It’s been a week since James Cameron’s scifi otherworldly epic has been released. And If you haven’t seen it yet, you’ve  been bombarded nonstop with opinions about it from everywhere. Friends are telling you to see it, bloggers are recommending it, reviews are glowing, and Digg is full of articles about the film.

At this point we figure most people have their interest piqued by this $250+ million scifi movie from the maker of Titanic. But most people are still asking what’s the big deal about a story with blue CG aliens that look like cats? The trailer didn’t really get you interested, you weren’t a super big Titanic fan, and all the growing hype around it seems a little too much. You might be on the fence about watching it in theaters, or wondering if you should just wait for it on DVD/BluRay or even (gasp!) download it.

Here’s 4 reasons we think you should watch it in the theaters.

VISUALS

Movies are much more than just stories and characters. Movies were made to be seen. They’re a way of telling a story with moving images. That’s what separates it from other narrative mediums. If it weren’t about the visuals in the end, then we could just be as happy reading a book or listening to a radio drama. But it’s the carefully crafted images that seamlessly come one after another that manage to tell a story and evoke these feelings of hurt, depth, joy, and wonderment. The movies have always been journeys to places we’ve never been, and for a few hours in front of a flickering screen, we allow ourselves to be lost in that world along with the stories of its characters.  What s good movie does is takeyou someplace new. What seemed impossible before is real, even if it’s just for a few hours.

Avatar is just that. It’s not just a story. It’s a world. And it’s a world full of things we’ve never seen or imagined before, all richly alive in full color.  Remember the first time your eyes took in  the endless desert in its painted glory, the Grand Canyon in it massive depth, the sun setting on the vast and open Pacific, or the lights and soaring skyscrapers of New York City? We’ve all seen postcards and photos of these things, but we know it’s different when we’re there to experience it in its true grandeur.

In the same way, James Cameron and his team have created an amazing world from the depths of their imaginations. It’s been accomplished by seamless CG and motion capture technology that James Cameron has spent years collaborating on. The result is a lush rich world that seamlessly blends with real live action and a world thats been populated by people who’s performances, thought they’re CG, are as real as any actors.

Sure you can watch it on your TV or computer screen later on, but would you look at a picture of the Grand Canyon and then tell people you’ve been to there? Avatar is a movie meant to be seen on a big screen as it draws you in and makes you part of its world. It’s a movie that underscores that theaters are still relevant in an age of faster and more mobile(and consequently smaller format) media consumption.

3D

The big talk about Avatar has certainly got to be the 3D. If you’ve heard anything about Avatar, it’s that James Cameron spent a very long time making this in 3D. It was the only way he could envision it so he went ahead and helped develop a stereoscopic film camera when the technology didn’t exist. And after the recent spate of 3d movies that have seen gimmicky, the talk is that this movie has cemented 3D’s place in cinema.

When most people think of 3D, they think of the red and blue paper glasses from decades ago. If you’ve had the chance to watch any of the animated films that were in 3D over the last few year, you know that things have come a long way since. It actually works and it works well. The problem with the films before, and why 3D hasn’t taken hold, is that the use of 3D has been hugely gimmicky. Things were filmed to fly out at you to elicit that GOTCHA! moment. The backgrounds feel like they’re just set paintings while animated cardboard cutouts move in and out against that background. They’ve been more of a tool to get people to pay more in a time of declining box office receipts, than they’ve been a new tool for telling stories.

Avatar is different. It has depth. It uses 3D not as gimmick, but as a tool to draw you deeper into the world.

If Avatar is all about its visual beauty, then the 3D creates a living landscape for that beauty. It’s the subtle things that the 3D does that really makes it work.  Things flicker and move around. People are slightly occluded behind dirty glass. Light bounces off water and shimmers in people’s eyes. It creates a new depth of realism.

In the end, the 3D isn’t flawless. But it’s definitely fantastic and engrossing. And once you allow yourself to be wrapped into the story and world, you’ll feel like you’ve been privy to go along for a ride to another world, and you’re lucky enough to have an open window seat just as historic events start unfolding.

Do yourself a favor. Instead of sitting there investigating the technology and looking to see how well it works or doesn’t work, just forget you have the glasses on. Just slip into the world from the moment you see the 20th century fox logo and take it as it is.

SUPPORT IT

The official number from Fox is that Avatar’s budget was $237 million to make. Others estimate and gossip that it cost far more than that, and may have cost up to $350 million to produce. After you’ve decided on a figure, remember to  tack on an extra $150 million for marketing. Either way that’s no chump change. Avatar is by far one of the costliest movies ever made.

We often forget that every movie made is a product. And to make a product, money has to be initially invested. People and companies don’t invest money to break even, or even worse, lose money. They invest money in things they believe will ultimately reap them a profit. And people dont spend a years of their life, learning their craft, struggling, trying to convince other people to support them and invest in their ideas, just to take that huge risk and gamble and not have it pay off.

If endeavours like this, which are huge risks, don’t pay off,  people won’t be willing to invest in an artist(no matter how critically acclaimed they are) simply because they saw how much money that artist lost last time. People will be unwilling to make huge bets. They’re simply too risky. If you’re going to put a lot of money in on something, you’re gonna do it on what’s safe. Which is why most movies that have huge budgets are sequels because they know a fan base is going to watch it and make money for them. Think about it yourself. If you had a couple of million dollars to invest, would you give it to someone who’s last film flopped in terms of box office receipts or barely broke even? No matter how popular it may have been, it comes down to the bottom line.

With Hollywood spending money on so many flops and disappointments, wallets tightening in this economic climate, and movie tickets being so much more expensive than they used to be, it’s tempting to dismiss Avatar as another overhyped Hollywood blockbuster. It’s easy to think of it as another that probably won’t be worth the price of a ticket. But the truth is, Avatar is worth the price of that ticket. Certainly more worth it than over half the things that have been show in theaters for the past few years.

It was a huge gamble but we’ve ended up with a good product. And any good product deserves whatever success comes to it whether it be modest or massive. Good products should make money. The people who take the financial risk, no matter how big their bank accounts are, should reap those profits because they saw the potential and invested despite the huge risks. The people who have labored and spent years to make it should be rewarded. If it’s not rewarding, there’s no reason to waste your livelihood or money on it. Without them a movie like this would never see the light of day.

There’s always the argument about downloading and that’ll be for another day. In the end I’ve always believed the argument comes down to value. Why go to a theater and plop down money for horrible movie after horrible movie. My thought has always been that when Hollwood releases something worth the $15 for a movie ticket, I’ll watch it in the theaters.  And so will everyone else. Avatar is well worth the money.

If the iPod made no money, there would be no iPod touches or iPhones and consequently the slew of products that are now competing against them that have revolutionized computing in a few short years. If Terminator 2 and True Lies made no money, then nobody would have faith to put down  the $200+ million it cost to make Titanic, and if that wasn’t successful, then we would not have Avatar today or possibly some of the other high stakes gambles that have happened since then. When products are successful, we encourage future investment in new, creative, and innovative products. This applies to films just as much as it does to consumer products.

ITS AN EXPERIENCE

In the end, Avatar is what good filmmaking is about. It’s an experience and a trip. It manages to take you out of your daily grind, put you someplace new and immerse you completely in it. It pushes the boundaries of what we thought filmmaking was with its CG and 3D. It doesn’t use any of these tools as gimmick, but as tools to tell a story by enveloping you in the world completely. It’s visually beautiful. The acting is great. Some will argue the story isn’t amazing, and the truth is, it’s not. But it’s a good basic story that appeals universally to everyone.

Avatar is at its core, a trip to another world where we get to meet living and breathing people, immerse ourselves in a different culture, and be present to watch as their history unfolds. Avatar is film. And film is magic.