Avatar Sneak Preview

I was lucky enough to receive tickets to the sneak preview of selected scenes from Avatar. For those who don't know, Avatar is directed by James Cameron. His last film was the highest grossing film of all time, Titanic. It was also released 12 years ago so there is a lot of anticipation for his next film. Avatar has been shrouded in mystery and will be the first film shown exclusively in IMAX 3D. The film also is supposedly using new technology to deliver a more impressive experience than other films released in 3D.

The screening consisted of 4 to 5 scenes from the finished film. I'm not going to describe the scenes in detail, but I will say the special effects were impressive. The biggest improvement I saw was in the mouth movements of the computer generated characters. In the past computer generated characters looked realistic, but their mouth movements were never accurate with the voices and it always made it hard to buy into them interacting with real actors. The Avatar special effects team seems to have fixed this problem.

Unfortunately the biggest disappointment for me was the 3D. The 3D was plagued by the same problems I've seen in the past, and it didn't look any better than other films I've seen in IMAX 3D. All of the action scenes were blurry and had sort of a shimmery reflection to them that made it hard to tell what was going on. This was especially true in scenes where the characters were close to the camera and were moving quickly.

When I came home from the screening I watched the trailer again on my computer and immediately wished I would have been able to see the preview without the 3D. I'm interested to hear what other people thought of the 3D technology used in Avatar, and of the preview in general.