James Cameron has often been hailed as a living legend giving us such wonderous films as the Terminator, Aliens and the Abyss. All of those movies involved special effects that give life to inanimate objects so it makes sense that these iconic benchmarks would be in the background of the man intending to break one more. James Cameron claims that his upcoming film the Avatar will bridge The Uncanny Valley.
For those who don’t know, Uncanny Valley is basically a theory that “when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost, but not entirely, like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers.” Imagine a graph showing the progression of realism in computer generated characters. The “valley” in question is a dip in that proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot’s lifelikeness.
This brings us one step closer to the syn-thespian theory that people speculated when CGI characters were given such life that we feared they would eventually replace actors altogether.
This theory was often challenged by the Uncanny valley. Basically saying we cant make CGI people that are convincing enough to replace the real thing. The most popular example of this was the CGI Final Fantasy The Spirits Within which had such staggering effects that you often forgot you were watching an animation. Yet when you looked into the eyes of a character, they tended to look empty or lifeless.
James Cameron’s Avatar has photo-realistic characters that Cameron brags are SO GOOD that they will bridge that valley of discomfort.
I myself am excited just to see another James Cameron film. He hasn’t let me down. But to know that he is setting this goal to shatter the current standards makes me even more fascinated with this film.
Hopefully this film will differ from Final Fantasy and will actually be a good film instead of just staggering to look at.
I think the problem most people had with Final Fantasy was that they didn’t go into expecting a foreign film, or an anime film. And it was very, very much a foreign film, and one that fits right in with anime and Japanese video games. If that was the kind of thing you like, then it was a great movie. If you went in expecting an American summer blockbuster, well it certainly wasn’t that.
As for Cameron bridging the uncanny valley, I’ll believe it when I see it. And honestly, I don’t expect to see it. He often is more brag than substance, and while the effects in his movies are often very good, they’re almost never as good as he and the marketing people make them out to be.
bruce, i totally agree with what you’re saying! transformers is a perfect example. but you can in a way, say that to almost all special effects movies. sure there are scenes in the original superman that convince you a man can actually fly. but some of it looks damn cheesy today. still, i agree with what you’re saying in today’s cgi-dependent movies.
bruce, i agree, cgi is down to the individual artist. I work in vfx and its a tradeoff of time vs money every day. Very rarely do fx reach the level of ‘invisibility’ we all strive for
So when the biggest prick in show biz tells you that the CGI Barrier has been broken, what do you do?
Move on……
Four words “Lord of the Rings.”
All of this is just hype, every director or producer of every blockbuster or highly anticipated film says thing like this. Know matter how good Cameron’s CGI is your still going to tell and your always going to know its cgi. In a year from the movie we will look back and be like this is way better looking than Avatar. CGI can never be real so why are people trying so hard when they get such let down results. All CGI has done is taint film, idiots or people who have been tricked in to loving cgi for know reason would bagg or look down on a practical effect and say something dumb like “its so fake its not real enough”. well cgi isnt there at all its made by a computer to be perfect in alot of aspects. film is an art, and those practical effects weather it be stop motion, creature or model are and were made by a human and you can see that and even tho they some times may not look as what you are made to now believe they should, but you no that there real and on the screen. the eye can pick things like this as soon as it sees it. in my mind movies are meant to be magic, dosent cgi take away that? when non if it it real and how good its going to look relies on computer power and money? its not fun, its maths. Sure these cgi dudes have skill in observation but where is the art in creating something that already exists? which is most the time what cgi does. Id rather watch a film that inst perfect and glossy and perfect because a computer could take out the “faults”. CGI makes films, and the experience that people now have all about the visual effects “look how real its looks” who cares how shinny it is or how many hairs it has. give me 6 months of Maya and il be able to do that, but i promise you i will never be able to paint like Michelangelo.
In 10 years we will look back at films of the last 25 years and just laugh because most of the films we watched were just straight out cartoons.
Let’s not be so quick to stroke Mr. Cameron’s ego. He did eight features, four of which sucked. The others were no more than eye candy. His crew deserves the credit that he gets.
fucking righteous…james cameron is a god.
yeah, whatever. they all say that but it only takes one dodgy shot with zombie eyes to ruin all the rest. just look at the creepy kids in polar express for what i’m talkin bout.