Was the long 13-year wait worth it? The industry's answer will be delivered about a little later. But yesterday's pre-sale of Avatar 2 in mainland China, with more than 2 million "want to see" users on both Cat's Eye and Ticketmaster platforms, and the nearly sold-out midnight show on the 16th, where many of the tickets were priced at a premium, seems to be answering the question: Is it worth it?
That winter, it was hard to find a ticket
"Avatar" was released on December 14, 2009 in North America (January 4, 2010 in China), through 3D virtual image photography and motion capture technology to create a dreamy and magnificent Pandora, almost redefining the "immersive" viewing experience. "The movie has not only triggered a phenomenal movie-going craze around the world, dominating the global box office charts with nearly 3 billion dollars, but also won numerous awards including the Oscars for Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Visual Effects.
Photo: Stills from "Avatar"
But the memories of "Avatar" go far beyond the box office figures or the awards. Do you remember the long queue at the entrance of the Heping Cinema in the cold wind that winter, where the crowd could have circled Raffles City along Hankou Road, Zhongnan Road, Fuzhou Road, and Xizang Zhong Road? Even so, because it had the only IMAX screen in Shanghai at that time, within 24 hours after the opening of Avatar, 90% of the monthly shows were sold out, and only about 2,000 tickets remained in the first three rows of the IMAX hall. Looking through historical photos, the theater also temporarily issued a "next day cancellation" of the "ticket number". It can even be said that the 14 IMAX screens nationwide generated a staggering box office of 168 million yuan (0.23% of screens, 12.2% of box office), which completely inspired the reform of China's film production and theater audiovisual technology.
Thirteen Years Later, Still Standing on the Tide
If 13 years ago, the combination of Avatar's extraordinary technology and art brought the presentation and experience of movies into a new era. Thirteen years later, moviegoers around the world are looking to Cameron, 68, to usher in a newer era.
From the trailer, the story of "Avatar 2" follows its predecessor, with leading man Jack's character Sam Worthington and others returning, but the movie will present a whole new terrain unlike its predecessor's, with a strong visual impact from the rainforests, which are predominantly dark in color, to the expansive oceans. It is said that Cameron created a set of motion capture system specially prepared for underwater filming to restore the real scene of underwater snorkeling, and the crew also specially prepared a huge tank holding 900,000 gallons of seawater to maximize the simulation of ocean currents. The cast of Avatar 2 were trained and certified divers, and were even able to hold their breath for a few minutes during each scene. Kate Winslet once said in an interview, "The longest I've ever held my breath was seven minutes and 14 seconds, and that was crazy." Cameron also confidently said, "We don't use any scuba (SCUBA) for filming, so the footage footage that was captured was all pretty beautiful, and the motion-capture points were all perfect."
Photo: 'Avatar 2' stills
In fact, it was more than a year and a half of experimentation and debugging behind the scenes. The difficulty of shooting underwater with a motion-capture system lies not in the water, but in the fact that the interface between the air and the water creates a "moving mirror," which reflects all the markers and produces a large number of incorrect markers. In order to solve this problem, the team experimented with a variety of innovative techniques, and finally managed to clearly capture the actors' tiniest movements and expressions underwater.
But, as the director who loves the ocean the most and probably knows the most about it on the planet, that wasn't enough. What younger moviegoers don't know is that after "Titanic," Cameron virtually "disappeared" for seven years, from 1998 to 2005, working 16 hours a day with a group of fellow scientists and leading a team that not only produced another perfectly welded and engineered movie, but also created a new, more complex movie. Not only led the team to produce another perfectly welded, strong pressure-bearing capacity of the spherical cockpit, and ultimately drive it independently to dive into the world's deepest trench - the bottom of the Mariana Trench nearly 11,000 meters from the horizon, is the third person in history to complete this feat. This time, for the live action filming of Avatar 2, he moved Pandora to the Marianas Trench. During filming, the crew built a special $5 million deep-sea submarine to dive into the trench and do fieldwork for the undersea landscape design. What's more, in order to give viewers a sense of the real Pandora, Cameron also invited astrophysicists and anthropologists, as well as music professors and archaeologists, to participate in the production of the film, who further refined the fictional elements of the film through their expertise, such as the density of Pandora's atmosphere, the creation of triple-tone Na'vi music, and the examination of the Na'vi people's history and social structure.
Photo: 'Avatar 2' stills
Even Cameron has revolutionized himself this time around. In his view, the 3D craze that characterized the screenings of "Avatar" is outdated, and "Avatar 2" will be the world's first naked-eye 3D movie. Relying on high frame rates to provide bright images, the new film will realize the effect of watching 3D movies without 3D glasses, presenting the world with a wonderful world that is both real and unreal.
Of course, "Avatar 2" may not be able to keep up with the high expectations of fans around the world and the Chinese market. After all, the new film is so expensive to make that it will have to save more than 2 billion yuan at the box office and climb to third or fourth place on the global movie list before it can pay for itself; and after all, Cameron said in a recent interview that if this one doesn't perform well at the box office, he's likely to end the series after "Avatar 3". But whether it's the legendary series that has been laid out to a fifth installment, or all the way from Terminator, Alien 2, The Abyss, Terminator 2, Titanic, the nearly 40 years of Cameron's films have always led the way in terms of innovation in the world's film industry, making Avatar 2 something to look forward to this winter.