Avatar Changed Cinema-For About Three Years

"Jake Sully, a colonialist Marine reborn as a blue-skinned freedom fighter, is trying to persuade his wife (also an alien) to accept the human weapons he's found at the bottom of the ocean. As a proud Pandoran, she won't touch the cursed technologies of the "sky people." So instead he starts to strap grenades onto her wooden arrows, Rambo-style. This can be their compromise, he says: the traditions that she loves, but optimized for kicking ass."

"The original Avatar, released the week before Christmas in 2009, made $750 million in domestic ticket sales, plus another $2 billion around the world. It was the largest total ever netted by a single film, and enough to bend reality toward Cameron's vision of the future. The industry rearranged itself to accommodate 3-D. New cameras were invented. New theater screens and televisions were ordered and installed."

"In 2011, 3-D screenings accounted for nearly one-fifth of all ticket revenue in the U.S. and Canada-a couple of billion dollars in brand-new, rocket-on-an-arrow money. Suddenly, the most famous and successful directors in the world were working in 3-D: Tim Burton, Steven Spielberg, Alfonso Cuarón, Ang Lee, Martin Scorsese. For three years in a row, from 2011 to 2013, the Academy Award for Best Cinematography went to 3-D movies."

Avatar films embraced massive technological upgrades—three-dimensional filming and high-frame-rate capture—to amplify spectacle and redefine cinematic exhibition. The original Avatar (2009) earned about $750 million domestically and $2 billion internationally, prompting theaters and manufacturers to adopt 3-D infrastructure and new camera systems. By 2011, 3-D screenings supplied nearly one-fifth of U.S. and Canadian ticket revenue, attracting major directors and winning multiple cinematography Oscars from 2011 to 2013. Art-house filmmakers experimented with the format. Initial momentum and industry realignment validated a wager on spectacle and innovation, but audience enthusiasm and the cultural impact of those technologies waned over time.

Read at The Atlantic