If movies equal immersion, how far do we dare to go? Next stop: ICE tech
Avatar: The Way Of Water
Let alone a detailed synopsis that many write-ups get put out as film reviews for readers—what if I broke down for you, James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way Of Water, scene by scene? There’ll still be nothing by way of reveals/spoilers, likely to even minutely diminish the viewing experience!
It’s a film that you just have to “watch”—whether you love it, doze off, find it exhaustive/exhausting; that’s not the point. As with its 2009 prequel, the world’s most expensive, breathtaking blue-film ever—nobody else can translate its energetic, sensory visuals for you.
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And while that’s true for a great movie anyway—you should be able to enjoy it, even without knowing its language—Cameron’s latest attempt at a classic for the ages, calls for your body, on occasion, to immerse itself under-water, devouring the extraordinary flora, fauna, codes and conduct,
created from scratch.
The ICE Immersive technology was invented by Jocelyn Boussy
Making all world-building in cinema semi-redundant, for the moment. This is Cameron, our man, playing God, for the screen. Hell, yeah, the size of that
screen matters.
Also Read: James Cameron opts out 'Avatar: Way of Water' LA premiere after getting Covid-19
Goes without saying—go giant IMAX. What you can’t do much about are the crummy, darkening 3D glasses, that don’t seem to have undergone much innovation since their first commercial use. That was exactly a century ago, by the way.
So you got those glasses on. When your eyes aren’t navigating vast three-dimensional expanses, you find the brim of the ocean at the centre of the camera’s lens, or its lowest edge. The sense of wobbling in and out is complete.
What if I told you that from the corner of your eyes, peering outside the glasses, you can still sense the ebbs and flows of the ocean’s tides?
Can’t be imagining this, right? I wasn’t. The cinema I was at is the ICE (Immersive Cinema Experience). There are only two in Asia, presently. Both in the National Capital Region (PVRs in Delhi’s Vasant Kunj, Gurgaon’s Ambience Mall), that opened with Avatar 2. There will be seven such in India soon. The one in Mumbai opens in March, 2023.
Using ICE Immersive, a technology invented by French ‘theatrepreneur’ Jocelyn Boussy. What do you see, or rather not consciously see, in an ICE theatre? Large LED screens/planks—several times the size of advertising screens at airports, hotel-loos, etc—lining up both sides of the cinema’s walls. It’s not like there are separate movies—or the same movie playing separately.
Consider these multiple screens facing your ears as extension of the film’s canvas/colour palette. They also seamlessly draw out the movie’s visible action. “Light [changes] and movements are really when you can best tell the effect [of the ICE design],” Boussy tells me.
He debuted this technology with Luc Bresson’s Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets (2017). Rohit Shetty’s Cirkus will be the first Indian movie to get the ICE treatment. Avatar 2 is obviously an apt start for desis. Boussy was earlier equally impressed with test results for Brahmāstra (2022).
In fact, the final outcome of several screens so subtly enveloping the cinema hall, without once distracting from the actual big screen before us, is so simple and satisfying—one wonders why it’d never been thought of before.
Boussy says, “We’re dealing with peripheral vision that, through evolution, humans have been highly sensitive towards—that’s how they perceive threats, for instance.” You can imagine this logic serving horror movies chillingly cold.
Avatar, of course, is a sci-fi fantasy that turns on its head the mainstream movie-concept of aliens—wherein it’s inevitably humans, or Americans, more specifically New Yorkers, under attack!
Here, the insatiably greedy, destructive humans are the problem. As they’re likely to be—if we do discover life outside Earth, or indeed a hospitable planet. That Elon Musk, the clown billionaire on Twitter, is aiming for, with the Moon and Mars.
For all of Cameron’s film-tech geekery with CGI, 3D, motion capture, magic, and a healthy obsession with oceans—he’s patented a propeller to shoot underwater—the script of Avatar 2 holds water.
The editing may not be water-tight. But Cameron has a story to tell, and characters and emotions to zoom into—chiefly with a father protecting his family—as you closely observe actors emoting within aquatic life, like they haven’t before.
Also Read: "Thanos? Come on. Give me a break," says James Cameron as filmmaker pans Marvel VFX
In this sequel, Na’vi, or Forest People of fictional Pandora, get together with Reef People. This film’s audiences are obviously Sky People, the enemies here—freaky humans. Who, in their movies, generally crave set-pieces of violence/battles. Cameron (Terminator) is obviously up for that.
No goose bumps, but I did feel the ‘action’ coming at me from the side screens as well. “Is ICE, like VR (Virtual Reality), without headset, for a community experience?” I asked Boussy, before watching the movie.
He was impressed with the analogy to say he’ll use it in his promotional interviews, from hereon—maybe I should share bank details for copyright. But, no ICE, isn’t the all-encompassing/consuming/restrictive VR. Watching Avatar 2, over three hours, 15 minutes, would’ve been a massive headache otherwise.
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