Sink or Swim?

It has been in the making for a decade. Ten years. The technology of James Cameron's "Avatar" is being called groundbreaking before it has even launched. It is already approaching the $500 million dollar price tag, making it one of the most expensive movies ever. Throughout his career, Cameron has used eye-popping digital effects to create worlds and characters audiences have neither witnessed nor imagined. But he has never tried anything as creatively and commercially ambitious as Avatar, a combination of 3-D film-making, photo-realistic computer animation and live-action drama that opens Dec. 18.

Some people wonder if Avatar's plot - dense with action sequences and special effects, but also featuring a love story between two 10-foot-tall blue aliens - will resonate with a wide enough audience to steer the movie into profitability.

Cameron's Avatar is a type of film-making that has never been done before. While most movies add all of their visual effects in post-production, Cameron was able to see fully composited shots in real time: The actors he was directing may have been performing in front of a blank green screen, but Cameron's camera eyepiece - not to mention giant 3-D television monitors - immediately displayed lush, synthetic backgrounds.

Avatar is set on a distant moon under siege by humans determined to pillage its natural resources. It required the reinvention of bulky 3-D cameras - which had to be downsized to fit into smaller spaces and move with fluidity - and lengthy experimentation with improvements in motion capture animation, which superimposes animated characters onto real actors, as in the current Disney movie A Christmas Carol.

Can a film like this succeed? Will it forever alter the history of films? Is this our generation's technicolor? Personally, this type of genre is not my cup of tea, but I may warm up to it. in time The aspect of the incredible technology featured in the film could change my mind. I think I'll wait for the reviews to trickle down. If it is worth seeing, I might just fork out the cash to experience it for myself. For Cameron's sake, I hope this movie soars...

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