Let's Go To the Movies!

Going to the movies in Hanoi is not a lot different than going to the movies in the US. Our favorite venue is the Megastar complex in Vincom Tower, an upscale high-rise mall south of the Old Quarter. Same stadium seating, same sound system, same programming: ads, followed by previews, followed by our feature presentation. But you can buy beer and eat shrimp chips as well as popcorn. They even have a fairly nice patisserie. Best of all, you buy specific seats, so you know exactly where you will be sitting.

Luckily, they don't dub movies, so if they're in English we can watch and understand once you get used to ignoring the Vietnamese subtitles. But if the original language was other than English, you're out of luck, because the subs are only in Vietnamese. I had a hard time watching Inglorious Basterds because so much of the dialogue was in German or French and a Vietnamese translation did me no good.

We had heard bad things about Vietnamese audiences--that they talk throughout, make and receive calls on their cellphones, etc., but I've been to 5-6 movies now and have never had a problem.

Everyone in town was excited that Avatar was opening in Hanoi on the same day it opened in the US. Usually we get US movies a week to a month after they open in the States, so that was a big deal. It was also the first 3D movie to play Hanoi. So, of course, it was sold out for the first couple weeks. We bought tickets last Tuesday for the Friday morning show, and it was already mostly full. We got great seats, though.

What we didn't know was that the traffic Friday morning was horrible because of the New Year. It may not be a holiday here, but the streets were packed. Lots of shoppers and moviegoers. It took us over an hour to make what is usually a 20 minute drive. So we missed the first 15 or 20 minutes, but we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves once we arrived.

The 3D visuals were amazing. At first the CGI is distracting and a bit cartoonish, and the floating Vietnamese subs were a bit annoying, but we quickly suspended disbelief and became immersed in the stunning world Cameron has created. Of course we didn't know what the Na'vi characters were saying, but the story was so simple that we could easily get the jist. The story is totally predictable. It happens to be a story that O. and I are partial to, but we still would have liked it to be a little less cliched. But visually it is a remarkable achievement.

I especially liked the fact that the 3D is used to bring reality to the imagined lanscapes rather than the typical "poke your eye out" visuals most 3D movies use. And as a long-time science fiction fan, I liked that, though the story incorporates many typical fantasy elements, they all have a (more or less) hard science explanation. This post about the science of Avatar by a working astrophysicist is well worth reading if you're interested in that sort of thing.

P.