UPDATE: In the midst of my frenzy, I forgot to mention this very important observation! The screening of Avatar I attended in Shanghai, along with several other screenings experienced by my friends here in Shanghai have witnessed the first time ever an audience in China has applauded to a movie when the credits started rolling. THAT itself, is another milestone in China cinematic history. It felt awesome really, along with the fact that during the 2 hour 40mins or so, no cellphones rang nor whisper/mumbles could be heard. Something VERY RARELY seen in China theatres.

So, I finally got to experience the much talked about and anticipated movie, Avatar on it’s opening day in Shanghai on the 4th of January in Shanghai in Imax 3D. I had wanted to write about this the night I got back home from the movie, but had to hold it off until today. The reason was not because of laziness, but mainly because I had to settle and collect my feelings and emotions together before I could write about the milestone in cinematic history. If I had written this post on the same night I watched the movie, the post would have looked something like:

” Avatar was amazing, wow! Incredible!! UNBELIEVABLE!! YOU HAVE TO WATCH IT!!! I’M GOING CRAZY FROM POST-AVATAR-WITHDRAWAL!! OMGosh!!! … “

You get the drift. Also, me and my room-mate had a few discussions about the movie, and tried to find the most suiting adjectives to describe the movie. The verdict was that the surreal experience could not possibly be represented by words alone. If you haven’t watched it yet, you can only find out by watching it, in Imax 3D preferably, or at the very minimum, 3D.

I was fortunate enough to be residing in a city with one Imax 3D equipped theatre, as opposed to my Singapore mates who informed me that there were no Imax 3D theatres in Singapore that aired feature films. If I’m not mistaken, the only Imax 3D theatre is at the Science Centre, and it only shows boring documentaries.

James Camerons Avatar has been described as sheer Greatness. A milestone in cinematic history. A breakthrough in cinematic technology. Unbelievably believable. 60 percent of the film is CG (Computer genereated Graphics) which includes the world featured in the movie, and also the characters. While this sort of fantasy theme isn’t new, James Cameron has taken the visual and audio representation to a whole new level. Every scene in Pandora (the planet featured in the movie) is SO breathtakingly beautiful and detailed that you want to watch the  movie a second time, just to observe the tress, leaves, drops of water in the world because you didn’t have enough time to appreciate all of it the first time round.

Every one of the CG characters look life-like and impossibly expressive, from a cocky smirk to a subtle blush of embarrassment.

Technically, I think you already get the pitch. Now on with some of the more subtle observations of the film.

With all the hype that has gone on about James Camerons Avatar over the past year and more, you would have though you knew quite abit about the movie. After watching the trailers countless times, you would have thought you already have a good idea of how the movie would start and end. James Cameron knew exactly how movie-goers would feel and think, and crafted the movie and marketing intricately to make sure that the audience would be blown away despite the amount of homework they have done, and leave the theatre in awe.

Let me just put this upfront without spoiling the movie, the trailers are more like a prologue to t he movie, and generally the gist of the trailers are about the first 15 minutes of the movie or so. This was a very pleasant surprise, because how often have you watched a movie where bits throughout the movie from start to end have pretty much been previewed in the trailer ? as opposed to finding out that after the first 15 minutes, you realized that you have already seen everything from the trailer, wow, so what’s going to happen for the next 2 hours 25 minutes??

That to  me, is plain genius. In fact, in a certain way, the movie begins as if it expected the audience to have already known what an avatar was, who the protagonist is and what he will do. It doesn’t waste an hour introducing the protagonist, the technology and stuff. It just launches you straight into the action after a brief ‘ Hi, I am the protagonist, I am handicapped and I will be an avatar. ‘.

All that being said,  you NEED to experience this movie in 3D, preferably in an Imax theatre. It would be the only way to do the movie justice. Details protrude in 3D, the whole experience of the world is magnified, especially in Imax.

Notice I kept using the word ‘experience’. The truth is, watching Avatar is an experience. A surreal one at that which surpasses what you see and hear. It had the similar feeling of watching Star Wars for the first time. I also reminiscence of seeing a brontosaurus in Jurassic park for the first time. My room mate has compared this movie with the moment when color television replaced black and white television.

James Camerons Avatar can only be truly described as a feat of Greatness in Cinematic history, and shows how far Computer Graphics and brilliant creativity and imagination has come.