Why Avatar 2 may seem weird to your brain

Avatar 2, James Cameron’s sequel to the highest-grossing movie of all time, was shown to public audiences for the first time yesterday. And just like that, film-tech-nerd history – aka the best kind – was made.

🤔 What’s the big deal?... Avatar: The Way of Water is the first big film to be released in a high frame rate, but adjusted to keep a “cinematic” look, CNBC reports. What this means is that the movie’s action and underwater scenes are shown to audiences using a high-frame rate of 48 frames/second – since more pictures shown per second helps motion appear clearer and more realistic – but its dramatic scenes have been adjusted to appear like 24 FPS, the traditional rate used for virtually the entire history of film.

And while others have also experimented with higher frame rates, like Peter Jackson in The Hobbit trilogy and Ang Lee in Gemini Man (which used a whopping 120 FPS😳), Avatar 2 is the first to switch between HFR and what looks like a traditional frame rate throughout the film.

• For reference, live sports and newscasts usually appear at 30 frames/second. Video games typically show 60 frames/second.

👀 Looking ahead… Per Cameron, the film needs to make $2 billion-plus to turn a profit. Which – besides being higher than Snoop Dogg and Willie Nelson before brunch – may be a tough nut to crack, given its performance in China could be impacted by a widespread Covid outbreak. Though there is some way-too-early good news: international ticket sales are reportedly pacing 124% ahead of the original Avatar so far, which grossed $2.7 billion.