Lede

On release day – and across the global rollout – cinemas worldwide are still charging a premium to strap mild suffering to your face and call it “immersion”.

Hermit Off Script

This week it is the same old nonsense dressed up as the future. I first saw a film in 3D in 2009 in Amman, Jordan – and of course it was Avatar, and I still remember cursing those glasses – the dim, shadowy lenses, the colours that never matched normal viewing, the feeling that the tech was the headline and my eyeballs were the sacrifice. I tried it once or twice in 3D, then watched Avatar about 10 times in IMAX 2D whenever I could, because the clean picture and the big screen absolutely wiped the floor with the gimmick. Fast-forward 16 years and I honestly hoped we would be past wearable plastic by now – glasses-free 3D, or at least something that does not make your nose ache and your eyes burn. Instead I watched Avatar 3 in 3D again and it felt like the same kit from 16 years ago. Half the film my nose hurt, my eyes hurt, and my heart hurt, because I could see the beautiful, clear image around the edges – like Pandora was teasing me from outside the frame of stupidity. And the excuse is always the same: “technology is changing, jobs, money, tradition”. No. Old generations who refuse to adapt are the ones rotting the whole system, then acting surprised when the stink reaches the audience. Avatar will run for decades and become a legend like Star Wars and Star Trek, and then AI will make worlds cheaper, faster, easier – which means stories will need to be better than ever, not just shinier. Maybe by 2029 I will finally watch it in 3D without glasses, if I am still breathing on this Earth.

P.S. I went back and watched it again in ScreenX 2D on a smaller screen and it instantly proved the point: no glasses, no faff, no dim lenses stealing the colour and clarity. If you get the choice, pick IMAX 2D when it is available – the clean picture and the big screen swallow whatever “wow” moments 3D tries to sell you. Until 3D works without glasses, it is a hard no from me.

Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025)

Trailer

Synopsis roast

This is Avatar in its “myth has consequences” phase. The big flex is still the same: Pandora does not feel like a backdrop; it feels like a living system with rules, weather, weight, and memory. The franchise works when it treats spectacle as a delivery method for emotion – family strain, grief, loyalty, fear, and that slow moral panic of watching humans repeat the same ugly story with better hardware.

Cameron is still doing what he always does: making the screen feel like a window you could step through, then reminding you the real horror is not aliens – it is extraction, arrogance, and the belief that owning something makes it yours. If you want the best experience, the irony is brutal: the clearer the image, the more Pandora wins. Which is why the rant about 3D glasses lands like a slap – the film is built for awe, and the industry insists on selling it through dim plastic.

Cast and credits

Director: James Cameron
Screenplay: James Cameron; Rick Jaffa; Amanda Silver
Story: James Cameron; Rick Jaffa; Amanda Silver; Josh Friedman; Shane Salerno
Producers: James Cameron; Jon Landau
Cinematography: Russell Carpenter
Editing: Stephen E. Rivkin; David Brenner; Nicolas de Toth; John Refoua; Jason Gaudio; James Cameron
Music: Simon Franglen (with original Avatar themes by James Horner)
Studio: Lightstorm Entertainment
Distributor: 20th Century Studios
Runtime: 197 minutes
Release year: 2025 (US release: 19 December 2025)

Main cast (headline)

• Sam Worthington as Jake Sully
• Zoe Saldana as Neytiri
• Sigourney Weaver as Kiri
• Stephen Lang as Miles Quaritch
• Kate Winslet as Ronal
• Oona Chaplin as Varang
• David Thewlis as Peylak
  (Plus returning ensemble across the Sully family and RDA threads.)

Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

Trailer

Synopsis roast

This film is Cameron basically saying: “You thought I was done inventing cinema languages? Cute.” The water work is not just pretty – it is choreography, physics, performance, and mood all locked together. Under the scale, it is a family story: protection, displacement, belonging, and the cost of surviving when the war will not stop following you.

Its strength is patience. It gives you time to live on Pandora instead of sprinting through it. That is why it hits on a big screen: it is not content, it is habitat. If the first Avatar was a door opening, this one is you stepping inside and realising the house has oceans, rules, and consequences.

Cast and credits

Director: James Cameron
Screenplay: James Cameron; Rick Jaffa; Amanda Silver
Story: James Cameron; Rick Jaffa; Amanda Silver; Josh Friedman; Shane Salerno
Producers: James Cameron; Jon Landau
Cinematography: Russell Carpenter
Editing: Stephen Rivkin; David Brenner; John Refoua; James Cameron
Music: Simon Franglen (original Avatar themes by James Horner)
Studios: 20th Century Studios; Lightstorm Entertainment
Distributor: 20th Century Studios
Runtime: 192 minutes
Release year: 2022

Main cast (headline)

• Sam Worthington as Jake Sully
• Zoe Saldana as Neytiri
• Sigourney Weaver as Kiri
• Stephen Lang as Miles Quaritch
• Kate Winslet as Ronal

Avatar (2009)

Trailer

Synopsis roast

The original is a landmark because it makes audiences feel like they are travelling. It is not “just visuals” – it is a world with an ecology, a spirituality, a culture, and a physical sense of place that cinema rarely delivers at that scale. The story is deliberately mythic: a clean moral shape that lets the real achievement shine – immersion that actually means something.

Its strength is how quickly it makes you care about Pandora as a living home rather than a stage. And yes, it kicked off a lot of people’s beef with 3D: the day cinema decided the future should be watched through slightly dim spectacles. No wonder IMAX 2D became the safer bet for anyone who wanted the cleanest, brightest picture. Clarity is not a minor detail – it is the point.

Cast and credits

Director: James Cameron
Writer: James Cameron
Producers: James Cameron; Jon Landau
Cinematography: Mauro Fiore
Editing: James Cameron; John Refoua; Stephen E. Rivkin
Music: James Horner
Studio: Lightstorm Entertainment
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Runtime: 162 minutes
Release year: 2009 (London premiere: 10 December 2009)

Main cast (headline)

• Sam Worthington as Jake Sully
• Zoe Saldana as Neytiri
• Sigourney Weaver as Dr Grace Augustine
• Stephen Lang as Miles Quaritch
• Michelle Rodriguez as Trudy Chacon

James Cameron – biography and accomplishments

James Cameron (born 16 August 1954) is a Canadian filmmaker and deep-sea explorer who treats cinema like a contact sport – part engineering, part myth, part stubborn will. He broke out with The Terminator (1984), then kept raising the bar with Aliens (1986), The Abyss (1989), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), and True Lies (1994) before turning Titanic (1997) into a cultural event that won 11 Academy Awards from 14 nominations. He later built the Avatar saga into a long-term world project, using cutting-edge production to force the industry to keep up. Outside film, he led the DEEPSEA CHALLENGE project and completed a solo dive to the Challenger Deep in March 2012, blending his obsessions – technology, risk, and the unknown – into one life story.

Career timeline

• 1978: Xenogenesis (early short – the DIY blueprint)
• 1984: The Terminator (breakout)
• 1986: Aliens (sequel that behaves like a masterpiece)
• 1989: The Abyss (water obsession begins, permanently)
• 1991: Terminator 2: Judgment Day (effects plus emotion, the Cameron formula)
• 1994: True Lies (action comedy with scale)
• 1997: Titanic (global phenomenon; 11 Oscars, 14 nominations; Cameron personally won Best Director and shared Best Picture and Best Film Editing)
• 2009: Avatar (Pandora arrives; the modern 3D era gets supercharged)
• 2022: Avatar: The Way of Water (water as a cinematic language)
• 2025: Avatar: Fire and Ash (franchise enters its darker, consequence-heavy stretch)

Companies and craft footprint

• Lightstorm Entertainment: founded in 1990 by Cameron and Lawrence Kasanoff.
• Digital Domain: co-founded in 1993 (effects infrastructure era thinking).
• Signature style: long development, ruthless technical standards, simple mythic story bones, and emotional punches delivered by spectacle.

Non-film achievement

• 26 March 2012: solo descent to Challenger Deep as part of DEEPSEA CHALLENGE – the director literally went to the bottom of the world to research “depth”.

Practical author notes

• Make him a builder, not a genius myth.
• Show the pattern: invent – suffer – deliver – industry copies.
• Praise the craft, interrogate the exhibition choices (hello, glasses).
• Keep the human through-line: he is obsessed with survival, systems, and the cost of power.

What does not make sense

• Cinema sells “the future” while handing you eyewear that still cuts brightness and comfort.
• You pay extra for 3D, then spend 197 minutes babysitting your nose bridge.
• The industry acts shocked people drift to streaming, while it keeps bundling irritation with the ticket.
• A franchise about seeing a living planet clearly is often experienced through tinted plastic.
• Studios can animate oceans, ash, and alien skies, but cannot upgrade the one object touching your actual eyeballs.

Sense check / The numbers

1. Avatar did not “introduce” 3D – it turbocharged a modern boom: one analysis of the era calls the latest 3D boom as starting with Avatar in 2009, and a YouGov survey of nearly 3,000 Britons found only 22 per cent thought 3D improved the experience, while 59 per cent did not know or did not care. [Stephen Follows / YouGov]
2. The glasses problem is not imaginary – it is physical: the lenses can cut brightness and add discomfort, so the “premium” format often feels like a downgrade in clarity. It is literally light loss: a peer-reviewed study measured 60.8 per cent brightness loss for 3D viewing, and SMPTE guidance notes additional luminance reduction at the viewer’s eye due to the “demultiplexing” glasses. [Applied Sciences (MDPI); SMPTE]
3. Glasses-free 3D in a cinema is complex because cinemas are not living rooms: research on glasses-free 3D cinema highlights the need to accommodate viewing across the packed auditorium, while modern optics work notes constraints on optimum viewing distance that are unfriendly to multi-user scenarios. [ResearchGate paper; Optica]
4. The tech is moving, just not into your local multiplex yet: Nature published late 2025 research on glasses-free 3D displays that frames the core trade-off as a balance between size and wide viewing-angle constraints. Translation: it is possible, but scaling it to a room full of humans without headaches or dead zones is still brutal. [Nature]
5. James Cameron is not a “lucky director” – he is a repeat offender at the top: Titanic earned 14 Academy Award nominations and won 11 Oscars, and Cameron is also credited with piloting a submersible to Challenger Deep in March 2012 at 35,787 feet (10.90 km). [DCEFF; Deepsea Challenge]
6. Jon Landau, Cameron’s key producing partner on Titanic and Avatar, died aged 63 on 5 July 2024; coverage notes Fire and Ash as his final credited Avatar project. [The Guardian; Deadline; People]

The sketch

Scene 1: Premium Discomfort
Panel: Ticket counter. A sign reads “3D surcharge”. A cashier slides a pair of plastic specs across like contraband.
Dialogue:
Cashier: “That will be extra for the immersive nose pain.”
Viewer: “Do I get Pandora, or just a migraine?”
Scene 2: Innovation Meeting
Panel: Boardroom silhouettes. A flipchart: “2025 Roadmap”. Under it: “Wash glasses. Repeat.”
Dialogue:
Exec: “We are future-facing.”
Engineer (whispering): “Those are literally 2009.”
Scene 3: Planet of the Clear Image
Panel: A Na’vi silhouette points at the human’s glasses. Behind them, Pandora glows perfectly sharp.
Dialogue:
Na’vi: “Why do you wear darkness to see?”
Human: “Because Earth calls it progress.”

What to watch, not the show

• Exhibition incentives: upgrading projectors and screens costs money; glasses are cheap.
• Standards and scale: glasses-free 3D needs acceptable viewing for an entire auditorium, not one sweet spot.
• Brightness maths: 3D systems and eyewear routinely trade comfort and luminance for the effect.
• Audience tolerance: once the novelty wears off, discomfort becomes the headline.
• The bigger threat: when AI and virtual production make “worlds” cheaper, only story and character will still be scarce.

The Hermit take

Pandora keeps evolving. The cinema business keeps polishing the same plastic and calling it destiny.

Keep or toss

Keep the ambition, the craft, and the big-screen pilgrimage.
Toss the idea that “premium” should mean dimmer, heavier, and less human.

Sources

• IMDb – Avatar: Fire and Ash (tt1757678): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1757678/
• 20th Century Studios – Avatar: Fire and Ash page: https://www.20thcenturystudios.com/movies/avatar-fire-and-ash
• Wikipedia – Avatar: Fire and Ash: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar:_Fire_and_Ash
• Box Office Mojo – Avatar (2009): https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0499549/
• IMDb – Avatar (2009) (tt0499549): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/
• Box Office Mojo – Avatar: The Way of Water: https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt1630029/
• IMDb – Avatar: The Way of Water (tt1630029): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1630029/
• Stephen Follows – 3D audience interest / YouGov references: https://stephenfollows.com/p/how-are-3d-movies-performing-at-the-box-office
• SMPTE (PDF) – On-screen light measurement guidance: https://www.smpte.org/hubfs/er0992-2014.pdf
• Applied Sciences (MDPI) – Brightness loss in 3D: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/5/4/926
• Optica – Glasses-free 3D LED display limitations: https://opg.optica.org/oe/abstract.cfm?uri=oe-33-9-19616
• ResearchGate – Glasses-free 3D cinema viewing constraints: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258506005_On_Aspects_of_Glasses-Free_3D_Cinema_70_Years_Ago
• Nature – 2025 glasses-free 3D display research: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09752-y
• DCEFF – Cameron awards context (Titanic nominations and wins): https://dceff.org/filmmaker/cameron-james/
• Deepsea Challenge – Cameron Challenger Deep dive details: https://deepseachallenge.com/the-team/james-cameron/
• The Guardian – Jon Landau obituary coverage: https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/jul/06/jon-landau-titanic-avatar-dies-aged-63
• Deadline – Jon Landau death report: https://deadline.com/2024/07/jon-landau-dies-avatar-oscar-winning-titanic-producer-was-63-1236002580/
• People – Cameron tribute to Jon Landau in Fire and Ash: https://people.com/james-cameron-pays-tribute-late-avatar-producer-jon-landau-fire-and-ash-11864790