There’s Something Weird About the 3-D in Avatar: Fire and Ash

Unfortunately, the release of the otherwise wonderful Avatar: Fire and Ash will revive a debate many of us hoped had been put to rest some time ago. I’m talking, of course, about high frame rates (HFR). If you see James Cameron’s new film in premium 3-D formats, there’s a chance you’ll understand immediately what I mean. Some shots and scenes have a weirdly smooth quality, almost like you’re watching a soap opera or a behind-the-scenes making-of documentary. The motion is hyperfluid, but it feels wrong. It’s basically an effect similar to motion smoothing on your parents’ TV, though proponents of HFR will consider that a blasphemous comparison. In the case of Fire and Ash, what you’re watching is an image that’s being presented at 48 frames per second (fps) rather than 24 fps, which has been the standard since the dawn of the sound era.

Three years ago, Avatar: The Way of Water incorporated some HFR, though sparingly. (My colleague Chris Lee wrote an excellent piece at the time about the work that went into the changing frame rates in that film.) In the new picture, the HFR is a lot more prevalent — and a lot more distracting. Cameron has estimated that about 40 percent of Fire and Ash is HFR. It’s used in all the underwater scenes, as well as for shots that have a lot of lateral motion. As a result, the film seems to switch frame rates constantly. Cameron is a control freak, and he has his reasons for doing things this way, but I kept getting disoriented by the way Fire and Ash appeared to go back and forth between 48 fps and 24 fps. Individual shots presented at different frame rates in the same scene started to feel like they didn’t belong together, almost like we were watching an assembly cut of the film.

Proponents of HFR like the technology because it results in hyperclear images and, more importantly, reduces a stroboscopic flickering or stuttering effect that sometimes occurs at 24 fps when characters move across the screen or when the camera pans or tracks sideways. This effect, called “judder,” drives some obsessive technician types crazy, and once they see it, they apparently can’t unsee it. But the vast majority of viewers seem to be totally fine with judder. I have never once heard an ordinary audience member complain about it, though I have definitely heard some complaints about how off-putting HFR looks. Cameron would likely counter that the headache some people get from 3-D is specifically a result of our brains trying to handle the judder effect (and since the man makes three-hour-plus 3-D movies, that should obviously concern him). “High frame rate shouldn’t be thought of as a format,” he has said. “3-D is a format. 70-mm. is a format. High frame rate is a way of improving 3-D. So, it’s an authoring tool.” Maybe he’s right, though the people I know who get headaches from 3-D still got them even after watching The Way of Water with its HFR modifications.

On a practical level, however, not considering HFR a format presents another problem: Theaters tend not to identify when a film is being presented that way to audiences. They’ll note 3-D showings, and Imax, and Dolby (and, when we’re lucky enough to get them, 35-mm. and 70-mm.), but unless the HFR is being billed as some sort of premium experience (with the resulting upcharge), theater listings generally won’t mention it. This means that a lot of viewers will spend a lot of money to see Fire and Ash in 3-D and then wonder why half the movie is in SoapOperaVision™. One solution might be to just not see the film in 3-D at all. Which is a shame, because the first Avatar looked amazing in 3-D, and it didn’t need any HFR. That said, I saw The Way of Water (good movie) in multiple formats, and I always preferred seeing it at the standard 24 fps.

Frame rates have had a long and fascinating history since the earliest days of cinema. No need to hash all that out again now; you can read more about it here, here, here, and here. HFR garnered more attention in the past decade-plus thanks to the rise of digital effects and 3-D. Peter Jackson used it for his Hobbit trilogy (2012–14), and Ang Lee released two films, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2016) and Gemini Man (2019), in HFR. The Ang Lee efforts flopped mightily, the Hobbit epics were hits, and neither critics nor the public seemed to wholly embrace the newfangled technology.

Those who champion HFR believe it makes everything look more realistic — clearer and smoother and closer to how our eyes actually perceive the world — and they prize that kind of fidelity. I’ll agree that HFR does often make things look more “real,” but not in a good way. Explosions and gunshots look weirdly quaint and inconsequential in HFR, almost like someone set off a firecracker. More importantly, a performance that felt appropriately dramatic at 24 fps starts to feel awkward and stilted at HFR — almost like you’re in the room with the actor, cringing at their overacting. As David Edelstein put it in his review of the first Hobbit, talking about the film’s use of HFR: “The grandeur of the Lord of the Rings trilogy [has] been replaced by something that resembles tatty summer-stock theater.”

The art of movies, and the acting styles therein, has developed in a 24 fps world, and messing with it disrupts the illusion. “Movies aren’t real, and when we try to make them real, we realize just how not-real they are,” I said in my review of Gemini Man. Cinema requires a certain cognitive distance to work; it has to feel a bit like a dream, even in its most straightforward iterations. One of the reasons why some of us get so worked up over HFR is because some of its advocates envision it as the future of the medium, and that would be, frankly, a good way to destroy it forever. Texture, light, and motion — that’s all cinema ultimately is. Fundamentally changing those elements threatens the very nature of the form.

Since he’s a stubborn, punchy guy, Cameron can get combative when talking about HFR. When asked recently about the criticisms around his use of it, he replied, citing The Way of Water’s global box office, “I think $2.3 billion says you might be wrong on that.” He added, “Well, that’s the argument from authority. But the argument from artistic is: I happen to like it, and it’s my movie.” Fair enough. Fire and Ash does look pretty spectacular, so he’ll probably feel even more vindicated when all’s said and done. I suspect, however, that deep down, he understands that 24 fps remains the superior format. Years ago, he had planned to make all the Avatar sequels entirely HFR but then walked back that notion. “We’re using [high frame rate] to improve the 3-D where we want a heightened sense of presence, such as underwater or in some of the flying scenes,” he said at the time of Way of Water. “For shots of just people standing around talking, [high frame rate] works against us because it creates a kind of hyperrealism in scenes that are more mundane, more normal. And sometimes, we need that cinematic feeling of 24 fps.” I would argue that we always need “that cinematic feeling” — whether the actors are standing around talking or riding CGI dragons.