Avatar 2 - The Way of Water Dec 2022

[Pob]

I've not heard of an actual film having motion smoothing before - surely that is post-processing done by the display itself. Can standard cinema projectors do this? We're not talking about a higher frame-rate are we?

[krenzler]

The film is 48fps HFR but variable. Action scenes are 48 but dialogue scenes are still 24. The latter being doubled up to 48 which I guess is some form of smoothing.

[krenzler]

Cameron wanted to avoid that hyper-realistic weird look in static scenes like in Gemini Man.

 

 

[Art Vandelay]

That's such a strange effect, I can't tell whether I like it or not. It makes the action look so realistic and also a bit slow and boring at the same time. 

[krenzler]

Certainly puts a huge demand on set design. 

[Benny]

1 hour ago, Art Vandelay said:

That's such a strange effect, I can't tell whether I like it or not. It makes the action look so realistic and also a bit slow and boring at the same time. 

 

Putting my thinking cap on here a bit, I would suggest the reason why is this: at 24fps your brain is filling in the blanks more, and objects in motion appear to "jump" forward between frames because of the lack of actual granular motion. This will have the effect of making action seem quite fast.

 

Conversely, if you increase the number of frames available showing that object's movement, your eyes get to see more of the natural "real" transition of the object across all the separate frames. So it will look smoother and more "realistic" but if an actor is say, throwing a punch, then unless they are Bruce Lee, it's going to show up exactly how slowly humans actually generally move when they do stuff like that.

 

Your eyes and brain are being given a lot more information, so you are effectively being allowed to dwell on more actual movement from an object, from more visual information, so it appears to be moving more slowly as it takes up more of your focus.

 

It's why high framerate seems to make a lot of films look weird, and is much better suited to games, where the extra temporal resolution is needed to more closely align your player control with the visual feedback and reaction. Plus videogame characters can move a lot faster than real humans and objects, so speed can be compensated for.

[Pob]

1 hour ago, krenzler said:

The film is 48fps HFR but variable. Action scenes are 48 but dialogue scenes are still 24. The latter being doubled up to 48 which I guess is some form of smoothing.

 

Hmm, think I'll wait for the Digital Foundry video before I commit then

 

1 hour ago, krenzler said:

Cameron wanted to avoid that hyper-realistic weird look in static scenes like in Gemini Man.

 

 

 

Genuinely thought that was a screenshot from the GTA San Andreas remaster

[Jammy]

46 minutes ago, krenzler said:

Certainly puts a huge demand on set design. 

It always looks to me like a badly calibrated 4K telly - like you’re watching a rehearsal for a play or something. Like you say, the lack of sheen makes a flat backdrop look really obvious.

[Pob]

Bloody hell, that start of that Gemini Man clip. It's like Will Smith is suddenly performing in an amateur stage play down the local rep.

[Nick R]

What @Benny says about the gaps and motion blur of 24fps hiding the flaws in human movements is fair enough. 

 

But I tend to be a skeptical of the more fanciful and romantic theories about why 24fps is best for films - the ones that suggest that a 24Hz frequency is linked to some sort of resonance with the human brain.

 

I genuinely think it's got more to with nurture than nature; we associate 24fps with cinema because we've all grown up seeing films look like that. If the industry had standardised 60fps for cinema back in the early 1900s, and then TV and video had come along and settled on 24fps, then we'd associate the former with lavish film productions, and the latter with soaps and sitcoms.

 

I enjoyed the second Hobbit film in HFR (which was 48fps, not 120fps/60fps like Gemini Man). It was good for action sequences; I only found it distracting in the still dialogue scenes, when it came across like everyone was moving on fast-forward. I was keen to see if Avatar 2's variable rates solved that - sadly my local cinema isn't showing it in that format.

[Paulando]

The fast-moving action in Avatar was sometimes hard to follow on the big screen, especially in 3D, so I can totally see why Cameron would got HFR for those scenes. It’s a good idea.

 

The whole film is displayed in HFR, but the non-HFR scenes have their frames doubled so it just looks like 24fps.

[Hanzo the Razor]

17 hours ago, HarMGM said:

The best James Cameron sequel since T2!

 

The only one, Shirley?

[PK]

5 hours ago, Art Vandelay said:

That's such a strange effect, I can't tell whether I like it or not. It makes the action look so realistic and also a bit slow and boring at the same time. 

 

Yeah it's really interesting. I'm also finding it has a really strange effect on the shot/reverse shot conversation bits; it's almost as if it's highlighting how unnaturally still the actors are holding themselves to deliver the dialogue in frame. It looks stilted but doesn't if you knock it back down to 24.

 

I don't know why that would look less unnatural at a lower frame rate though?

[Art Vandelay]

It's really bizarre. There's a bit near the start where young Will Smith jumps onto that tree and it feels really dangerous and alarming for some reason. Then there's that section where the bikes amble past some cars at incredibly low speed and we get some onlooker's reaction and it looks absolutely terrible, like someone's holiday videos they shot on their phone or they way they film Neighbours now. I don't think I like it, but I'd be interested to see more of it. 

[Loik V credern]

Have to say I'm less into this new hobby people have of bigging up Terminator by knocking Terminator 2 down as though it's some trying average film instead of brilliant from start to finish in every way with an all time great villain with real suspense.

 

It's an exact same genre shift from horror to action as Alien to Aliens but no one feels the need to implore they fully understand what makes Alien so frightening by going 'yeah in Aliens they shoot them like bugs, ruins it'. Terminator 2 is more successful as it doesn't undermine the horror, being chased by the T-1000 is as scary as the Terminator, Robert Patrick's performance is simply scarier. 

 

Terminator 2 isn't as lean, tonally brutal or have that 80s aesthetic I love as well, but the central idea is just as well done. But it arrives in 1991, past the formative years like 1986 is for many that make an attachment Aliens has which shields it from randomly being brought up in comparison to anything. 

[Alex W.]

I think HFR really does have a place, there are too many beautiful panning shots that are just a bit jumpy, or as mentioned action shots that dissolve in to noise. Although a creative DP will just shoot so it differently to avoid that, it means that some shots are off the table which is an arbitrary creative limit.

 

In practice though, I just haven’t seen HFR that looks good. CGI animation limitations are exaggerated, and in live action it seems you need so much light that it winds up looking completely flat like Gemini Man.

 

Don’t let TV motion smoothing trick you if you haven’t seen real HFR though. Motion smoothing is an awful approximation that looks like the inside of a migraine half the time.

[Commander Jameson]

2 hours ago, Hanzo the Razor said:

 

The only one, Shirley?

 

Aliens, although not a sequel to his own film.

 

[makkuwata]

That Gemini man clip actually made me mildly interested in the movie, much more so than the trailer. Then I checked and was on minute 2 of 7 and oof. Bit much.

[Paulando]

1 hour ago, Commander Jameson said:

 

Aliens, although not a sequel to his own film.

 

Not since T2 though.

[squirtle]

Why is no one mentioning the jump at 8min09secs? I laughed so hard at that bit when I watched that film that it rendered the rest of it pointless.

[Hanzo the Razor]

1 hour ago, Commander Jameson said:

 

Aliens, although not a sequel to his own film.

 

 

Terminator 2 was released five years after Aliens. So Avatar 2 isn't the best Cameron sequel since T2. Because it's the first sequel since T2.

[Loik V credern]

I really think Gemini Man has the worst directing and cinematography of any film ever made. I know that sounds a bit much, just not getting even 0.1% of what Ang Lee was trying to do with it. 

 

Filmcast review is out, interesting that Devindra says he thinks it is genuinely well written and he thought Avatar wasn't and cites the other writers who came from the Planet of the Apes films.

[krenzler]

That other Ang Lee HFR movie.

 

https://www.youtube.com/@4KClipsAndTrailers/videos

 

 

 

[CarloOos]

15 hours ago, Hanzo the Razor said:

 

The only one, Shirley?

Piranha 2.

[Festoon]

Wqve your hand in front of your face. Now imagine that instead of motion blur you see sharp impressions of your hand all the time. It would look unnatural and weird. HFR has this problem in film.

[K]

HFR does seem to break the illusion of watching a film - it disrupts the waking dream quality where you can just lose yourself in a story. I can see HFR working well in a film that wanted to emphasise the brutality and mundanity of violence, like You Were Never Really Here, or maybe something that had incredibly fast and intricate action, like a Jet Li film.

 

Although that said, the Miami Vice film did something similar by shooting everything on relatively primitive HD digital cameras, which gave everything a kind of uncanny hyper-real atmosphere, which I thought worked really well, even though the vibe of the film and the action sequences was pure ridiculous escapist fantasy.

[CarloOos]

Regarding Gemini Man, as a bit of an experiment I watched the 60fps 4k Blu-ray with a friend, and afterwards we swapped over to the 24fps standard disc to rewatch certain scenes. We were both in agreement that the 24fps version looked better, even for the action scenes, but Gemini Man isn’t an aesthetically pleasing film either way. 
 

I’m absolutely fascinated to see what Cameron’s done with HFR because he’s a far better action director and it’s 100% a cultural response that we instinctively interpret smoother images as ‘worse’.
 

Supposedly the effect is better than higher the frame-rate goes, but that’s really hard to quantify when those experiences are so limited. Billy Lynn (the previous Ang Lee film) was both shot and mastered at 120fps despite there only being about three projectors in the world capable of showing it at the time, and you can only buy a 60fps version. I initially saw some reports that Avatar 2 had a large mix of frame-rates beyond 48fps, but that’s probably bollocks because I have no idea how you could master something with multiple frame-rates which aren’t equally divisible with each other. 

[CarloOos]

7 minutes ago, K said:

Although that said, the Miami Vice film did something similar by shooting everything on relatively primitive HD digital cameras, which gave everything a kind of uncanny hyper-real atmosphere, which I thought worked really well, even though the vibe of the film and the action sequences was pure ridiculous escapist fantasy.

One of the best films of the last 20 years, I completely lose myself in that world every time. Might even be my favourite Mann film.
 

It’s a shame it was nowhere near as effective in Blackhat, I really wanted that to create the exact same sense of place for Hong Kong. 

[Pob]

I wonder how something that aims to put the viewer in the scene as much as possible, like those super-long takes in Children of Men, would feel in 4K HFR?

 

The best technique for making something feel 'real' ironically seems to be to go the other direction and emulate the style of someone capturing the events on their phone or handheld camera, as in Cloverfield, because it's how we're used to seeing real-life events on the news or on YouTube.

[Ork1927]

I’m just out of Avatar 2.

 

Haven’t seen the first one since it’s original cinema release and was pretty much ‘meh’.

 

Never got round to showing my kids the original and not knowing if we find the time to watch it before Christmas (or they want to go and see what the sequel if they didn’t like the first), I went to a 9am screening this morning at Cineworld because why not.

 

3D but not super screen as the heatings broke, but a decent sized screen.  Only me and one other guy in there.

 

I assumed I’d start my review with ‘obviously it’s too long’, but while it could obviously  have been trimmed down, it didn’t drag at all and it was always moving forward/every scene (while sometimes long) had a purpose.

 

Cons - dialogue/narration is a bit ropey at first, but you sort of tune it out.

 

You don’t need to have seen the first one recently (or maybe even at all), but it might be worth watching a quick recap.

 

Occasionally the CGI speeds up a bit and it looks a bit jarring or you can’t entirely follow who is who - but that’s an exception.

 

If by the half way mark, you aren’t engaged with the characters (and creatures) then the rest of it is going to continue to be a real slog.

 

However, pros...

 

I really enjoyed it.
 

It looks great. The sea and its creatures are fantastic and there isn’t bits where you miss plot because you are looking at fish, but there are long scenes where you are supposed to just be looking at fish.

 

The plot is pretty clear and established early on. There is enough characterisation of the main cast that you care about them and crucially their creatures.

 

The bad guys are bad enough so when the third act rolls around their are stakes and you are invested in the outcome. Third act is a little dragged out, but easily one of the best for a few years in a blockbuster. Obviously CGI heavy, but it’s well done and much better than say BP2.

 

Im not sure if it’s 3.5 or 4 stars, but I will go and see it again if the kids want to watch it and I’m now looking forward to seeing what happens with the 3rd one.

 

For me it’s his best film since T2, but I have no affection for True Lies.