I have my reasons for not liking James Cameron. But the concept of and trailers for the new “Avatar” movie did get my interest. However came across an early anonymous review (caveat lector – how reliable is this?) which included the following:
The new technology they’ve been using to eliminate the headaches and sickness conducive to old 3D tech has not been used properly in the action scenes throughout Avatar. The problem is with cutting in between 3D focal points and perspective – the mind cannot adjust to it without a buffer – thus, Avatar is literally vomit inducing.
This particularly gets my attention because of an experience my family had a couple years ago. In Upstate New York to visit my mom -my sisters and my brother and his family were all there. We have a long family tradition of seeing movies together especially on holidays. So our July 4th movie was the disappointing “Hancock” starring Will Smith.
My brother and his daughter had to cover their eyes for most of the film because the constantly moving camera (shaking around, moving in a circle around the target, and so on) made them extremely nauseous. Basically two hours of misery and not being able to enjoy the movie. Did not seem to bother anyone else in the theater. But apparently some people are susceptible to that sort of thing – such as one encounters in many first-person video games. That his daughter had the same problem suggests it might be genetic.
I wonder how much movie makers are aware of this problem. I wanted to tell the theater manager about this so they might include some sort of warning to film-goers. Of course they might hesitate because it could hurt ticket sales.
H/T Big Hollywood and Guardian (UK).
