Playing a Losing Game

The more I hear, the more I read about people dismissing Avatar’s CG and expressing disappointment in the Navi – how they look like cartoons – makes me wonder if people know what makes a special effect stellar.

The designs of the Navi are subjective, so whatever on that point; although I do have strong, positive opinions about their designs, but at the moment, they’re not germane to my argument.

But their special effects – c’mon. If people want them to be a physical presence in front of the camera, then they’re most likely going to get stuff that looks like Tim Curry in Legend or everything larger than a midget but smaller than a house in the Hellboy movies. Curry and Perlman had less latex on their faces for expressions – which is always the mark of excellent make-up effects, because it’s easier to showcase empathy – but the rest of their appearance, they looked like giant action figures.

The Navi don’t suffer from a uniform plastic sheen. Look at the shot in the teaser where Jake wiggles his toes. His skin has pigmentation. It has a porous quality, that if you were to place a flashlight flush against their fingers, some light would reflect and some light would pass through as physics orders.

Or how about the shot where Neytiri darts her eyes at those luminescent critters that flutter around Jake? Facial expressions, people.

And in a less seen scene – Avatar Day footage – Jake wrestles with a banshee so they can bond, and shuffling along the sidelines is Neytiri. The way she flexes and squats, but just as important, how her facial muscles twist that’s not out of alignment with the rest of her body maneuvers – you’re not gonna see that kind of lithe stretching if the actor is buried under latex and prosthetics. And even though everything you see onscreen is computer-generated – inhuman flesh and blood – the skeleton of the Navi, of Jake and Neytiri, is all human. Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana; motion and emotion captured.

Probably the main reason for the underwhelming response to the Avatar teaser is the hype; that special effects anything but perfection are a failure. I think we’re at the point where texture detail is now only limited by the artists’ proficiencies. That isn’t going to make a difference if the lighting on the set doesn’t match with what will be digitally inserted later, or vice versa. This is the other important aspect of good special effects: lighting.

Let’s take for example the Pescadero escape scene in T2: when the T-1000 passes through the bars; when the T-1000 re-molds its head after taking a shotgun blast pointblank. Even after nearly two decades those effects still look amazing partly – or mainly – because of the lighting. The cold silver and blue lighting of the hospital matches the cool silver and blue on the T-1000.

And another reason why those frames are a stellar example of CG: while his split head melds back into a whole, Robert Patrick’s eyes move.

Facial expressions, people.