One of the closest things this blog has to a running theme (meaning I think I’ve mentioned it twice) is how much I disdain Ang Lee’s 2003 Hulk movie, and how the theater-going experience in which I consumed that particular entertainment ranks among the worst of my life, based solely on the movie itself (as opposed to unruly tweeners in the audience or Milk Dud-related dental injuries or anything extraneous like that). I return to this lament again and again because I think it encapsulates so many aspects of who I am: comic book fan, movie lover, amateur critic who tends to overthink things, social follower, computer-oriented professional …
Right, I know that last bit seems an unlikely stretch but Hulk relied very heavily on CGI and, as someone who works with computers, I do appreciate the time and effort that it takes to program them to do our bidding. My programming expertise is actually pretty limited, mainly concerned with straightforward forms processing with occasional forays into graphics manipulation that only reinforce to me that I am a better programmer than I am a designer. So from that perspective, I am awestruck by the abilities of those who can conjure up a moving image with a high degree of realism from nothing but computer instructions.
But from my perspective in the audience in the movie theater, that high degree of realism is never quite high enough.
I have a pretty distinct memory of the first time they aired a full-length trailer commercial for the Hulk movie on TV (I think it was during the Super Bowl) and I remember my friends being pretty stoked for the flick while I was utterly underwhelmed. I just thought the Hulk looked really fake. He looked like exactly what he was, a CGI special effect. And since he’s the title character of the movie, this struck me as problematic. I nursed a small hope that the trailer was cut together from preliminary footage and that the finished version of the movie would be better-looking, because I knew I would end up going to see the movie because all my comic book loving geek friends wanted to go see it and going to comic book movies en masse is something we do. But the finished result was about the same, and ultimately the glaring way that Hulk-the-character fell into the uncanny valley was, to me, the second-worst thing about the movie (the movie’s primary flaw of course is how unconscionably BORING it is).
I loved the Lord of the Rings movies, and Gollum doesn’t bug me. I loved the Star Wars movies, and Yoda doesn’t drag me out of the story, whether he’s a puppet or a CGI effect. (The lightsaber duel between Yoda and Dooku is kind of an egregious exception, but it is salvaged by the fact that my inner seven-year-old FLIPS OUT for that scene every time, it’s so gnarly.)
Maybe it’s the fact that Mordor and Coruscant are imaginary worlds and my suspension of disbelief casts over every inch of the frame, as opposed to real desert or real streets of San Francisco making an unfortunate backdrop for poor, unbelievable Hulk.
So, six years later, here comes James Cameron’s Avatar. I’m not going to see this movie, for a number of reasons. I barely go to the movies at all anymore, and my geek buddies won’t be dragging me to this one because it’s not Watchmen or anything. And the commercial I keep seeing for the movie inspires exactly zero desire to see it. Which of course is separate from a desire to understand it.
I love pop culture so much that I pride myself on knowing a lot about it, to the point where I feel my general familiarity of what’s out there in the entertainment marketplace should be pretty high, regardless of direct personal exposure. I’ve never read any of the Twilight books or seen any of the movies, nor will I, because I can tell it’s not my cup of tea. But I’ll read magazine and web site articles about them and seek out (snarky) podcasts comparing the movie to the book, because I know I’m going to run across Twilight references pretty often and I’d like to have a context for that. If people want to discuss Edward and Bella in depth, I’ll pass, but if people make Twilight jokes, I want to get them.
So James Cameron has made this obscenely expensive CGI-heavy sci-fi epic and it’s going to be out there and I feel like I should at least get what it’s about. Usually this would be easy, as most trailers designed for our hard-of-thinking society pretty much give away the whole shooting match. But Avatar so far only confuses me. I could probably do some online digging but I can’t quite muster the energy, so let me just speculate wildly. At first I thought it was a 100% CGI movie about an alien civilization of blue cat-people, but now it seems to be about humans in the future trying to colonize a blue alien cat-people planet by force. And some human guy in a wheelchair gets a chance to walk again, kind of, if he gets into a magic technology-pod which somehow turns him into one of the blue alien cat-people. So he infiltrates their primitive culture but falls in love with the princess and realizes that humanity’s militant colonization policy is bad, and he has to lead the blue alien cat-Davids against the human Goliath.
So, first of all, I don’t think the CGI technology has advanced that much since Hulk. The blue alien cat-people look fake. If the whole movie was CGI, then it wouldn’t be a problem; Shrek standing next to human Fiona doesn’t offend. But the humans are played by live humans and the cat-people look like eerie unreal hi-res polygon-maps. That wouldn’t even be a big deal if this were a humans-good vs. aliens-evil set-up, but I surmise that the cat-people are supposed to be noble and sympathetic and have these emotional arcs which the audience will allegedly get invested in. It also wouldn’t be a big deal if they had hauled ass way over to the other side of the uncanny valley. In fact, that would have been a lot more interesting, if the aliens were hideous and ugly and truly unapologetically inhuman, and yet shambling a mile in their tentacles allowed the infiltrator to see they had souls under their slimy exteriors. If you’re going to spend $500 million on an insane sci-fi boondoggle, why not really shake up audience expectations? But no, the oppressed aliens are sleek cerulean furries with Pantene hair, and just anthropomorphic enough to be hollow-eyed creepy.
What really kills me, though, is the title of the movie. “Avatar”? Really, Jimmy? The blue alien cat-people look like Second Life characters as it is – did you really intend to remind me of this fact with the name of the movie itself? For a second there I thought that maybe when young crippled hero gets in the magic tech-pod he’s actually downloading his mind into a computer-simulation environment, but I think it’s really supposed to be some kind of physical transmogrification. Still, the associations are unavoidable. I’m sure there’s some other reason in the context of the story that makes the word “avatar” meaningful to the plot, but to me it just flaunts the computer roots of the special effects that the film hinges on, and drawing extra attention to that is not a good thing.
So just as a general request, if anyone less lazy than me or more interested in the burgeoning blue alien cat-people craze that’s about to take off can explain what the hell Avatar is trying to accomplish, feel free to share.
"Avatar," best I can tell, is "Dances With Wolves" in OUTER SPAAAAACE! Plus the internet.
ReplyDeleteAn Earth expeditionary force is sent to the Planet of Noble Savage Cat People to rape the land, etc. Said planet has a noxious atmosphere, so humans don't do well there. Our Hero, a wheelchair-bound guy, has his consciousness downloaded into a vat-grown body of a Noble Savage Cat Person and sent as a spy or scout or something. The "avatar" of the hero is an actual physical being, like the avatar of a Hindu god.
Of course, once exposed to the Pure Nature-Loving Culture of the movie-style American Indians (excuse me, "Cat People from OUTER SPAAAACE!"), Our Hero changes sides and helps the Nobel Savage Cat People from the depradations of his own kind.
Twenty bucks and a box of jujubees says that Our Hero will encounter all of the following: one (1) regulation "tough girl" love interest; two (2) regulation cynical chiefs and/or shamans who will distrust Our Hero and create inter-Cat Person-tribe tension; one (1) cold-blooded human C.O. who will want to exterminate the Cat People because they're in the way, and one (1) second-in-command who will express sympathy for the Cat People, take over when the C.O. is killed in the Last Battle, and will either order the humans to cooperate rather than annihilate, or get the fleet to leave the planet.
It's a "White Man Among the Noble Indians" story. You've seen it before. We all have. It's cliched as hell, and, amusingly, an all-CGI movie with a virtually identical setup already hit the theaters and went to DVD ("Battle for Terra").
Why did Cameron make it? Best I can tell, for two reasons. First, he has the storytelling tastes of a twelve year old, and this is the kind of story a twelve year old would think is both deep and exciting. "Wow, we humans are, like, so savage and warlike and don't take care of our environment, man...That's messed up!"
(Seriously, look over his body of work -- it's all about what a young teenager thinks is awesome.)
Second, Cameron has a huge jones for 3-D and technical challenges. From what I've read, "Avatar" uses all sorts of krazy-advanced 3-D technology, and it's supposed to create an amazingly immersive experience way better than current 3-D stuff. The Planet of Blue Cat People is an entirely CG place, so Cameron can go utterly insane creating wicked cool 3-D images.
He's making it as an excuse to create a snazzy 3-D world, I think. And to tell what he probably considers an "important" and "powerful" and "deep" story. Ahem.
Thanks for the breakdown. With the mythological definition of "avatar" in mind I suppose it makes a bit more sense, but I still maintain that other word-associations just make it an unfortunate choice of a title. I still don't want to see the movie - never saw Dances With Wolves either, for that matter.
ReplyDeleteI suppose when you've made everything from T2 to Titanic you can ask for $500 mil to create a snazzy 3D CGI world for its own sake and reasonably expect to get it, but I still have to wonder why Cameron didn't just make a 100% CGI movie. Did he think the anti-military, pro-environment message wouldn't resonate unless there were flesh and blood actors on the screen alongside the video-game denizen blue alien cat-people? I really think it's the presence of flesh-n-blood onscreen that makes me think the cat-people look shiny, plastic and fake, whereas if the whole movie were a cartoon it wouldn't bother me at all. I wonder why that tradeoff was so important to Cameron.