Master of the universe

By Peter Jackson,  Sydney Morning Herald, 19 December 2009

In Avatar, film sorcery has finally caught up with James Cameron's imagination.

The suspension of disbelief. That phrase has long been used as a way of describing the necessary relationship between filmmaker and the audience. It's a quaint, slightly cynical concept, in which both participants admit that "we know this is a lot of nonsense but let's forget about that for a couple of hours and allow ourselves to have some fun". The suspension of disbelief is an unspoken contract that has served the needs of moviegoers and moviemakers for more than 100 years.

But occasionally a movie comes along that takes us by the scruff of the neck and propels us headlong into an experience so strong and profound that such agreements are rendered instantly redundant. These are the movies that live with us our entire lives and, some would argue, shape our lives - films that touch both heart and mind and compel us to surrender completely to the power of the experience. This has happened to me maybe 10 or 12 times in my life and doubtless, for each of us, the list of these watershed movies is unique and particular to our life experience.

One of the great strengths of cinema is its diversity; there are films to suit all tastes, films that connect on many different levels, films that appeal to different age groups and cultures, and films that speak very powerfully to specific audiences. However, every once in a while we will see a movie that transcends cultural barriers, genre and taste; a film that lives on in the minds of the audience, years after the fact; a film with a story, characters and dialogue so memorable that it creates its own mythology. An ocean liner splitting in half; a man falling away from the camera and plummeting into the sea; a box of long-stemmed roses flying apart to reveal a sawn-off shotgun; a watery tentacle snaking across a room; a playground atomising in a nuclear blast; a woman and a man standing on the bow of ship, faces to the sun, arms outstretched - these are the images that stay with us long after the lights have come up. These are the stories we remember and treasure and relive over and over again. Stories that, for many of us, become defining moments in our lives.

During the 12 years since Jim Cameron made one of the most extraordinary films of all time, the phenomenon that was Titanic, we have seen him working with new technologies to make 3D documentaries, in which he explores the undersea environments of some of the world's deepest oceans. We had no idea at the time that we were, in fact, witnessing the nascent development of Jim's next feature film but, in retrospect, that's exactly what was happening. Jim was preparing for Avatar - building and developing groundbreaking 3D technology that could enable him to capture, on film, images that had thus far only existed in his imagination; images that, until now, were too complex and too difficult to render on film in a 3D universe.

In terms of cinema, Avatar represents a giant leap forward in the world of filmmaking. Cameron has created a mind-boggling, beautiful, dangerous, alternative reality that has never before been seen on screen. As an audience, we find ourselves immersed in the 3D landscape of Pandora, an alien planet inhabited by strange, graceful creatures and terrifying monsters. The jungles of Pandora glow with bioluminescent plant life; it is an environment that is as frightening as it is beautiful and it is home to the Na'vi, an indigenous alien race who come into conflict with humans from Earth wielding futuristic weaponry.

Avatar is a fascinating mix of drama and science. Everything in the film has been designed and built with the utmost care and attention to detail - not just the costumes but even the buttons on the costumes. Not just the trees of Pandora but the leaves on those trees and the tiny insects crawling on the leaves. This is a world with an entire ecosystem, where animal and plant life has established itself in forms both familiar and wondrous, where there are gases in the atmosphere and minerals in the ground. It is a world that has evolved over time and that abides by its own internal laws of nature and logic. But at its heart, Avatar is a story that speaks to a universal truth about our place in the world and the things we value and the things we choose to destroy. It forces us to confront the issue of who we are and what we want and to acknowledge the simple truth that, as a species, we are bound to a common fate, and so the future of humanity is in our hands. The message of this film is: character is destiny.

Filmmaker Peter Jackson's digital effects company, Weta, supervised the special effects in Avatar. This is an edited extract from The Art of Avatar: James Cameron's Epic Adventure by Lisa Fitzpatrick (Abrams, $49.95).

The Banshee

The Banshee is the most important creature in the film, because as the story unfolds we see that the Na'vi are a flying culture and that they are closely bonded with their winged mounts, as a medieval knight was with his horse. Some of the earliest designs were quite alien, more like stingrays or living jet fighters. Then, as we tried to wrestle the shapes back to something more familiar, they quickly became too familiar pterodactyls and dragons. The goal became to mix the familiar and the alien in a unique way; to serve the metaphor and create a sense of familiarity for the audience but to always be alien in the specifics.

The metaphor I proposed for the Banshee was neither pterodactyl nor dragon but eagle a great bird of prey, a raptor whose diving attacks are swift and deadly. In execution, the Banshee took on aspects of familiar flying creatures. It has the membranous wings of a pterosaur; the hook-like claws of a fruit bat; the bright eyes and splayed wing tips of an eagle. But it also has the jaw mechanism of a barracuda, the colouring of a poison-dart frog and the hinged teeth of a viper. And its nostrils, inducting straight into the chest cavity like the intakes of a jet engine, are unlike anything on Earth. The audience is reminded always that one is on a truly alien planet.

James Cameron