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I watched Avatar back when it first came out in IMAX 3D not knowing exactly what to expect. I must say I was blown away with the film visuals and VFX elements and I truly believe the film has taken a big step in technology and in improving 3D cinema. The sound design was cool and I did feel inmersed in the film and locations. However, thats as far as it took me. Story? Like someone mentioned it is Pocahontas in space and has less depth than a sheet of paper. Characters? No depth and very mediocre acting. Music? Nothing new at all...just more of the usual..but in a way I expected that. Sound design, like I said, was cool, but not amazing. Did anyone think of Jurassic Park? After all, both Gary Summers (rerecording mixer) and Christopher Boyes (sound designer) both worked on Jurassic Park as well as Avatar.
Conclusion, Avatar fully deserved its Oscar in visual fx. Best film and best director? No.
The Hurt Locker is a much lower budget film and again, there was no need for a great budget considering the style of the film. Some decent acting, nothing amazing but enjoyable. Considering the subject of the film and the main purpose of creating that tension and putting you there, the cinematography and direction were great and fully supported the script and story. Was it an amazing story? No. In fact, there wasn't that much of a story. However, that was not the point. The point was being there, feeling the tension and feeling an emotion. Being placed in the shoes of the characters and that is what film is about and The Hurt Locker achieves that well.
Sound design was brilliant! Again, less crazy roaring and surreal backgrounds than in Avatar but the use of sound in telling the story and supporting the visual style was brilliant! Paul Ottosson did a brilliant job there and Kathryn seems to have been great in supporting that sonic style. The whole film contains very little music and when it does, not only is it mixed really low, but it is very slow and almost more of a drone than it is music. For the rest of it, the sound is all VERY real. So real that, unlike films with large explosions and creature vox reminding you its a film, Hurt Locker makes you feel like it is a real event, a documentary and that is what unsettles you and causes the tension. The use of realism in the explosions and sniper shooting thinking in how sound travels and how speed affects sound and so on make even the large explosions very original and real. Brilliant use of high speed shooting in closeups of gravel, and dirt lifting from a car chassis give room for sound to be microscopic. One thing I liked was how, whenever we entered a hostile area or an unknown territory for the squad to disarm a bomb, all background and atmos dissapeared and we could only hear the onscreen foley. This put the audience in the character's shoes and restricted the audience from knowing where they were and thus placing them in that hostile or unknown territory. Tasteful, simple, effective and totally deserved the Oscars for sound.
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