Last semester, during one of the major protest at UC Berkeley, I sat in the Main Stacks spiral staircase area and wrote a long piece about my take on what was going on. I never posted it anywhere, partially because I didn't really want to have to defend my hastily-typed position. It was just a catharsis, getting thoughts out on paper into a file.

The regents went and voted to approve fee increases, construction continues, I don't think sports funds have been reallocated, even the CS department has been hit (somewhat) by the budget cuts, and as far as I know, no jobs were restored, and there will probably be more layoffs to come. The thing is, everyone will have forgotten about this by next year; even if Berkeley and the other UCs drop to half their current quality they'll still be sought-after schools. (Setting aside the issue of measuring quality numerically and on a single dimension.)

The reason I went to one rally last year was not because I believed everything the rally coordinators shouted. It wasn't because I really wanted to stand up to the evil university, the regents, even the CA legislature. It was to be a statistic. It was to be one more person in a rally that would make headlines, so that this would become a major issue. Cause people don't spend money on non-major issues. If the public started feeling like this issue was unfair and more important than I-don't-know-what, then maybe the legislature would pull money off some other program to help education.

Anyway. Recently at UCSD there have been issues with racism, starting with a party in poor taste that was probably not meant to be an attack, but then escalating with a noose found hanging in the library, with an anonymous letter promising more. Apart from a "What the h***, anonymous messed-up racist vandal?", I don't know what to say about this. But one of my friends commented (offhandedly, on Facebook) that this huge reaction is probably just going to encourage the vandal, who would be delighted at the attention.

At UC Berkeley last night there was a "dance party" in support of the upcoming protest next week; we actually saw it as we left TR rehearsal around 11:00. The dance party then apparently turned into an occupation of Durant Hall (currently under construction and not a significant building on campus, so I assume it was chosen just because it was easier to get into), and then into a full-fledged riot on Telegraph. (Pics from the Daily Cal) Apart from being glad I don't live on Southside this semester, I'm disappointed and *facepalm* that we just lost most credibility we would have had for next week's protest. The organizers and maybe even the majority of rioters were apparently not Cal students.

These two events got me to thinking. If this were an Orson Scott Card novel, these would be deliberately planned events. Of course, the planners could still be on either side: if they were protesters, then they wanted to unite UCSD against a clear enemy and stir up that old Berkeley revolutionary spirit. If they were against the protests, then they wanted to distract UCSD with a more clear-cut issue, and discredit the protesters at Berkeley.

My personal feelings are lying with the latter results (gut reaction against racism and disgust for yesterday night's activity), so it looks like the Man is winning.

Anyway, it's an interesting theory. If you participate in any rally events on March 4, think about why you're doing it. I don't know if I am going to participate this time, but if I do, it's only for one reason: to be a statistic, and keep the issue in the news as long as we can.

Posted by chigaijin | 26 Feb 2010 12:13:08

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"Everyone's a little bit racist..."

Not quite a "personal characteristics post" like Spontaneity or Sincerity, but still an "-ity". And somewhat in line with the category anyway.

I recently read A Room of One's Own, by Virginia Woolf, on account of a friend's essay-length blog post that placed it as a necessary piece for understanding the situation of the woman author. It is a great book, an essay told in light, accessible, and enjoyable narrative prose. It's presented as both opinion and truth, and identifies the trap of writing against rather than about, instead of falling into it. It's generated all sorts of thoughts, and stirred up a particular older one once more.

All this pitting of sex against sex, of quality against quality; all this claiming of superiority and imputing of inferiority, belong to the private-school stage of human existence where there are "sides," and it is necessary for one side to beat another side, and of the utmost importance to walk up to a platform and receive from the hands of the Headmaster himself a highly ornamental pot. As people mature they cease to believe in sides or in Headmasters or in highly ornamental pots.

Or do they? (Excerpt from Chapter 6 of A Room of One's Own.)

I'm going to discuss this in terms of race, not sex, since that's where my original ideas lay and it's easier to talk about right now. Perhaps I'll talk about gender in a later post.

When I was in elementary school, there was no concept of race. Very little of ethnicity. Plenty of culture—parents aides would give presentations on their culture's New Year (lunar or solar), teach how to make all kinds of food in Cooking, and even answer questions about *gasp* religion. But no divisions by "white people", "asians" (or "east asians"), "Indian". It happened sometimes that a particular group of friends was all of one ethnicity, but there was never a sense that others were kept out of that, or that it was even the main bond that drew people together. Perhaps your elementary school was like that too.

I went to a K-8 alternative school, so it wasn't until high school that this world changed. And how it changed. Although it didn't hit me right away, high schoolers wielded their ethnicity—not just their culture—as an integral part of their identity. "He's Chinese." "I have to, I'm Korean." "It's because I'm black, isn't it." Jokes, casual references to stereotypes I guess I knew about but never internalized. To this day racial jokes are unsettling, no matter what the joke or who's telling it.

Some people grouped by language in high school, putting a not-insurmountable-but-difficult barrier between fluent speakers and nonspeakers or learners. Classes end up filtered somewhat by macro-ethnicity, by no cause of the high school itself. (Honors classes at CHS tended to be more Asian, east and south, and "regular" classes were more Mexican, Latino, and black, with whites and "Middle-Easterners" spread across the middle. I speak from my statistical impression-memories; of course it may have shifted even by now.) Few groups formed explicitly on the basis of ethnicity, but always it was part of someone's sense of self. I couldn't see why.

That's the background. Fast-forward to last year's "racebending" debacle; for those who didn't hear about it, the good guys in The Last Airbender (the movie) were all white, with a casting call looking for Caucasion actors more than other races, and the bad guys were of darker complexion. Active discrimination is still alive, even if in such a passive form. It's also been institutionalized, however, meaning that people's expectations, and their expectations of others' collective expectations, are well set-in and slow to change.

That's no excuse, of course. But there was also a recent conversation in our family about the movie 21. Apart from being very dramaticized, there was apparently much controversy over the characters being mostly white, even though the real-life people they were based on were mostly Asian. But, from Wikipedia:

Jeff Ma, who was the real-life inspiration for the character Ben Campbell and served as a consultant on the film, was accused of being a "race traitor" on several blogs for not insisting that his character be Asian American. In response, Ma said, "I'm not sure they understand how little control I had in the movie-making process; I didn't get to cast it." [5] Ma said that the controversy was "overblown" and that the important aspect is that a talented actor would portray him. [6]

That last bit's the part I think is more important; there's another part where he said he would be mad if they got some random Korean actor to play the character just because he's Asian. It's true that the collective Asian-American image does not get the benefit of this movie. But from the perspective of the story, there's no particular reason to pick any particular race.

This is where Woolf's words are important again: Remember not to take sides! By doing so you only lower yourself into that competitive, destructive working against, instead of something productive. Yes, there were more considerations than that which would have biased the studio towards white actors, and still do today. But is there anything inherently wrong with Jim Sturgess (he's not American, either!) playing a character based on Jeff Ma? In this story?

No.

Stereotypes suck. Unfortunately, when people unite, they are creating Sides. The best they can do, then, is change the stereotype; they can't possibly get rid of it, because they will have inadvertantly created a new overall impression of themselves. The worst part is that any one collection of people forming a group actually causes everyone around to find "their" people and do the same. Think about immigrants to New York or San Francisco; they find people who speak their language or share their culture—fine—but they may never leave.

Maybe that's okay. But it's part of why we have stereotypes. And forming ethnicity-based organizations against ethnic stereotypes is thus a lot less effective than it should be. Conversely, because people have their own ethnicity as part of their identity, they are less likely to help work against another ethnicity's stereotypes, meaning it's very hard to redraw or erase the lines.

The APATH "We are unique" event last year gave me a good sardonic laugh. "Asian / Pacific Islander" is such a broad range of cultures, languages, and ethnicities that such an event seems to be defied by the organization itself. It's partially because in the views of Americans (including, most likely, many of the club's members), the people of East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Pacific islands are more culturally, linguistically, and ethnically linked than people from other such groups. And this has a basis in scientific fact as well. Unfortunately, it means the club is a lot less powerful than it wishes to be.

Contrast it with the Gay-Straight Alliance, which from the start was established to cross the boundary between homosexual and heterosexual. Sure, such groups might still be thought of as "gay organizations", but at least they're trying. Organizations uniting people within pre-existing boundaries only reinforce those boundaries.

I came across a UC Berkeley "NewsCenter" article, "Mixed emotions: The multiracial student experience at UC Berkeley", while writing this post. My reactions are mixed as well. If anything, these stories demonstrate that these boundaries are reasonably stupid and arbitrary (if you're from the UK, it makes a difference if you're British or Scottish, but not if you're Norman or Saxon). Yet these students, like everyone else on the planet, still feel a need to belong. I'm just not sure it makes sense to try to join the group you share .05% more DNA with, rather than the group with which you can share culture. (I'm all for cross-culture experience—I'm part of Theatre Rice, and have a moderately deep interest in East Asian cultures, Japan in particular—but should I join a group because I'm 1/8th whatever-American and have thus "inherited" it?)

So, here then, is my thesis, and my dream. If we are to be truly race-blind, that means we—everyone—stop thinking of ethnicity as a defining part of our identity, much less the defining part of our identity. Culture, sure—we should celebrate and share that. But our first thought upon meeting someone shouldn't be "oh, she's Latin-American". I realize we have nothing more to go on, but we didn't do it when we were kids. Why do we have to do it as adults?

Imagine a world where affirmative action is based on income rather than race, because it would never cross anyone's mind to choose one person over the other on the basis of ethnicity. Because ethnicity just isn't a criterion on which to differentiate people (the original meaning of "discriminate"). Imagine a world where it's not only okay for a British man to play a French man, but for a Taiwanese woman to play a Korean woman, or even for a man from Barbados to play a white American, or vice versa, because they can best express the character. Imagine a world where no one asks "what are you?" because the answer would be "human".

...Of course it's impossible, even for me who still doesn't think well in terms of race. People believe in ethnicity, in groups, in Us Against Them. Our whole society is still too close to the history of it—or the story of it, cause it's here in present as well. The human need to belong, plus the tendency to form generalizations, plus the desire to feel superior all conspired to put us where we...were, not too long ago. I'd like to believe we've begun pulling back a little, back towards where ethnicity is not identity.

The victory is of course not when the heroes are East Asian and the villains are white (except perhaps for historical stories). But it's also not when there sits a statistically representative ethnicity mix of heroes and villains. The victory is this: when, say, an all-white cast of heroes and a Middle-Eastern cast of villains is picked for The Second-to-Last Airbender, because in this case, they really are the best actors (available and wanting) to play the roles. And nobody has any objections.

P.S. I tried very hard not to mention the fact that I am ethnically Jewish. I use that as a shield sometimes, both to others and to myself, for otherwise I would be part of the Great White Evil—this way I am also one of the oppressed. But that is Sides and Us Against Them again, and not fair to my white non-oppressed and non-oppresser friends. To claim that I am Jewish when I have only a few vestiges of Jewish culture in me feels absurd. But I am ethnically Jewish, and my family has felt the effects of that firsthand...in the Holocaust. And that part of me will never go away either.

The world must not forget or trivialize genocide. But I do not claim victimhood as my heritage. </PS>

Posted by chigaijin | 14 Jan 2010 23:51:39

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Whoo...two movies in four days. This review comes after discussing and dissecting the movie with my family, but before reading friends' or professional reviews.

Possibly the most anticipated movie of the year, James Cameron's James Cameron's Avatar was a visually stunning display of modern technology to present a classic anti-colonialism, environmentalist message. Because there was so much hype surrounding this movie, I'm going to break it down into sections.

This review is ridiculously long (3,000 words!), so skim or pick the sections you're more interested in. For the short version, just read the bolded bits in each paragraph.

The first half of this review has no spoilers (or at least no significant ones), but if you really don't want to know anything about the movie, or just don't want to read it, I'd say go see it, in IMAX 3D if you can and regular 3D if you can't. Just for the visual appeal. The story isn't bad—you've just seen it before—and the graphics are stunning.

Story

Everything you've heard is true. This is Dances with Wolves, or Pocahontas, or to a lesser extent FernGully. (None of which I have seen in their entirety.) Even the bit about a paralyzed man in an alien body has been done, in a rather good book by Timothy Zhan called Manta's Gift. It's not that Cameron didn't come up with any of the plot on his own, but there is nothing in it that hasn't been done before, just a mix of several different ideas. Man joins natives and betrays own side when they start killing and destroying the environment. The ex-military protagonist, the paralysis, the friends on the inside, the fact that the natives are aliens, the body-driving, the corporate bad guys, and some details about the planet and environment that would be spoilers are mixed in.

In some way, it's the mix that's original, even if the skeleton of the plot and the pieces of the story aren't. And I've been known to say that "there are no new stories", as an exaggeration of an interesting idea that I might be happy to talk about some other time. Regardless, there was no real original plot or story in Avatar, and so I'm not going to review it.

As a postscript to that, though: just because the story is not original doesn't mean it is bad. Like I said, I haven't really seen Dances with Wolves, Pocahontas, or FernGully, but they're all still around. This is another incarnation of the story, and not a bad one—the fact that the story is tried-and-true does not and should not reflect poorly on the movie.

Environment

Pandora is pretty well set up, and the kind of planet humans would explore and exploit—similar atmospheric pressure, only slightly lower gravity, and, well, valuable resources. The intro sort of implies that this is not the first planet humans have found, and that the corporation didn't just get here—there's been a several-year transit period, plus time spent developing the avatar technology and learning Na'vi-the-language. That timeline certainly gives the Na'vi enough time to surreptitiously learn English, but it's a long time for a corporation to wait. Still, it's possible the discovery of the mineral didn't happen right away, or that the management changed some time in the interval, or that the transit delay kept any expansion from happening until now.

Human technology, besides the genetics and biotech needed to create avatars, certainly seems reasonable for 150 years from now. I liked the consoles and displays, the touch interfaces, and the interactive use of a hologram (read: Jake sticking his arm into it). If anything, it was below expectations for over a century away. They're still using plain old bullet-guns. Their glass (well, some of it) can be shattered by arrows (still not as bad, I guess, as the Battle of Endor). Jake doesn't even have prosthetic legs, though that would make the story a lot weaker.

Moving on to the biology of Pandora, it's very interesting. The ecosystem seems...reasonable, if only briefly described. As for the creatures themselves...well, first off, there's no reason I can think of for any of the animals to have six legs, but once one does, it makes evolutionary sense for all of them to. So, why don't the Na'vi? (Not to mention the doubled eyes and throat breathing slits everything else also has.) Overall, they are far too human for Pandora, but then, that's all part of the "mainstream movie" compromise—they have to be human for the avatar program to work, and to get our sympathy (and for performance capture to give them that authenticity).

Oh, and the hovering mountains don't make any sense, or at least are never really explained (nothing else in the region is antigravitated), but are so awesome that they can be excused. Even if it's been done before.

Music

Avatar has rather unmemorable music. It's not bad, just never distinctive or something you concentrate on. It works perfectly well with what's going on. The use of "tribal" drums and "jungle" flutes for various tracks concerning the Na'vi and the world of Pandora are very nice, if almost obligatory.

Graphics

First of all, I loved the landscapes of Pandora. I didn't realize how much I liked them until they showed shots of them again under the beginning of the credits. They were no different from sweeping landscape shots on Earth, except they got to pick the most photogenic weather. (Also, Earth has no floating mountains.) So I guess I'd love similar amazing shots of Earth.

The wildlife looked completely real. The plants looked completely real—weird, but plausible. There was nothing there that even muttered "CGI", let alone screamed it.

As for the Na'vi, they were very good. They moved perfectly (which makes sense, since they were basically performance-captured). They had facial expressions (ditto). The ear movement in particular, and to a lesser extent the tail movement, were great touches that had to be entirely computer-generated, and that was probably what kept the avatars and Na'vi from seeming plastic. I have to say, though, when humans and avatars are in the same scene, the humans look just a bit more real. Maybe that's just bias against blue hairless skin, but I think we still have a little farther to go in CGI technology.

In short, CGI graphics have basically reached the point where they're invisible: if you're used to sci-fi, you don't notice it's there. My brother states it as thus: we have no idea which parts of a shot were real and which were digital. It's hard to strive for better than this. And on top of that, it's a stunning movie anyway.

3D

This is what the movie is selling, and what everyone's excited about. Using technology basically developed for this movie (the Pace-Fusion, or Pace-Cameron, 3D camera system), Avatar is best seen in 3D, and perhaps even IMAX 3D if you can make it. This isn't the red-blue 3D of the 90s; the 3D effect is so real (and in true-color) that you want to swat things out of your face. Seriously. The preview for this looked amazing.

Is it all it's cracked up to be? Well, kinda yeah. The movie would still work in 2D, sure. It would still be visually stunning, even. But watching a 3D movie feels a lot more natural than watching a 2D movie. Between the 3D and the amazing graphics, you really are missing out if you're watching a bootleg copy on your computer.

Avatar is nice in that it doesn't use the 3D as a gimmick, partly because they do show it in 2D, and partly because if there's one thing we learned from Spy Kids 3D, it's that 3D gimmicks can't carry a movie. The best way to put this is something my brother said (pulled from a review, I think): "Most movies so far have used 3D to make things jump out at you. Avatar uses it to put things in the background." And it's true; very few times are there scene elements closer than the main action, which is at the normal distance away.

The 3D technology is not perfect. Because it's based on polarization, tilting your head makes the two images not merge perfectly. (At least in IMAX; Wikipedia suggests that the non-IMAX projectors use clockwise/counter-clockwise polarization, which I don't really understand but which wouldn't have this effect.) I never realized how much I slouch and move my head around during a movie until now.

There were still some things which moved rather oddly. I don't know why. I can say that the best use of 3D was when it was subtle; an example from my dad is when they are walking through the control room and people are very definitely behind the screens they are looking at. And it makes depth-of-field shots a lot more natural.

Finally, though, the problem is that I don't always want to focus my eyes on the same thing as Cameron does. With a traditional movie, it's very clear you don't have a choice; everything looks flat, and the focus is where the filmmaker wants it to be. Here, control of the focus is still in the filmmaker's hands, but you feel like you should be able refocus your eyes on what's drifting by in front or behind, and of course you can't.

Spoiler Warning

From here on out there are spoilers. Stop reading now if you mind, though honestly even if I told you the entire movie you maybe still should go see it just so the graphics can BLOW YOUR MIND.

Characters

Again, the characters are rather simplistic. All of the Na'vi are entirely one-dimensional and predictable, with the exception of Neyteri who has the "before she's the love interest" and the "after she's assigned to him" modes (no better). The security chief is entirely the character you'd expect him to be. The corporate head is a bit better, staying in a character but not adding anything to himself or the story. And most of the scientists are just there, even Max (the other defector).

The four remaining human characters are a little more interesting. Trudy, the pilot who joins the scientists' side, starts out as a fun helicopter pilot character, but because she's identified as a person, you don't want her to be on the bad guys' side. And lo and behold, she flies home in the middle of the first attack. Okay, so she's kind of sympathetic now. ...Then she busts them out of jail, steals a ship, and flies off into the sunset jungle range of hovering mountains. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like a big jump from "refusing to fire on innocents" to "aiding and abetting prisoners". Passive vs. active resistance. But maybe I'm just being cynical...after all, she did The Right Thing. Right?

Dr. Augustine (or just "Grace") is the typical gruff senior expert, made a little more modern by being female. But Cameron writes it well and Sigourney Weaver plays it well. When Jake is unexpectedly brought into the Omaticaya village, she suddenly values him—because that's how scientists work. And later on, she feels responsible for him, as director of the program, and enough sympathy for the Na'vi to side with them. All of this makes a casually realistic character, even if she is there to play a part. A bonus tidbit, though, is that her avatar is only a little older than Jake's or Norm's. It makes total scientific sense, but it's also kind of interesting for an older woman to get a younger body again—a lighter version of Jake's situation.

Norm is probably my favorite character, though that's more a casual affection than full sympathy. Maybe it's cause he's not in every version of this story. Like Grace, his character has real responses all throughout: enjoying being a mentor in the beginning, then jealous of an untrained colleague's success, and finally choosing to be a kid martyr. He's not such an important guy, but I like him. And it was a nice touch how when his avatar is shot, he stumbles out of the link machine clutching his chest.

Finally, there's Jake Sully, the main character. Everything he does is playing the role he has to play, so there's not much to like or dislike. Because this is a grown-up movie, Jake maintains his attitude even through his conversion (particularly when taking the toruk (leonopteryx)). There are some nice details, such as how he enjoys his avatar's ability to run, and how he comes back into a paralyzed body and has to drag himself into the wheelchair. My brother pointed out that his legs were thin and weak, which of course is totally necessary for anyone who's wheelchair-bound.

Jake's schedule is pretty ridiculous: he has to be in the link whenever he wants his avatar to wake up, but he still needs to eat and sleep and video-log in human form. His not shaving and not showering, and even having to be pressed to eat, were all nice touches. Well done.

Culture and Language

The Na'vi culture seems very well developed, as in "I wouldn't be surprised if someone wrote Lord-of-the-Rings-esque appendices about Na'vi history while making this movie". The mythology (backed up by biology), the rite of passage, everything seems very reasonable and consistent. Not that I know that much about this class of societies ("tribal"?), but it at least matches my limited knowledge...and my stereotypes.

Now, language I do know something about, and I spent a lot of the movie trying to figure out basic facts about the Na'vi language (mainly word order). The language was actually developed by Professor Frommer of USC to be the next Klingon or Elvish—a fully-developed artificial language that could really serve all purposes of communication. There's a site up for learning Na'vi (not really the name of the language), which is mostly based on material from Frommer himself. Turns out the word order is officially mostly free, with adpositions indicating subject or object, kind of like Latin or (sort of) Russian.

There are nice little touches, like "Na'vi" actually meaning "people" (common to cultures and languages on Earth as well), or the use of "I see you" as a greeting (ditto). The list of known vocabulary kind of kills the latter by mentioning there is a separate word for physical seeing, but I guess that's the sort of change that happens over time. (Did you know that "bead" probably comes from the word for "prayer" because of rosaries, or that "an apron" used to be "a napron"?) And "dreamwalkers" is a perfect way to describe the avatars from the perspective of those they walk among.

There were a few things I was unhappy about, but they weren't really problems, just things I didn't like. The main thing was the fact that a male still chooses a female, but given all the evidence on Earth, it's not uncommon for cultures to treat the different genders differently. Another one is when Neyteri rejects Jake's calling the toruk a leonopteryx. ("It is toruk.") Come on. It's just a word; the toruk doesn't care what you call it. This does fit her role, though, and you'll notice I've been using the Na'vi names for most things in this review. So this was in-universe dislike, not poking holes in the fourth wall.

Environment, with spoilers

Neural link, together with the Tree of Souls, makes me think a lot of Orson Scott Card's Lusitania, the world of the pequeninos in Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind. It's not really the same, but I think it's a reasonable connection to make. I can't think of an evolutionary reason for this odd USB port directly into a creature's upper nervous system, but like the legs, it's reasonable for all of the large animals to share this trait. It is a little weird that the Na'vi only have one such link, when all other animals have paired "neural queues", but evolution does that sometimes. My pet theory is that a Xel'naga-like race actually designed the Na'vi, and modified the other higher life on the world, a combination of Card's stories with StarCraft. Wait, that means the Na'vi are the Protoss...and Protoss have nerve cords too!

For more StarCraft / Avatar parallels, see my friend Kyle's comparison...

Story, with spoilers

How could it have been different? This is a rich enough world that maybe an entirely different story could have been told, but a story that didn't involve contact between humans and Na'vi would have only highlighted how the Na'vi are similar to humans—too similar to be plausible. So most other stories wouldn't have gained so much from this wonderful universe.

What about changing this story? Yeah, that could have helped. My grandma suggested having everybody die at the end—a much more serious and stunning ending that would leave people thinking a lot more than this one did. I didn't think that would work so well, cause it is a mainstream movie out to make money, but still thought the ending scene was ridiculous. You knew it was going to happen from the moment they tried it with Grace, and they still overdid it, with the dramatic face shot and eye-opening.

Because they basically won. They lost a lot, yes, and knowing human nature this isn't the last time they'll have to drive humans away from Pandora. (I hope, but doubt, that there won't be a sequel about that! Or at all.) But the movie ends with a happy scene and no imminent problems, making you forget that Hometree and the Tree of Voices were both destroyed and the previous Omaticaya chieftain killed.

I think my chosen ending would have had Jake die. He collapses out of the tank, gets to touch Neytiri, and says the über-meaningful "I see you..." ...then dies. It's still cheesy, but at least it's not saccharine. It's not really enough change to call the story original, though.

Oh well. I enjoyed the ikran flight, the symbolism of the paralysis, the giant battle at the end, the technology, Norm, and basically the whole movie.

Terminator

Graphics are a problem. For some reason, good graphics in the movie industry seem to be able to carry the movie a lot more than good graphics in a video game, but it's still a problem when the special effects start driving the story, rather than the characters or even the plot. The best stories are those that unfold because of how the characters interact, and Avatar only has that in the sense that each character is specifically set up like a domino to participate in certain ways.

Over twenty years ago, James Cameron made a small-cast, low-budget movie called The Terminator. I didn't see Terminator for a long time, because it sounds a little silly: Arnold Schwarzenegger comes back in time to hunt down one woman, with lots of collateral damage. I didn't think I needed to see that. But it turns out Terminator (IMHO) is one of the best sci-fi movies ever made. Why? Because even though the setup could be considered contrived and the characters don't have much depth (it's a bit better in T2), you're on the edge of your seat the whole time. They're never safe, they never manage to really beat the Terminator. They just barely get away. (Whenever I said "oh, that'll never work", it didn't.) It all seems very realistic, in that you don't see it as a story.

Avatar, by contrast, is so preachy it might as well have ended with "I'm James Cameron, and I approve this message." It was so clearly not just a story but a parable. Which, again, didn't make it bad, but it doesn't get the viewer nearly as involved. Using impressive graphics tends to make people forget about the other things that make a movie good, and overall Terminator was definitely a much better movie.

Odds and Ends

• There are nice little touches, like how the video cam comes on pointing to the side, and Jake has to adjust it, or how Jake's wheelchair has "Sully" written on it in sloppy Sharpie.
• "Unobtainium" is a real term, BUT it doesn't seem to be used that way, BUT it's only used once, and by a corporate guy. Let's say that's not the real name of the mineral.
• While I don't have the allergic reaction to the font some people have...Papyrus? Seriously? A budget in the hundred millions, and you have to use one of the most-abused fonts on Windows or Mac OS? And not just for the movie title, but for the subtitles as well. I'd almost say that's demeaning to the Na'vi.
• When you get right down to it, "Avatar" isn't that great of a title. Not that I have a real alternative, but I think even "Pandora" might have been better. Of course, then I probably would have complained that it wasn't really a Pandora's Box story at all.

Summary

Again, the story and plot were almost completely unoriginal. Few of the characters were sympathetic or even faceted. The graphics were amazing, though, and the environment, culture, and language were all very well-developed.

A second for the preachy bit. More than the "destruction of native culture and homeland and the environment" part, there was a small piece of another message. "We have nothing they want," Jake says in a video log. Which culture is more happy? What does that say about our culture now?

It wasn't a bad movie. I can't quite say it was a "good movie", because my criteria for a "good" movie require certain things about the story and the characters. But it was a good movie in the sense that it was solid and entertaining pretty much the whole way through, and that I would encourage almost anyone to go see it.

I can hear the old-timey cash registers going off from here.

Credit for doubling the "James Cameron's" in the first paragraph goes to Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw's Zero Punctuation video game reviews.

Posted by chigaijin | 04 Jan 2010 14:46:02

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I went into Sherlock Holmes expecting to be able to cry foul, that it disregarded and discarded the original book series by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Happily, I found it to be an exciting and entertaining modern adaptation rather than the travesty I feared. My bad for doubting Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr.

I admit I have only read one or two of the original Sherlock Holmes books, and so am actually not the best to judge whether the movie does justice to the original. (My brother pointed out that I am ridiculous for being willing to censure a movie based on books I don't know well, and he's right.) Regardless, the movie includes detective-story mystery analysis, and the usual "let's reveal all" at the end, tying up all (well, most) of the loose ends.

The character play between Downey and Law as Holmes and Watson is great. Holmes is in a sort of depressive phase, which actually makes sense for a such a genius. (I would say "tending towards the autistic end of the spectrum" and point to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, a story by Mark Hadden about an autistic kid who admires Sherlock Holmes.) There's a fair amount of amusing banter that occasionally breaks period, but it's done in an entertaining way and with good timing.

The movie admittedly has a lot more action than a Sherlock Holmes book (certainly more explosions). But for the most part it fits in the story being told, rather than being shoehorned in. And there are cool sequences where Sherlock Holmes calls out what fighting moves he's going to do ahead of time, then performs them in real-time (sadly, only twice in the movie; wouldn't want to overdo it, but I would have enjoyed another one). Since you can't translate a book directly to a movie anyway, I was fine with this.

The music in the movie isn't so amazing (i.e. I wouldn't listen to it over and over), but there are a number of clever bits. Holmes' theme is plucked out on strings in a minorish key, occasionally on a violin played by Holmes himself. (Not quite how I pictured it in the books! It's no elegant performance but almost a nervous habit. But it fits this Holmes very well.) As for the background music, it does a good job of managing the level of tension in the scene, a couple times transitioning into Holmes' theme right when I was getting nervous. (I caught myself watching for it once.) Well done.

It's not quite a mystery story, or rather it's the type of mystery in which the audience has no real way of connecting the dots themselves, and just has to wait for the answer. But while there was nothing amazingly original or outstanding about the movie, it was just fun. It's not Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, but it's a perfectly good manifestation of the character. It's an above-average mainstream action movie, and I'd say go see it for sure...if only movie tickets weren't so darn expensive.

Posted by chigaijin | 01 Jan 2010 13:28:39

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Meta: Better write this before I forget everything. Also, I seem to not be able to decide whether reviews are classified as Life or Thoughts on Chigaijin, but that doesn't really matter since most of you will read this on Facebook anyway.

District 9: A relatively original movie that stands out from everything else that makes it to mainstream. In order to review it properly, this post will have spoilers. If you are NOT OKAY with that, read the rest of this paragraph and then leave. District 9 was, to put it succinctly, "interesting, but not entertaining". Also, if you are disturbed by gory action (most of it slightly over-the-top, which saved me), you may want to skip this movie.

If you are still reading but mind spoilers, UR DOIN IT RONG.

Setup: The backstory for District 9 was pretty original. Rather than humans dealing with aliens as friendly or hostile equals or superiors, they are the ones who have to help their visitors. And not just like in ET; this is a whole shipload of people who are dying and have little to directly offer the human race. In addition, the story was set not in the US or even the UK, but in Johannesburg, South Africa. Basically, they're not afraid to start off with a totally different premise.

Plot (high-level): Sadly, the plot turns out to be a rather stale offering: main character represents oppressors, feels he's doing the right thing in the long run, undergoes some incident that alienates him from his own side, seeks refuge with the oppressed, finds they are much more humane (ha ha) than his own people, regrets what he's done but does one last asshole thing, which doesn't work, and finally sides with the oppressed against the oppressors, displaying bravery and self-sacrifice in the process. Sorry, not original.

Plot (low-level): The plot is just as flawed when looked at on a smaller scale. There are a number of plotholes: since Christopher was never caught before making it back to his house, why couldn't he take the fuel? why does fuel turn humans into aliens anyway? why do aliens have compatible enough chemistry for this kind of melding? In addition, there are the movie equivalent of the "quick time events" found in video games which Yahtzee is always ranting about: lucky coincidences. I'm talking about where all the bullets miraculously leave Christopher alive, or how the Bad Guy Soldier (whose name I forget but isn't important) takes like five minutes savoring his chance to kill Wikus. The Incredibles parodies this ("You caught me monologuing!"), and a few movies (The Terminator, for one) manage to avoid these almost completely. District 9 is full of them. Finally, there are several questions raised which are never answered: why Johannesburg? why were the aliens starving to begin with? what do they make all the weapons out of? why wait twenty years to go back? and more. They made you feel like this was a story about Humans and Aliens (Self and Other as groups, for Candace), but it turned out it was a story about Wikus and maybe Christopher. Leaving things like these hanging would be fine in a short film (or short story), but is a little unsatisfying for a full-length movie.

Characters: The characters varied greatly in terms of quality. For the most part, all of the characters were very realistic, even if they also played storytelling roles (repentent protagonist, foreign ally, evil mastermind, sadistic henchman, etc.). Everything they did was very much driven by some aspect of human nature, and it's that sort of truth that makes me respect the characters. (At least the tired plot is driven by decisions all coming from the characters themselves, and remaining in character here.) And everyone likes Christopher's kid.

World: Also very well filled in. The existence of MNU, the conflict between the humanitarian administrators and the military forces, the black market dealers. And the alien-related stuff, too. Giving them human names, referring to them as "prawns", population control...all of these are things that have happened in real life concerning one group of humans taking control of another group. Very good universe formation. The language barrier is dodged in a reasonable manner—they never mention it, and we assume 20 years is enough for each group to learn enough of the other's language. Similarly, occasionally some aliens would show decidedly human emotional responses, but I'm okay with that—this is something else that could have easily been picked up over 20 years.

One note, though: the denomination of the black-marketeers as "Nigerians", associating them with cannibalism and exploitation, is a bit unfortunate. Not that I know the political state of Nigeria right now, but it's a blanket statement that people might not see as part of the irony of the film. (I'm not sure how much it is.) Besides, Nigerians have a bad enough record from the bank scam spam e-mails we've probably all gotten (though it's died off of late).

Okay, two notes: I also found it a bit offensive that there were subtitles for some clips of moderately heavily accented English. I admit, however, that I am oversensitive to such things, and that the person I saw it with didn't realize there was any such use of unnecessary subtitles. So perhaps this is not a point worth making.

Alien Design: Same atmosphere and food? Pretty unlikely, but without it there'd be no story. ("We cut into their ship and found it full of methane; a few weeks and they were all dead. Then we were stuck with this big floating tomb over Johannesburg.") Human body plan? Really unlikely, even with the tail (but possibly necessary plotwise for the transformation to work). I guess I'm willing to let it slide, since they followed through pretty well with the decisions they made and did a good job with the alien movements (active and subtle). (The "our planet has higher gravity" comment, though, while nicely consistent, was really just showing off on the part of the writer(s). "See, we know what the best reason for their superhuman strength is! This is real sci-fi!")

Cinematography/Directing: The documentary style was very good — something we don't see a lot and something that added to the verisimilitude and personal connection of the story. While some of the shots were ones that almost certainly wouldn't exist in real life, it was still a nice change from (and a more gritty look than) the smooth, stable shots we see in most action movies. While those kind of shots are carefully crafted to be exciting, these feel more exciting because they're filmed mostly the way someone would film it if they were actually there, which they were supposed to be. (And things like "We'll cut that, right? The bit where it sprays me, that's cut, right?" are again both funny and realistic.) Points for this.

Summary: In the current era of movies, District 9 feels very original, and a number of reviewers hailed it as such. However, many more original movies are made every month (anyone heard of the Sundance Film Festival?) and while I myself do not generally watch them, it just means that the bar's set too low for movies. The plotholes and open questions make me feel that this would be more suited for short-film status (or even short-story, as I said before), where such things are more permissible (where by "permissible" I mean "expected by viewers and thus not causing a sense of disfulfillment"). Credit does go to Peter Jackson and co. for pushing this through to mainstream movies, with a nice subtle advertising campaign and a trailer that didn't give the whole movie away. As my brother put it:

I'd imagine if this movie were made by others, the trailer would've taken more of a horror movie angle, having the beginning with Wikus evicting, having him passing out, and then big text saying SOMETHING IS HAPPENING TO WIKUS van de MERWE (they would've given him a more american name though), and then NOW, HE HAS JUST 24 HOURS TO HELP THE VERY PEOPLE HE HAS OPPRESSED, OR BE FOREVER CONDEMNED TO LIFE AS ONE OF THEM, and they would've had the ending shots where his eye has changed and then of the prawn that looks like him and all that stuff. It would've sucked. They did a great job.

So my final verdict is "why'd you screw it up". All the setup and infrastructure was great, and they used it to tell a story that's been told too many times before. My brother's review points out a lot of small things they did well, and he's right. But it just didn't save it for me.

If you enjoy alien action movies, this is a better one than most (AFAIK, since I suppose I don't). If you enjoy interesting sci-fi / xenophobia concepts, it might be worth watching just to be able to talk about the concepts. But all in all, it was not entertaining and the overall plot did not grab me, and so I have to leave it there.

Posted by chigaijin | 13 Sep 2009 01:45:55

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