On "Avatar," "Lord of the Rings" and "Gangs of New York" and Why Motion Capture and Green Screen Will Never Replace Live Action Acting and Filming on Back Lot Sets and Locations

Jim Cameron's Avatar is set for a holiday-weekend opening, and already his detractors are sharpening their knives. Costing $380 million to make and market (on a production budget of $230 million), Avatar, which is Cameron's first feature since Titanic, is among the most expensive films ever made. Employing an innovative camera system allowing the director to "fly" a virtual camera through a computer-generated world, much of the action is depicted using CGI and the motion-capture technology which allowed Peter Jackson to render Gollum based upon Andy Serkis' performance on a green-screen stage in his Lord of the Rings trilogy. It is estimated that the film will have to do $217 million domestically to recoup its costs (by comparison, Titanic did $600 million domestically, and $1.84 billion worldwide). Shot in 3-D, part of what is riding on its success or failure is the extent to which audiences will pay a premium price to sit through a 3D feature.

Whether Avatar ultimately proves to be DeMille's Birth of a Nation, on the one hand, or Cimino's Heavens Gate, on the other, I doubt that the CGI motion-capture technology will make a heavy inroad as against live-action sequences for all but unique character parts.

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