In the last month of 2022, "Avatar: The Way of Water" (hereinafter referred to as "" Avatar 2") will be released globally. The prologue kicked off from the premiere in London, first in Europe, and then gradually expanded to North America, Asia and the southern hemisphere. Among them, director James Cameron led the main creative team to appear in London and Tokyo successively. "Avatar 2" fueled the flames. Taking the Chinese mainland market as an example, Cameron and producer Jon Lando appeared in Taikoo Li Qiantan, Shanghai on the day the film was released, answering questions from lucky viewers on the spot. In fact, everyone knows that this kind of lottery-style question and answer is far more formal than meaningful. How could it be possible for the entire production team to spend more than three hours of highly digital and ultra-large-scale video production in one question? The mystery will be revealed in one answer. The question that the audience really cares about is: After thirteen years of transformation and upgrading of the film industry initiated by "Avatar" in 2009, can the technical wonders shown in "Avatar 2" be as good as last time? And after experiencing the concept turmoil and ideological division in the post-epidemic era, after the main creative team led by Cameron deeply reflected on anthropocentrism and practiced marine exploration and protection many times, how will the film revolve around the concept of nature, What an epic and magnificent display of topics such as the relationship between multiple species of life and individual happiness.
movie "Avatar: The Way of Water" poster
"Heaven and earth were born side by side with me, and all things are one with me"
People who care about Chinese movie after a while will remember that in 2012 "Titanic", Years later, it was re-transcribed and re-screened in China in 3D format. Cameron's team came to China and announced the production plan of "Avatar 2" with an open mind, releasing a very clear cooperation intention. Although it will take time for the hidden secrets that the cooperation failed to achieve to be revealed to the world, the natural presentation of "Avatar 2" clearly runs through the ancient oriental concept of nature, and there is no lack of Taoist aesthetics in the background. That is Zhuangzi realized in " Equality of Things Theory " that "heaven and earth are born side by side with me, and all things are one with me".
Stills from the movie "Avatar: The Way of Water"
Cameron has announced to the world his two favorite things more than once: one is a movie that uses pictures to narrate, and the other is the ocean. "Avatar 2" can be described as an opportunity to blend two of Cameron's favorite works into one work. Perhaps this can also answer the questions of many viewers: Why did I feel like I was watching a stereotyped story after sitting in the theater for more than three hours? But if you blindly criticize the story technique as too old-fashioned, why can't you feel the passage of time after more than three hours of watching the movie, and don't have the sense of boredom and anxiety of sitting for three hours in reality? The reason is also the essential difference between "Avatar 2" and "Avatar". The stage level of "Avatar" is that 3D technology has been polished by on-set practice, matured and entered mainstream production, which marks the supplement of computer technology in film post-production to the camera task of focusing on live-action performances, and is essentially a refreshed and upgraded visual spectacle Blockbuster. However, "Avatar 2" has basically achieved the fusion experience of an immersive movie after more than ten years of strength gathering, concept reflection and technological transition, so that the audience can still watch the movie without seeing any stories. Chose to stay in the seat until Jack was shocked to open his eyes again at the end of the play.
In other words, Cameron no longer intends to shoot nature, the film itself is nature. He wants to use the new standard film technology language of high brightness, wide color gamut, and high-definition picture quality to pour his favorite ocean into one movie theater after another. The audience is both absolutely static watching and relatively dynamic cruising. The slight bubbling sound captured by the underwater photography, and the aural transformation and the different field of view exhibited by the characters when diving or jumping out of the water, so realistically and naturally replace the viewer's field of view behind the 3D glasses. When Locke, the second son of Jack's family, and Tu Kun, the giant spirit of the deep sea, slowly float in the clear and translucent boundless sea, Zhuangzi's artistic conception of "free and unfettered excursion" fills the whole picture peacefully and vigorously.
Still photo of the movie "Avatar: The Way of Water"
A simple metrological analysis of the film can continue to reveal that the number of scenes where Locke and Tukun appear together is much more than the number of scenes where he coexists with other biological species. His original family members and the new close partners he met after migrating to the island and reef tribe constitute Locke's growth map, and Tu Kun is the core spirit of the painting. Cameron's understanding of the concept of nature has also advanced from the environmentalist in "Avatar" to the overall coexistence view of "human beings are nature, and Tao follows nature". In addition to his identity as a technical "geek", the director himself has a more "child of nature" cognition.
There is a very crucial difference in plot dynamics between the two existing Avatar films: what is the function of nature in the film? What should be the correct and wise attitude of human beings towards nature? Cameron repeatedly emphasized in the first film: There are unmeasurable resources in nature, but human beings should not force aliens to change their own ancestral way of life in order to plunder resources. The rare ore on Pandora contains the super energy that human beings have dreamed of for a long time, but the fundamental contradiction that cannot be exploited is that the most abundant mineral deposit is located exactly where the ancestor spirit of the tree of life believed by the Na'vi people is located. An irreconcilable contradiction is thus constructed. The superficial binary opposition is the disparity in almost all aspects of technological force, life enjoyment, material civilization, etc., and the Na'vi people are incomparable with human beings. However, when we go deep into the relationship between individuals within the ethnic group, we can find that the seemingly indestructible high-tech base of human beings has long been torn apart mentally. On the side of natural exploration and protection represented by scientists, energy companies have shown excessive demands for natural resources, and mercenaries as tools of violence are sometimes employed by capital under the logic of profit-driven, and sometimes accept scientists at the moment of conscience awakening. Nature protection concept. The resulting cognitive split is used as the main contradiction in "Avatar", arranging fierce and changing combat scenes again and again. In this regard, comparing the image of resource predators in "Avatar 2" specifically, we can see the different focus points between the two.
Stills of the movie "Avatar: The Way of Water"
As the title of "The Way of Water" indicates, the development space of the movie story has shifted from the highland jungle of Pandora to the ocean paradise where kites fly and fish leap. Correspondingly, human beings covet natural resource grabbing objects and also transfer to the sea. The film designed a rather deliberate resource extraction scene. The hunters on the sea drove the elevator inside the giant spirit Tukun, and exaggerated the anti-aging effect of the so-called life essence by drilling holes to take out the brain. This shows that the time-consuming ocean hunting is actually profitable, and then immediately arranged a dramatic fall to increase the emotional tension of the scene. The techniques are indeed as diverse as possible, but their fundamental function in the film is not to participate in the construction of the main contradiction like the first one, but to stop at a cutscene. The content of the above layers in the second part serves more for the display needs of the action screen, basically to pave the way for the rational elements of Tukun's revenge in the second half. Look, Tukun has advanced intelligence, maybe even better than human beings; Tukun migrates regularly, and is as close as friends with the tribes on the islands and reefs. All kinds of hints are dismantling the misconceptions and misunderstandings that human beings have long believed to be the center of nature. On the one hand, it repeatedly expresses the small feeling of human beings in the boundless ocean, and on the other hand, it also serves as justice for the upcoming bloody scene of Tukun's revenge. The preface highlights that this is a righteous revenge where the grievance has its head and the debt has its owner. The steel cables and ships used by Tukun are all industrial creations of human beings. It uses its strength to fight back in its own way, allowing the greedy and brutal people who invaded the ocean to eat the bitter fruit they buried. .
The integration and conflict of technical innovation and emotional expression
The answer is obvious after some comparisons. The focus of the Cameron team’s 13-year work is still technological innovation. Note that it is a comprehensive innovation, an innovation applied in the entire process of film production, rather than a patch on the basis of "Avatar". At the end of many of Cameron's films, there is often a single frame of black screen, telling the audience with simple statements: how many working hours are provided for how many laborers in this filmlong. In the last "Alita: Battle Angel" directed by Rodriguez and supervised by Cameron, the computer CPU of the post-production special effects company was running at full capacity, and the meteorological inspection department found that the temperature of the entire town increased. 1 degree Celsius. The number of special effects screens in "Avatar 2" is 3350. According to the information released by the crew interviewed, only 2 shots on the sea are actually shot by the camera. It is no exaggeration to say that the high cost is unimaginable, and the average cost of producing one frame is enough to complete a small-cost production. Seeking benevolence, the underwater shooting jointly developed by Vita Digital and Sony Corporation, and the 3D, 4K high frame rate multi-camera shooting system made Cameron very confidently announce that the underwater 3D shooting technology has been overcome Don't worry about the long-standing problem of water performance in the film industry. Cameron's words are full of the confidence of the one who shouted "I am the king of the world" at the Oscars. However, for Cameron, who has achieved the technological leap for the second time, the presentation of the emotional relationship between the characters is greatly restricted by the vision setting under the regulation of new technology, resulting in repetitive appearance and many shortcomings in the emotional narrative, including and Not limited to: the comprehensive replacement of long-shot narrative by digital setting, and the polarization of common situations between characters.
still photo of the movie "Avatar: The Way of Water"
"Avatar 2" is 193 minutes long, and another super director who made the audience sit in the theater for three hours is Akira Kurosawa . No one will forget the long shot of " Seven Samurai " at the beginning of the film, the one-minute-long galloping horse, effectively conveying the chills of the villagers under the threat of bandits, and allowing the audience to fully feel the precarious worries of the villagers . The long shot brings out the space where the enemy and the enemy coexist, and then describes in detail the subtle reactions between characters in a small space. The villagers versus the samurai, the first samurai versus the later new entrants, between the seven samurai... The black and white film that does not contain any special effects has a large number of images that have neither lines nor actions, and only rely on the camera to follow the psychology of the characters The possibility of reaction time is switched and connected in an orderly manner, so that the audience can smoothly understand the character's psychology, and even guess his next possible move. The nature of the picture is comprehensible rather than experiential. Emotional moments such as infinite sympathy for the sympathetic, sincere admiration for the noble sacrifice, etc., are like surging waves, which makes the world with different cultural backgrounds and different eras The audience can resonate deeply. The artistic refinement of these emotional moments is mainly based on the realism of the image. It is refined on the basis of a film language that captures images from people and objects with a camera without technical support, rather than the simulation of special effects. Dimensional understanding is reached, breaking through the media gap between images and reality.
On the contrary, Cameron has always pursued the dynamic experience of "bright images" and spectacle images. Get vigorous exercise. The wide-frame, wide-view IMAX format slows down the emotional connection and love-hate drive between characters. The coexistence between father and son has not yet officially warmed up, and the next second is Locke from the highland learning to drive the aquatic mount Iru. On the short video website, some die-hard fans of "Avatar" carefully produced a paragraph comparison between the two films. Locke's control of Iru is like his father Jack taming the monster Toruk in the first part. The behavioral lines of the two, the ups and downs of the first smooth and then twists and turns, and the joyful expressions after the successful domestication of the mount are all exactly the same. This shows that digital technology has indeed brought great technical convenience to film production, realizing the reuse of models that can be developed once and used many times, but it also makes it difficult to empathize or resonate after the model is reproduced.
Author: Yang Junlei│Professor of the Chinese Department of Fudan University
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-