Games of Today
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I don't know where else I could really discuss this other than here as no one I know really cares.
For some reason, when viewing this movie in the theater I really wasn't all that impressed. However I watched it last night on my 55" LG OLED E8 with 9.1 Atmos and I was pretty blown away.
I kind of already had the feeling this was going to be the case as OLED's usually do movies more of a justice than most theater projectors in terms of color and depth. But never the less it really impressed me.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not here praising the overall story and writing as even though it's more engaging than the first one character wise and the plot has slightly more depth to it, the overall story isn't anything special, mind blowing or even that original, similar to how the first movie is. What really stands out though are the visuals, the cinematography, the action set pieces and the musical score as well that was (dare I say leagues) better than the original score.
In my opinion, this is the first CGI film that has scenes that are indistinguishable from reality. Certain scenes look so great in fact that there is real, physical material, water and skin in the shot connected to CGI and my brain was unable to tell which was which. It's absolutely insane. When I think back to even the first movie this wasn't the case. But not only that, there are actually full CGI shots that look 100% real which I personably don't think has been achieved before by any filmmaker or studio.
I lean heavily towards the anti-CGI realm myself in terms of general modern filmmaking (not for videogames). I tend to think that it should only be used as a last resort scenario and for things that you absolutely cannot do with props, sets or physicals special effects and models. To me CGI is only really done properly when it takes years to do (Like 13 years for Avatar 2) and the scene is filmed with a real camera (preferably film) on a physical location or set (Jurassic Park 1 through 3 are great examples of this and you can see how the animators got better with each film) or when the entire scene including the characters, set, lighting and background is well crafted CGI. Take something like The Last of Us 2 as an example for the latter. To me the human characters in that game look fully real and believable because it was created with extreme detail to the animation, texture quality and lighting. The characters including the world around them all fit together like an animated puzzle.
So for Avatar 2 to make such an impact on me it was actually pretty crazy. I really just can't believe how the entire ocean looks especially. The underwater scenes literally look like an actual fish tank on my screen. It felt like being at the aquarium looking through the glass, that's how clear this movie is resolution wise. There was a short scenes where the Sully family flies through a thunder storm and the waves are crashing against the cliffs along with rain past them and it actually made me tear up because of how incredible it looked and sounded. Growing up playing the Uncharted series of games I became obsessed with rain graphics since every single game has an updated version of a rain storm. This was the best animated rain scene I've ever seen.
Oh and the high frame rate 48fps shots are absolutely insane. I believe that if this movie ran at 60fps about 85% to 90% of the movie would simply look real, no questions asked. Where as it sits now I'd say it's more around a 50-50 split most of the time.
As for the sound quality. Holy shit I'm not even kidding, this is the best mastered movie I've ever heard. The sound is literally perfect. It feels like like you're actually in the presence of these characters and well as the forest and sea surrounding you. There wasn't a single instance where I could hear a microphone being artificially raised in volume or anything like that. It was flawless.
And finally, the musical score was really stepped up for this one. It's honestly awesome. You get the themes from the original combined with brand new music that enhances every moment of this movie, especially the set pieces. Outside of a few themes from the original it's not exactly memorable like a John Williams score is but still they did a fantastic job.
Now there are plenty of shots that don't look real and made me cringe a bit. The whole human colony just looks very fake and I think it has a lot to do with the grey and beige colors of the steel and concrete. Plus the humans in the mech suits are very uncanny. Luckily that is a smaller portion of the movie. The train crash, while looking cool didn't exactly look real. I could tell that it was an obvious train crash simulation of some kind. Looked kind of like BeamNG Drive which made me chuckle. There was also an instance in an underwater scene where I could see the repeating wave surface texture in the corner of the shot. That made me laugh too as it reminded me of looking out over the ocean in Uncharted: Drake's Fortune haha.
But all in all, this was the first time I watched an animated movie and actually wondered how some shots were accomplished. I'm excited to see what the next three movies bring to the table.
I'm just curious if other people have come to the same conclusion as me technology wise. Let me know what you thought!
For some reason, when viewing this movie in the theater I really wasn't all that impressed. However I watched it last night on my 55" LG OLED E8 with 9.1 Atmos and I was pretty blown away.
I kind of already had the feeling this was going to be the case as OLED's usually do movies more of a justice than most theater projectors in terms of color and depth. But never the less it really impressed me.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not here praising the overall story and writing as even though it's more engaging than the first one character wise and the plot has slightly more depth to it, the overall story isn't anything special, mind blowing or even that original, similar to how the first movie is. What really stands out though are the visuals, the cinematography, the action set pieces and the musical score as well that was (dare I say leagues) better than the original score.
In my opinion, this is the first CGI film that has scenes that are indistinguishable from reality. Certain scenes look so great in fact that there is real, physical material, water and skin in the shot connected to CGI and my brain was unable to tell which was which. It's absolutely insane. When I think back to even the first movie this wasn't the case. But not only that, there are actually full CGI shots that look 100% real which I personably don't think has been achieved before by any filmmaker or studio.
I lean heavily towards the anti-CGI realm myself in terms of general modern filmmaking (not for videogames). I tend to think that it should only be used as a last resort scenario and for things that you absolutely cannot do with props, sets or physicals special effects and models. To me CGI is only really done properly when it takes years to do (Like 13 years for Avatar 2) and the scene is filmed with a real camera (preferably film) on a physical location or set (Jurassic Park 1 through 3 are great examples of this and you can see how the animators got better with each film) or when the entire scene including the characters, set, lighting and background is well crafted CGI. Take something like The Last of Us 2 as an example for the latter. To me the human characters in that game look fully real and believable because it was created with extreme detail to the animation, texture quality and lighting. The characters including the world around them all fit together like an animated puzzle.
So for Avatar 2 to make such an impact on me it was actually pretty crazy. I really just can't believe how the entire ocean looks especially. The underwater scenes literally look like an actual fish tank on my screen. It felt like being at the aquarium looking through the glass, that's how clear this movie is resolution wise. There was a short scenes where the Sully family flies through a thunder storm and the waves are crashing against the cliffs along with rain past them and it actually made me tear up because of how incredible it looked and sounded. Growing up playing the Uncharted series of games I became obsessed with rain graphics since every single game has an updated version of a rain storm. This was the best animated rain scene I've ever seen.
Oh and the high frame rate 48fps shots are absolutely insane. I believe that if this movie ran at 60fps about 85% to 90% of the movie would simply look real, no questions asked. Where as it sits now I'd say it's more around a 50-50 split most of the time.
As for the sound quality. Holy shit I'm not even kidding, this is the best mastered movie I've ever heard. The sound is literally perfect. It feels like like you're actually in the presence of these characters and well as the forest and sea surrounding you. There wasn't a single instance where I could hear a microphone being artificially raised in volume or anything like that. It was flawless.
And finally, the musical score was really stepped up for this one. It's honestly awesome. You get the themes from the original combined with brand new music that enhances every moment of this movie, especially the set pieces. Outside of a few themes from the original it's not exactly memorable like a John Williams score is but still they did a fantastic job.
Now there are plenty of shots that don't look real and made me cringe a bit. The whole human colony just looks very fake and I think it has a lot to do with the grey and beige colors of the steel and concrete. Plus the humans in the mech suits are very uncanny. Luckily that is a smaller portion of the movie. The train crash, while looking cool didn't exactly look real. I could tell that it was an obvious train crash simulation of some kind. Looked kind of like BeamNG Drive which made me chuckle. There was also an instance in an underwater scene where I could see the repeating wave surface texture in the corner of the shot. That made me laugh too as it reminded me of looking out over the ocean in Uncharted: Drake's Fortune haha.
But all in all, this was the first time I watched an animated movie and actually wondered how some shots were accomplished. I'm excited to see what the next three movies bring to the table.
I'm just curious if other people have come to the same conclusion as me technology wise. Let me know what you thought!
