My Thoughts On Corries 50th Anniversary Tram Crash Explosion

The 50th anniversary of Corrie has lead to the writers to commemorate the occasion by attempting to do what is known in filmmaking jargon as an attempt at "Jumping the Shark", and to give them credit they pulled it off pretty well. I mean it's not like these people are accustomed to filming "Die Hard" for a living, but that aside, the Corrie Tram crash over Leanne and Peters bar (I've forgotten what it's called and can't be arsed googling it.) was pulled off pretty well I think, and that got me thinking. This scene cost about one million pounds to film, that is equivalent to about under a minutes film time of "Avatar" and "Revenge of the Sith", but it was more exciting than any scene in those films. A magic tree falling down in Alpha Centauri and a lightsaber duel on a volcanic world were outdone by a pub with dodgy gas fittings blowing up, and a fake tram landing in a pretend paper shop in a studio in a city in the North. I would well imagine that both George Lucas and James Cameron would have spent ten times as much on a scene like this with the resources they have. They would have set up all the right camera angles for optimum viewing position for the audience. Spent months setting up CGI shots and hired trained stunt men to do the leap on the ground as the concussion from the explosion hits them. It would have been choreographed, crisp, too perfect. And that is the problem with some of these big budget films. The Corrie scenes were done on as lower budget, with less sophisticated technology, but it seemed more real. There was real rubble and fire and chaos. It was more arbitrary with the demands on time and budget constraints (and it was also an outdoor location shoot -well the scenes inside the wreckage aren't, - which brings up other problems), it was in short more realistic and exciting, as that is what these sorts of things are in real life, chaotic and out of the blue, messy. It felt real as nothing on Avatar or the Star Wars prequels, which sprung from the binary code of a graphics program did. As Red Letter Media accurately said, a little bit of the magic was lost when CGI overkill came into play. It's all a bit too clean and perfect to be plausible.

A good example of my theory that less can sometimes be more was in another soap "Emmerdale". They jumped the shark with a plane crash, but because of the low budget they could show little of the actual event. The explosion was seen in the reflection of a car window, and a burning line torch dangled off the side of an unseen filming truck was supposed to be one of the burning wings of the doomed airliner landing on the road into the village, and that worked surprisingly well. In reality something like that would be totally out of the blue, a totally surreal experience of a rain of fire descending on the hapless village arbitrarily raining carnage from above. If Emmerdale had had 20 million to do that scene and today's FX tech, I don't think they could have matched the simple effectiveness of those scenes.

As with a lot of Corrie it is the little things in the script, and the high standard of writing that makes the episode. It looks like goodnight Vienna for Sunita, I defy anyone to have remained stiff lipped when Dev broke down with guilt admitting she wouldn't have been in the shop at all if he hadn't made her work a shift instead of going to the hen do. Or how they are prolonging the suspense by having them trapped under all that very unstable rubble that I have a feeling will not be standing for much longer. It's guesswork figuring out the other two may be who have a one way ticket to soap heaven. Or a clever scene when they are so wrapped up with the main explosion, they don't realise a surrounding house is on well alight until they feel the heat from the window, who else is unnaccounted for?

It's pretty exciting stuff I know that.

Review. Avatar 3D (2009)

James Cameron seems to be on a personal mission to establish himself as a ground breaker in film. We have had the Terminator films, Titanic and now Avatar. Avatar isn't so much a film with some gratuitous CGI chucked in for good effect. It has simply redefined what special effects should be in a film. Avatar has pulled out all the stops, every cent of the 310 million dollars it reputedly cost to make has been spent in order to produce a cinematic experience truly unlike anything that has been before. Camerons uber-perfectionist style has meant that no stops have been left out to make the Navi and their homeworld: - Pandora, as believably possible as an alien world on a cinema screen can actually be. I was also impressed that the effects, whilst always in the forefront, were a means to an end, rather than the end themselves. If a CGI scene was put in, it was for a reason. So the film never felt laboured, or gratuitously self indulgent, unlike the Transformers films and the Star Wars prequels. I recommend the 3D version as well, it makes use of the effect without resorting to effects that are blatantly choreographed to take advantage of 3D, such as stuff on the screen, poking you in the face. Highlights for me are when protagonist, Jake Sully's (Sam Worthington) avatar first gets stranded in the Pandora forest and it's weird bioluminescant lifeforms. This felt like the weirdest David Attenborough documentary I'd ever seen, and a scene on a tree top near the vortex mountains. I literally had a wave of vertigo pass through me (no really). The FX are just that spot on. I really can't do them justice with words alone.

The actual plot of the film without giving away too much is a relatively simple one that's as old as the hills. The Blue skinned Navi are a peaceful race of forest dwelling primitives who have a deep affinity and connection with the life forms on their lands. But this way of life is threatened by a greedy mining colony of resource strapped humans, with their zealous, bankrolled marine privateer guards, that wants to mine unobtanium, some made up stuff that is very valuable, and wouldn't you know, is inconveniently plonked under the Navi territory. The humans have made Avatars, which are genetically constructed Navi, whose consciousness are controlled by humans in a lab. These remotely controlled Navi are designed to persuade their supposed countryman round to yielding land to the humans. There's only one way this is going to turn out, and this is the core of the film. It is essentially a morality tale about the need to respect mother nature, and not to exploit less advanced societies. It's hardly the most subtle example I've ever come across, but it tells a competent and focused story, showing us the conflict about how the humans are treating the Navi without going into some major league on screen sermonising. The film is atmospheric enough to show us the humans actions against the Navi, so we see for ourselves, rather than being hit about the head with the moral of the story. Which was a relief to me. It could have been a long 3 hours! The moral of the story as I said is old hat, but is a worthy one and if you want to put it across then you're OK with me. (I'm sure there will be some Republicans in the US ragging the film as green trash, at some point of it's showing.)

The Navi themselves are obviously based on the Amerindians (or common perceptions of them.) and the story is an allegory of the colonisation of the New World. These peaceable 12 foot tall, puppy eyed aliens are your standard nature loving (if overly rose tinted view of primitive societies.) low tech tree dwellers, but Cameron has added a little twist to this old trope, we see there is a pseudo scientific reason for why the Navi can mentally link with other life forms, and how the forest itself may be a giant ultra - consciousness. Has Cameron been tweaking about with the Gaia hypothesis? I'm not big on getting all sentimental about nature, but these (almost on the fringe of plausible) at least try to rationalise this green philosophy, rather than that lazy Hollywood cliche that Indi---,, sorry Navi are just at one with nature, cause they, er.. are like you know, - are. They also feel like real characters (some who probably walked,- alongside some of the plots, off Pocahontas, Last of the Mohicans and Dances with Wolves!)

The acting and dialogue in the film was also above par. Whilst it wasn't the most profound or richest of scripts I'd ever seen put to screen, and didn't have much in the way of plot twists or bombshells to drop. I had no real complaints. This is primarily a visual experience after all, and I don't begrudge it this. I don't think it was under any illusions that it was any other way. The script gets the film along, and never shrivels under the effects, or gets bogged down in exposition and muddled plotting, as I said it is a well paced, tightly woven piece. It would have been easy for the film to neglect the plot points of the toxic atmosphere (to humans) and the leads paralysis, but they are put to good use in the film, so well done there.

As I said this isn't the most subtle of stories I've seen, and my main qualms about the film are in this area. The baddy marines are a case in point. They seem to be hired from the "Rednecks and Hicks, Token Cipher Bad Guys" agency. Honestly when they are trotting out about every red-necked cliche, in the briefing scene at the end, I thought they were literally going to start denying evolution and climate change, whilst heckling Barack Obama as a communist who was born in Kenya. Likewise the Navi are a bit too squeaky clean, all the stubborn traditions, noble spirituality and puppy dog eyes are wheeled out to the utter limit. But then the film wants you to think that way about them, so we'll give that the benefit of the doubt.

But that aside. I really enjoyed Avatar. James Cameron has set out to rewrite the rules in visuals and my god he's succeeded. This is about as close as you can get to seeing a truly alien world as is possible. Brilliant effects with a zappy fast paced plot, that doesn't resort to self indulgent CGI scenes that are just window dressing, that maintains itself over a 3 hours that passes by quickly. That's no mean feat to pull off, and I recommend you go and see it soon as, you won't be disappointed.

Rating 8.5 / 10.