What day is it today? At the time of writing, it is, most of us would say, Friday, almost time to go home and relax after a long working week. But to many film fans worldwide, today has another name: it is Avatar Day. For today marks the launch of the first preview footage from James Cameron's eagerly awaited blockbuster - and, simultaneously, the trailer for the computer game that accompanies it.
It used to be that computer games were a minority pursuit, often derided by those who considered themselves better connected to 'real life'. Being inherently unreal, they certainly weren't seen as suitable material for films. Then Tomb Raider happened and all of a sudden it became apparent that there was big money to be made. Games franchises like Grand Theft Auto started buying in the talents of the skilled character actors Hollywood had too long relegated to minor roles, and fans responded with great enthusiasm. It is now rare for an action film to go into development without work also starting on a spin-off game. Increasingly, the games are proving more lucrative than the films themselves, and now films are starting to be made based on games, rather than the other way around. What does this mean for the film industry?
We might start by asking what a film is for. There are numerous possible answers. Films are for entertainment. They can make us think. They can educate us, and they can give us cultural currency over which to bond with our friends. Some people invest in films for these reasons - but for most investors, films have just one primary purpose: to make a profit. If they do this directly, that means they have to give audiences enough of what they want to sell lots of tickets. If they do it through merchandising, they only have to attract enough viewers to effectively promote their product, and what appears onscreen is inevitably under pressure to change as a result. It becomes less about entertaining, informing or inspiring, and more about advertising.
With the rise of the event movie - a film of such cultural importance that many people will go to see it even if they don't expect it to be very good, as happened with Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull - the popular approach to cinema-going has undergone a significant shift. The recent G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra was critically panned as little more than a promotional stunt for a toy line, yet still people were prepared to go and see it, partly due to their nostalgic feelings for the older toys that inspired its television predecessor (as, indeed, with Transformers before it). Unfortunately, once it's proven that people will pay to watch adverts, there's a lot less motive for the industry to produce anything else. Amongst other things, we can look forward to films based on Monopoly, Battleships (move over, Bill And Ted) and even the mini computer game Asteroids.
Where will all this lead? To answer that question, it's worth looking at where the future of games is heading. Whilst, with the exception of 3D viewing, cinema technology has remained fairly static in recent years, games have been changing dramatically. The fluid graphics of Avatar (despite a few frame rate issues) illustrate an increasing trend toward realism in light and movement, even when characters are cartoonish, and other games are becoming more and more immersive. Looking back at Sixties science fiction films, we can see that many people expected cinema to become an immersive experience sooner or later. Now that water projections can produce a giant Water Horse in a Japanese lake or send Watchmen's Dr Manhattan strolling down the Thames, should we expect to see conventional cinemas gradually replaced by stories told in this way?
If a change is coming, it's not coming that fast. It's not that the technology is young - it's fast developing - but rather that the financial incentive isn't there to push things in this direction when it would require such a big investment in infrastructure. Similarly, whilst much of the appeal of games is their interactivity, which requires individual focus, cinema-going remains a group activity whose appeal lies partly in the fact that (even whilst we might interpret them differently) we all see and hear the same things. In a game, all the participants influence the action, so not everyone can get their way. A trip to the cinema isn't competitive - it's an opportunity to relax and absorb something that can be talked about afterwards. In cinema there's no need to experience the frustration of never quite being able to defeat that end of level boss, though there remains a danger, with films based on games and toy lines and theme park rides, that you will end up feeling as if you're going through the same thing again and again and again.
Given this familiar story, is Avatar really deserving of the hype? It's beautiful to look at, that's for sure, but at this stage it's difficult to say much more - there is as yet little evidence of a strong story. Never mind. If it doesn't play out the way fans are hoping, there will still be Tr2n to look forward to.
