A couple weekends ago, my wife rented Avatar. A week later, we bought the Blu-ray at Costco. We watched it again last Sunday, with my daughter this time, because she has an obsession with dinosaurs and flying creatures. She just loved the Banshees and even the ferocious animals in the forest.
We watched it on a 12' projection screen from about 8' away (first row). The image quality was very clean.
From my viewpoint, I have to put aside my rational brain to watch this film. Once I empty my "cup" as it were, the film is an enjoyable experience. The visuals were the richest ever to show on-screen, given the groundbreaking modeling, animation and rendering technology used. The live action shots were recorded by Sony CineAlta cameras F23 and Sony CineAlta HDC-F950 at full 1920x1080 acquisition. It sure looked ultra-clean for digital acquisition.
The story is one of those that puts your emotions in direct conflict with your reasoning ability and that makes one somewhat angry. But as one who despises eminent domain, I found myself siding with the Na'vi on this matter of the Sky People invading their world. And what a world it was. A strange sense of high tech, in a low-tech forest, due to the sentient nature of the flora and the information conduit that was comprised of all the roots, making the entire world one big neural network. A fascinating concept.
The use of certain imagery was clever.. near the end of the film there is such as the scene with the Direhorse, aflame, running through a flaming inferno that was once the Home Tree. In slow motion, it was dream-like, in a way that only an old war movie captures a certain moment of battle with a memorable, if not frightful, scene.
Overall, pretty simple plot, but the direction, pacing and the quality of the way it's all edited, craftily together, maintains a constant 'never a dull moment' excitement to the film.
I thought the sound mix was quite seamless. The surround just blended into a 360° space, with nothing calling attention to itself. I did think they could have taken more advantage of LFE moments when the Home Tree was felled though. As has been noted, other sounds in the film had more LFE in it. The explosions were so-so. This wasn't U-571, but the general sound quality was sweeter and more natural. It just wasn't as visceral as other films I've seen. And thankfully the logo music at the beginning didn't blow us out of the room. I hate when a loud logo plays before the film, evoking yells of "turn it down! it's too loud!" from the audience and then the film starts and you can't hear the dialog because the level is now set too low. The dynamic range was decent, with acceptable levels for the various machinery and environment sounds heard throughout the film. There were times though when I felt that the music score, particularly the part with Japanese drums, was a bit overpowering. My daughter had her hands over her ears for much of the film, but she was talking about the flying creatures all night after that, right up to bed time.
This whole 3D thing has me in a quandry though.. a gimmick such as this will shift further focus away from plot, story, content, toward razzle-dazzle effects, further devolving the art of story-telling. Though, I hear it worked to good effect for this film.
Definately a keeper, in my book, even though it's got some contraversial plot issues.
