You’ve probably never seen the 1968 Soviet-produced adaptation of ‘War and Peace’. That’s okay, I haven’t either. Directed by Sergei Bondarchuk, it is to date the most expensive film ever made, costing $100 million, or over $700 million once adjusted for inflation. It tells, at both an epic scale and an epic length, Tolstoy’s story of the Napoleonic invasion of Russia. The magnitude of its production is almost incomprehensible; it runs over eight hours and involved, in a scene depicting the Battle of Borodino, 120,000 soldiers. The film has received wide critical acclaim, achieving a rare 100% rating on rottentomatoes.com, with Roger Ebert saying of it, “Considering the cost and the vast effort that went into its making, such a film can be made only once in our lifetime. The wonder, indeed, is that it was made at all.”

How times have changed.

We may never see anything that can claim the same scope of production that drove ‘War and Peace’. Since the 60′s, production costs have shifted from the production phase to post-production; armies filmed live to being created in animation studios. Currently, the most expensive film to have been made in the West is the third Pirates of the Caribbean installment, ‘At World’s End’. It holds that title for another week as anticipation grows for another monster to unseat it.

James Cameron’s epic ‘Avatar’ is scheduled for release on the 18^th of this month. If the volume of conversation surrounding it online is any indication, it looks to be well worth the investment. There has been persistent, almost obsessive buzz leading up to the film’s release. As time goes by, commentary around the film grows more positive.

A positive perspective

Feelings within social media were heavily divided in the early weeks of Fox’s marketing push for ‘Avatar’. As trailers and clips are released, opinion is becoming more and more in favor of the film. Currently, 38% of the mentions of the film are positive, while only 17% are negative, unusually favorable for a big-budget blockbuster. This bodes well for Fox, Cameron, and everyone with a stake in the film. Add to that the film’s average 3000+ mentions well outnumbering the 1200-mention norm for a film of its type at this stage prior to release, and ‘Avatar’ looks like it’s sitting pretty for a very healthy opening weekend. It is, however, unlikely to surmount the massive box office tallies of the latest ‘Twilight’ installment, which benefited from the virtues of being a franchise.

That said…

The film is not without a wide range of criticisms. In a year that saw the release of ‘Terminator Salvation’ and ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’, there is naturally a lot of skepticism surrounding a film that relies heavily on its special effects. From complaints that it looks like a video game to a presumed lack of substance, bloggers have been quick to dismiss this latest effort by a man accustomed to pre-release dismissal. There has been skepticism as well as fevered anticipation (28% of mentions are from people with an intent to see it in theaters) for the new 3-D technology that has been developed by Cameron for ‘Avatar’. The industry is hoping that it’ll give the technology a much-needed boost in popularity.

While there are reasons to worry that ‘Avatar’ may not be the film that everyone’s hoping for, Cameron is not unaccustomed to this kind of criticism. Leading up to its release, ‘Titanic’ was panned by the fledgling online social communities of its time.

Times have indeed changed since the release of ‘War and Peace’. No doubt Sergei Bondarchuk would be both delighted and perhaps a little disturbed at the nature of today’s CGI and 3-D technology. Only time will tell if the viewing audience shares that disturbance, or if the word will ring through the web next week that ‘Avatar’ is a revolution in film-making.