Do you remember the first time you saw The Matrix? I do. I was maybe twelve or thirteen and I had rented it behind my parent’s back – they wouldn’t let me see it because it was rated R – and watched it with a couple of friends. They had been telling me to see it for months just because it was so different. I remember seeing bullet time and thinking it was pretty much the coolest thing ever. Most of all, I remember liking it because it was so different from what I had seen before.
Now it’s been a decade and I feel pretty much the same way with Avatar. I went to go see it as a last minute thing with a few friends over break (some of whom where the same folks from way back when that got me to first watch The Matrix) and lucky for us, the local megaplex had put in an IMAX screen just for the occasion. When we regrouped about three hours later for some late night food, the conversations still hadn’t faded away – the acid-trip, day-glo bioluminescence in the jungle at night; the magnetic flying mountains; the fact that we forgot partway through that most of characters were 10 foot tall blue cat people. In fact, this was the movie that made me think that 3D Is a possibly viable medium.
Yes, I’ll be the first to admit that the characters were weak and the plot was Dances with Smurfs. Was it a perfect film? By no means. But Avatar reminds us that cinema is a visual medium, so much so that we’re willing to forgive these flaws… or at least I am. Is this the future of cinema? Is Avatar the next the Matrix or the next Jurassic Park, a film that changes the way we do things? Only time can tell, and I'm not qualified enough to predict the future, but I'm willing to lean that way.
