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One of this year’s most hyped movies was hard to resist, and resist I did only to try and avoid completely full cinemas which annoy me, but finally tonight I succumbed to the treat that is Avatar in 3D.

I have always held Cameron in the highest regard for his vivid imagination and storytelling genius, if The Terminator (1984) wasn’t enough to concrete his reputation for incredible epic battles, then Aliens (1986) should have done it. I was also quite a fan of the less successful Abyss (1989) and so my trepidation to watch was also about a build up of disappointment avoidance. Interestingly as I write this a story broke about his reaction to a fan who tried to get his autograph which sort of blew up a bit, but that is another story that I don’t think we are seeing in 3D. But I truly hate the anticipation that is usually followed by anti-climax when there is too much hyperbole surrounding a film.

I must say that now though that I thoroughly enjoyed it. There were only a few moments of bad narrative that for some reason just have to occur in every Hollywood movie these days, you know the love scene and the big showdown, but they didn’t spoil it too much at all.

What is blindingly obvious is the anti-capitalist spin and message or parallel the director is trying to draw between today’s modern way of life and our disrespect for mother Earth,  as the people of Pandora have an affinity to the planet they live on.

Called the indigenous people of the land, the Na’vi, are all part of a network of connectivity through the living things they share their world with, and of course our money hungry nature has found a naturally occurring mineral on this land that we have to suck the life out of because of its infinite value back on Earth. 20 Million dollars a kilo in fact. It’s genocide for the Na’vi if we have our way, and risk that is without consequence for us as our super-troops simply see the Na’vi as a nuisance to be rid of in the way of mining ‘unobtanium’ – a terrible name they have given the compound they wish to mine which is underneath ‘Hometree’, another terrible noun created for the home of the Na’vi and of course the central location of unobtanium. Only Tolkien can create proper imaginary nouns in my mind.

This Na’vi conectivity is brought home again as our hero come anti-hero is taught the native language and he is taught to ‘see you’. A fascinating homage and clever link to the narrative and  technology of 3D as we really ‘see’ the characters.

That aside, what was really impressive was the visual this movie presents. That sounds obvious now with so much publicity – even if you don’t follow movies fanatically like I do, it would be hard to ignore or miss the PR tirade of this movie or indeed the other big Hollywood film for Christmas ‘Sherlock Holmes’.

But it really does impress, on your nose that is, and you look like this which is never really a look that I can rock in any way. Seriously, these are some seriously heavy 3D glasses! I recently took some kiddies off to the movies in 3D to see Monsters vs Aliens and was really impressed by the lightweight clear 3D goggles. Similarly so with The Final Destination 3D although the tiddly winks were left behind for this one.

Wow, that is some seriously weird looking kit you have there. Spielberg, Cameron and Jackson with spiffy looking cameras.

Great I thought, those ugly paper things of the past with a blue lens and a red lens are gone, but I am afraid not people, Avatar 3D requires you to wear these beauties and I may be precious but I did come out of the cinema with a big red welt on top of my nose where the plastic of these hideous things sat for 2 hours and 30mins, and I really could have done without it.

Whinge over, I really think the welt was worth it as the 3D was simply brilliant. While ‘Monsters vs Aliens’ and ‘The Final Destination’ used the 3D to effect where things popped out of the screen etc, Avatar uses this technology, new technology I might even go so far as to say, to a completely different effect. There are no jolting moments when huge guns or knives pop out of the screen, but instead an incredible depth of field is created where you can really see the layers of the film and you can literally feel how a person may be positioned behind someone else, or the foreground scenery really is more defined and sort of closer than the background or mid ground.

Unlike photography and normal cinematography though, this depth of field does not get blurry. Used normally in this way something that has depth of field usually means that something closer is in fine detail and highly focused, and then a certain bouquet occurs which describes the way that the focus on stills photography blurs and rounds off into the distance and anything in the mid to background is out of focus and blurred.

But this new cinematic approach leaves everything mostly in focus and this makes it difficult for the eye to have a natural focus, and subsequently something I find quite hard to explain . I was constantly trying to adjust my point of view to take it what was supposed to be the focal point at any given time, this is my only gripe with the 3D technology though and I should point out at this point that it did not spoil the film for me.

In fact I am encouraged to go and see it again in 2D just to see how it translates that way. The 3D is strikingly beautiful and I can see the technologies merits, even in the credits and title sequences as well as the sub titles when the Na’vi are speaking – which are quite purposefully placed in a more forward manner than normal. I noticed that the credits had used a foreground and background technique for listing directors etc that was quite unusual and I hadn’t seen before.

Truly spectacular robot suits abound in Avatar battles. Awesome.

The film, like my review, is long at two and half hours but I barely noticed which is really unusual, although I did find myself getting a bit wriggly towards the end where we see the second ritual,  which is all I will say not to completely ruin the final plot for you if I haven’t already.

In summary, this film is a masterpiece of modern film making and storytelling and will no doubt go down on record as one of the greats that Cameron can already add to his list. For me it is the imaginary world of Pandora, the incredible vision of the director and writer to realise some of the most amazing creatures like the wild helicopters and amazing dragonfly things with luminescent circular wings combined with the film makers amazing ability to camouflage what is CGI and what isnt with some amazing techiniques that for the first time truly left me wondering, was that a real actor or a digital creation?

Quite simply, amazing.