * and a half out of five

Valkyrie

The true story of the 1944 attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler by a group of his own senior officers. Starring Tom Cruise.

A handsomely mounted production with great historical authenticity and impeccable acting from a British all-star cast – and, yes, from Tom Cruise as well – this film is very much a tale of two halves. The first, frankly, drags: having to set up the characters and plot for one thing, but also the basic problem of revolving around an assassination attempt that we all know fails. Added to that the film is shot in a seriously low-key realist way and the net effect (boosted by the all-Brit cast) makes it feel like a BBC Play for Today. There’s a lack of tension, and also a lack of atmosphere – it doesn’t feel like a Nazi regime but could be almost anywhere; there’s no sense of war or tyranny or evil people doing evil things, just a lot of bureaucrats doing paperwork. Which might be spot-on, but it does not a good film make. One thing that isn’t a factor is the “accents” debate – it doesn’t need to be in German and Cruise’s American accent amidst all the Brits is not a problem.

Then the assassination attempt happens, surprisingly early in the running time, and the second half kicks into high gear and becomes fascinating as it tells the far lesser-known tale of how the plotters tried to follow through, organise the military and take over – and how it all unravels, and the consequences. As a largely untold story, this is gripping and surprising. There are some brilliant touches, and the decision to keep the Wolf’s Lair incommunicado and Hitler unseen for the remainder of the film leaves you wondering – just a little – whether your knowledge of history is wrong and Hitler really might be dead after the dramatic and sudden bomb blast scene. It’s a nice touch and really helps the film fly, so that by the end of the film you’re interested in knowing what happens to the characters you’ve been watching, and really understand the film’s core message – that not all WW2 Germans were Nazis and some had honour and tried their best to save Germany from itself (although surely this is not as breakthrough a revelation as the extras try and make it?) A worthy, laudable aim for a worthy, laudable film, just a shame that the first half lets the show down: a more adventurous, less-linear approach to the storytelling rather than the flat, plain one actually followed here might have worked wonders.

Rating *** out of five

Doghouse

A lads’ outing to the countryside goes horrifically wrong in a zombiefied battle of the sexes.

Danny Dyer; Noel Clarke; zombies. Really, the film writes itself from there and it’s exactly what you’d expect. It’s a big, laddish, sweary, gory, 18-certificate version of Shaun of the Undead, with none of that romcom’s “rom” aspect – or any of its subtlety. Everything’s big and loud and obvious, and it doesn’t hesitate to beat you over the head with anything it thinks might be getting past you. Which is not to say that there isn’t some good fun to be had and more than a few laugh out loud moments along the way, it’s just that after a good slow build-up, once the action gets going it does rather stay at one level and leave itself no where to go; it frankly overstays its welcome by a good 20 minutes, which is a shame. It’s also hard not to find the film misogynistic – although in truth it pokes at least a few sharp sticks at men, too, and has special fun with Danny Dyer’s traditional blokey image. Its main strength is in the relationships between the group and some good, charismatic performances from all concerned (the lead duo, Stephen Graham and Lee Ingleby in particular), and in the early moments which offer a very familiar and natural world of male friendship down the pub that wins many a smile of recognition.

Rating ** out of five

Untraceable

A pretty decent thriller, with undeniable tension that grips right through to the end. On the plus side we have a strong central performance from Diane Lane as FBI Agent Marsh, and there’s a determination not to deliver the rote stuff for this kind of film, so that in the end the heroine doesn’t need saving – she’s able to save herself. The techie stuff is handled convincingly for once and the direction has some nice touches; although strongly stealing from the likes of Silence of the Lambs and especially the Saw films, the film manages to stay just on the right side of the exploitation line and hence its “you are accomplices for watching” line is not lost in hypocrisy. Ultimately though, apart from its central gimmick the film comes off as surprisingly unoriginal, the kind of thing that’s been done many times since Se7en, and you just know that Marsh is going to end up in the killer’s clutches as the rain pours down, thunder crashes and lightning floods into the dimly lit sets. There’s a desperate lack of even the slightest leavening humour, even with Colin Hanks in the cast as Marsh’s sidekick, and the one-note gloom and borderline ponderous tone is something we’ve seen many, many times before. In the end it’s just a little too sub-Criminal Minds to make a lasting impression.

Rating ** and a half out of five

District 9

Refugee aliens are set up in a slum township in South Africa. Starring Sharlto Copley as a hapless immigration officer whose life takes an unexpected turn.

The problem with films that have become word-of-mouth hits is that the hype raises expectations and the reality turns out to be disappointing. Well if anything, all the hype in the world didn’t do District 9 justice: a fascinating film with so many contrasts and so much fresh creativity that it blasts the tired sequels and franchises out of the water. How they achieved this on a “limited” budget is astonishing, because rarely have CGI aliens proved so real or had such emotional depth and character. The setting of South African slums is an exciting, visceral, rarely experienced location; the comparison with racism and apartheid is impossible to miss but handled deftly and not hammered unduly; the alien ship might be reminiscent of Independence Day but the aliens (starving, dying, their technology inert) couldn’t be further from that bombast. Time and again, the film takes genre inspiration and convention (there’s Alien Nation, Enemy Mine, The Fly, Aliens and more), uses it and transforms it into something totally fresh and original. There are plenty of strikingly original and eye catching directorial touches, too. Best of all, while the film starts as ‘found footage’ evoking the likes of Blair Witch and Cloverfield, it doesn’t allow itself to be hidebound by that conceit and soon expands into more cinematic footage, but so artfully and smoothly that it never jars or undermines the documentary feel of the early stages. And that early documentary footage is genius, as it allows the lead actor – South African ‘unknown’ Sharlto Copley – to talk directly to camera and build huge rapport with the audience which propels us through the rest of the film. Copley’s performance is brilliant, starting off as something out of “The Office” but ending up a truly heroic and tragic figure by the end when he stares at the camera with a deeply unnerving gaze. In the end this is a film that transcends genre and adds military warfare, conspiracy and politics plus a dash of unlikely romance and comedy to the expected science fiction themes. One of the best, and most original films of 2009 – up there with “Moon”.

Rating: **** out of 5

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Avatar: something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue

January 13, 2010 in Films with Leave a Comment
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When I first heard about Avatar, I wasn’t sure I particularly wanted to see it. But I was very sure that it was going to be a disaster – a gazillion-dollar art house personal project from James “King of the World” Cameron that had the critics salivating in their eagerness to bring it down. Poor thing, it didn’t have a chance: it was clearly going to be the biggest disaster this side of Heaven’s Gate. Getting dubbed “Dances with Smurfs” or – my favourite – “Smurfahontas” was not a good sign.

Flash forward to the first weeks of 2010 and of course Avatar has become the second highest grossing movie of all time – topped only by its sibling, Cameron’s Titanic, and it’s surely only a matter of weeks before the top spot falls as well. Admittedly, some of its success in the “gross” standings comes down to the higher ticket prices today and especially the 3D premium, but then again the higher prices make it all the more remarkable that it’s pulling in the raw numbers that it is.

So that puts me firmly in my place and shows what little I know; at least this time around I can say I’m in the good company of Almost Everyone In The World. But Cameron proved us all wrong. I saw the film today, and – I liked it. Yep, thoroughly good film, good entertainment – but not one that’s going to get on my Best Films Of All Time list however much it grosses. And I’m not an anti-Cameron snob: I love the first Terminator films, The Abyss, Aliens – and, yes, I really loved Titanic as well. But Avatar strikes me as just a “good” film, and one I can’t really get hugely excited about.

That it’s a gamechanger in terms of movies is not in question. It’s the first time it’s been possible to watch a CGI-generated world and characters and totally forget that it is just CGI. The Na’vi characters seem real and thoroughly rounded, beautifully acted, never once lapsing into the blank thousand yard stare that CGI actors have in the past in outings such as Polar Express. It’s extraordinary just how much Sigourney Weaver’s avatar looks like … Well, like Sigourney Weaver.

It would be easy to say, then, that it’s “fabulous film, shame about the script”. But I’m not going to argue that the film succeeds despite its script being stereotyped and laden with clichés and completely flat characters: instead, I believe that the film’s success is precisely because of these faults, and that if Cameron had done anything different then the film wouldn’t have made anything like the money that it has.

Think what he’s smuggled through into a mass market here: a far more pure fantasy film than anything we’ve ever seen before. Science fiction films of the past have been little more than redesigned westerns, horror and war movies; The Lord of the RIngs is probably the biggest fantasy film before Avatar, and Peter Jackson got away with it by downplaying the fantasy and cloaking it in a down-to-earth, gritty, earthy realism at all times. We give Harry Potter a free pass because, well, it’s just a children’s movie. But Avatar makes no such compromises: every film looks like the cover art of the most way-out fantasy novel in the cult stores, the kind of thing that would have mainstream readers and viewers running for the hills. But not this time.

That’s because Cameron’s making it easy for everyone. Every element of the script is one you’ve seen before: the exploitation of the indigenous is straight out of Dances with Wolves, Pochahontas and Last Samurai; the holistic environmentalist message is very much of the moment; and then there are some very thudding swipes at US foreign policy, with references to terrorists and the irredeemable, two-dimensional Earth commander’s sneering at the native people’s deities as he prepares to shock and awe them into submission. There’s no mistaking the points being made, and the fact that mainstream America has been going with it and presumably cheering as the Earth military hardware is laid into by a bunch of primitives is remarkable. If a viewer comes away thinking “wow, this was thought-provoking, never considered that before” then – well, it’s good that it’s got them thinking about some of the complexities. But really, where the heck have their brains been for the last couple of decades? This is Modern Life 101 stuff for anyone paying attention.

Contributing to the sense of familiarity of the film are the creature designs (which all have clear cousins to Earth creatures such as jackals, rhinos, birds of prey, horses etc. so that you don’t have to start believing in dragons to get through it) and the overall structure of the film, which is remarkably similar to Cameron’s Titanic: for all the great strides he’s made in film making technology, as a script writer he’s barely moved from 1997. Just as Kate and Leo spent two thirds of Titanic strolling round the ship and falling in love despite being from two different worlds, so Avatar allows its lead characters most of the movie to show us around Pandora and fall in love despite being from different worlds. Then in both cases the big threat kicks in – iceberg in one, military assault in the other. But again, this structural familiarity gives the audience the comfort and security to go with the fantasy as a whole and indulge themselves in the world laid out before them: there be no dragons here, unless you happen to be the type of person who likes that sort of thing already.

Ultimately, total immersion is what this film is about. In the film, the lead character inhabits an avatar (surrogate body) that allows him to enter a new, alien world; and Cameron is endeavouring to provide the same sensation to the audience through the medium of this film. By the time Avatar is over, you too would be forgiven for being confused as to what is real and what is imaginary such is the strong sense of having lived in this completely unreal world for the last two and three quarter hours. That’s always been the power of movies at their best, and it works here perfectly. Viewed in this way, the wooden characters aren’t so much a mistake as intentional, blank archetypes for us to inhabit as our own avatars and for us to project ourselves into.

That’s why 3D is so important for Avatar – 3D is the ultimate in “immersive” film making. Now, I’ve not seen the new 3D system in the cinema before this, so I’ve held my tongue and not joined in the naysayers and doubters until I had some first hand empirical evidence. And now I have, I can say with my hand on heart – I really don’t like it. In fact, I loathed it.

Oh, it’s effective enough in producing 3D effects – I gasped with some of the effects, and found myself marvelling at some of the more subtle uses it was put too. It didn’t make my eyes go too funny or give me a headache (although plenty of people were complaining about just that as we filed out.) No, my complaint on it is on two fronts: firstly that it kept jarring me out of the film to jump or go “ooooh, look at that”; but mostly that it left the film looking washed out and fuzzy. Halfway through I found myself thinking, “I can’t wait to get this on Blu-ray when I can watch it properly” – and this was backed up when I saw a clip of the film on TV in 2D format just before writing this blog post, and I thought instinctively “Wow, that looks gorgeous! … pity it didn’t in the cinema.” So, a big “no thanks” on the 3D front, then, and I have to say that my ambivalence to it did affect my appreciation of the film.

But coming full circle back to my first thoughts: I did like it. It’s sweeping, mythic, action-packed, and looks amazing (3D permitting). I can absolutely believe that a sizeable number of kids will see this today and have their minds blown, and look back on Avatar in years to come as the Movie That Changed Everything in much the same way that my generation had Star Wars. That was a pretty silly movie, too, when you look back at it – but it was our silly movie. We lived in that universe, and a new generation of kids will want to live on Pandora in exactly the same way – and I can’t blame them.

Compared with a lot of the unadventurous, formulaic, franchise-derivative stuff being churned out by movie studios, Avatar deserves every bit of its success. But I’ll get back to you with a more definitive report of my own feelings about it in due course when it’s sunk in … and when I get to see it again properly, without that annoyingly fuzzy 3D nonsense.

Until then you’ll have to settle for “good”, a solid 3-star film with 5-stars for the effects.

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