The Coming Failure of James Cameron's "Avatar"

Few movies have been so long in the making as has been "Avatar", with the script going back fifteen years, to 1994. Estimated to be the most expensive movie of all times and a shattering breakthrough in the quality and use of computer generated images (CGI), the news that James Cameron, one of the few truly always successful and imaginative directors left in Hollywood was working on bringing it to the big screen apparantly enthralled many e-zines and supposedly brought Cameron back into the light of the movie-going public with a bang. Not that I had noticed as much. I have been a regular on a very large, science fiction orientated webboard since July 2000, and I had never heard about Cameron's newest film until the day came at which the trailer was shown.

The general reaction to it was surprising to Cameron and the studio behind him, to say the least. Genre fans watching the trailers online found it to be largely unoriginal and non-inspering. Comments like this one

This is the new big step in film effects? Rubber fake-looking CGI aliens fighting humans? Yawn.

or that here

$300 mil to make photorrealistic alien trees that look just like Earth trees. At least the WETA programmers are happy making mortgage paymts

or, one of my favourites,

James Cameron's AVATAR is the best looking thing that ever fell out of a hard drive from 2003

tried their best to signal the studio and the mind behind the movie that they were far less enthralled with what was shaping up to be the final product than Hollywood's producers and directors had imagined. Exclusive trailers shown in theatres across the globe hardly received movie-goers' praise, running in front of half-full or even almost empty theatres .

Some offered reasons for this non-existant enthusiasm, claiming that "District 9" took the steam out of the trailer launch, making it impossible for a mere trailer to elicit the praise that the South African film had generated. Others derided their fellow fans for not falling in love with the new work of a man who during his carreer had always succeeded in delivering worthwhile and extremely entertaining movies and who had always had a feel for pushing the technological edge of his craft a little bit further. However, the one gripe the majority of fans seemed to have with "Avatar" was neither its graphics nor any kind of distrust in James Cameron, and despite heated online debates, that gripe - to my knowledge - never found its way into one of the many professional online articles dealing with the trailer debacle.

For one, the graphics were a non-issue right from the start. We are not living in the early 1990ies anymore. Almost a decade has passed since the "Star Wars" prequel trilogy and the far more superior "Lord of the Rings" trilogy drew hundreds of millions of people into cinemas worldwide and set the bar for what could be visually expected from a well-funded feature film. The lure of great CGI has lost much of its power by now, amplified by the fact that it has become nigh impossible to convey the full power of it unless one is watching it on a HD television set, on a Blu-ray disc. The second part also falls flat on its nose, for large parts of the adolescent target audience (the movie most likely will receive a PG-13 rating) are too young to have ever seen a James Cameron feature film in a movie theatre, while the rest of us remembers him vaguely, but fondly.

No, what made the trailer a failure was that it was inconsistent and strongly hinted at a prevalence of themes and topics that the average young male viewer and intelligent movie-goer do not relate to.

James Cameron has always been a man who has been able to create stories that transcend party lines and gender lines, even though his work arguably catered primarily to a male audience. Even "Titanic", which having avoided to watch is often considered among men as much as an essentiel achievement as never having watched the late Patrick Swayze's "Dirty Dancing", is a superbly crafted movie in which the Cameron once again pushed the technologic edge by combing the best CGI with an enormous love for historic detail. The love and dedication that man spent in realizing the project made it worth watching, and made even the romance bearable.

But that was 1997. And something has happened with James Cameron, and with Hollywood since then. What we really have to expect from "Avatar" becomes apparent through Dana Goodyear's article "Man of Extremes - The Return of James Cameron" at The New Yorker. It gives some disturbing insights and is too long to be quoted completely, but some choice bits from it and other sources about Cameron and this movie make it a worthwhile read. That, and I think some things deserve more exposure.

Contrast, for example, these two quotes.

1.) “With ‘Avatar,’ I thought, Forget all these chick flicks and do a classic guys’ adventure movie, something in the Edgar Rice Burroughs mold, like John Carter of Mars—a soldier goes to Mars,” Cameron told me. The hero of “Avatar,” Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), is a paraplegic ex-marine who travels to Pandora, a moon in the Alpha Centauri star system, where there is a human colony. Humans can’t breathe the air on Pandora; Jake lies in a casket-like vessel, while his consciousness, projected into an “avatar”—Vishnu-blue and nine feet tall, like the native population, the Na’vi—explores Pandora’s rich interior.

2.) Set roughly a hundred and twenty-five years in the future, “Avatar” is, like most speculative science fiction, a cautionary tale. Humans have turned Earth into a wasteland and, in their pursuit of a precious superconductor called Unobtanium, are beginning to do the same to Pandora. Jake, through his avatar, falls in love with a Na’vi princess, who teaches him to live in harmony with nature, and then he leads her people in an insurrection against the colonists. “Of course, the whole movie ends up being about women, how guys relate to their lovers, mothers—there’s a large female presence,” Cameron said.

You know, there is quite the discrepancy between the first and the second quote, because nothing in the second one relates to he first one. A preachy environmental tale about a supposed hero going native with 'the enemy' is hardly what one would call a 'classic guys’ adventure movie'.

"...teaches him to live in harmony with nature..."

By "in harmony" with nature, they certainly mean "like half naked tribespeople in the middle of a rainforest". With the requisite of "live in constant borderline starvation", "near total lack of justice system" and of course the ever present "constant symbiosis with flesh eating parasites with no hope of medical care."

Yeah. Living "in harmony" with nature ROCKS. Because thats waaay better than having technology, right ? Right!?

I really hate the "noble savage" theme because the real world was never like that. There was never such a thing as a noble savage. Regardless of culture or level of technology, humans have always used and abused the environment for their own personal needs or wants. The only difference "now" (relatively speaking, of course) is that it is industrialized so it is a lot more noticeable than it used to be. Make no mistake, the Native American and African Tribes, etc. all dramatically changed the environment around them to suit whatever they wanted to the best of their abilities once they reached a certain level of social organization. Living in harmony with nature is a fantasy invented by extreme environmentalist to try to make normal people feel guilty about everything.

It should be obvious that such a message does not draw in the intended target audience (which demands another question, that being "Who is the target audience?").

"Conversationalist messages can be good, usually when they're subtle and not overly preachy. I'm upset because as far as I can see, this entire scenario relies on the Humans being incompetent, amoral dicks for shits and giggles and trying to slaughter the 'noble savage' natives for the macguffin, even when there are blatantly obvious methods that would be more efficient and less costly toward acquiring said macguffin.

Other examples of films that have tried this angle and failed miserably are Ferngully, Star Trek IX, Pocahontas (Disney version) and the like.

That the humans seem like they're going to be doing their best to give D-War humanity a challenge in 'most military incompetent morons ever seen on the silver screen' isn't helping at all.

I mean, Christ, even the Galactic-fucking-Empire, an organization run by some of most of the most blatantly mustache twirling villains in movie history (including an individual whose response to a peace protest was to land his freaking ISD on top of them) didn't exterminate the natives on Endor (at least not intentionally). They left them alone and went about their business."

a commenter at Spacebattles.com wrote in an ongoing thread about the article above. It seems obvious to me that this story was written towards the people who think controlled burns to remove old growth trees in forests are a bad idea. These are also the same people who kill entire industries or towns just to save one tiny animal or keep tying things up in litigation that nothing ever gets done. Luddites, hiding under the realm of environmentalism and nothing they do is ever rational or smart. It comes as no surprise that most the time absolutely none of them ever have any sort of scientific or engineering background.

This really makes me want to watch a movie where spacefaring humans bomb the shit out of random alien natives - because this is how any war like this would go. What we apparently do get, however, seems to be a combination of the worst themes we can get:

• preachy environmentalism wrapped up in a parable about White Imperialism (woe is us, who we disturb the backwards ways of the locals)
• the Vietnam War - in SPAAAAACE! (the humans/Americans can't win in the foreign/Vietnamese jungle)
• and the Iraqui Insurgency as hardly hidden moral messages (going native with the "Resistance" to fight the "Invaders").

So, what happened that the guy who gave us the awesome United States Colonial Marines in "Aliens" now ends up giving us the 22nd century military being tossed around by half-naked stone-age bipeds riding around on pseudo-dragons? Ah, let me enlighten you with some more quotes! How about these?

Since 2000, he has been married to Suzy Amis, who had a small role in “Titanic.” She no longer acts; several years ago, she founded Muse Elementary, a private school with an emphasis on ecological consciousness, in a setting that is, according to its Web site, a “dye-free, toxin-free, pesticide-free zone.”

This one also is telling.

He revoked his application for American citizenship after Bush won the election in 2004.

And last, but not least, this.

The Na'vi represent something that is our higher selves, or our aspirational selves, what we would like to think we are.

Dunno about Cameron, but I don't *cough* "like to think I am" *cough* a retarded, technologically backwards blue furry savage, thankyouverymuch. As it seems, however subtle Cameron's politics may have been in his prime productive phase of the eighties and nineties, they no longer are subtle today, and I doubt that many members of the target audience of young males between 13-33 will find them overly attractive, either. And that does not even touch the inconsistencies and non-politics related shortcomings of the known plot.

I won't spend a cent on this creative abomination. And you shouldn't either.

Why "Twilight" and not, say, "Amethyst"?

A new post is up over at Whiskey's Place, and while I do not agree with his idea that the mass market is back (for one, it was never gone, and secondly, if anything the Internet will accellerate the process of niche-specific content creation), he quotes an interesting passage that another reader of his had posted in "NBC's Leno Gamble" and which, to me, was a rather revealing episode as to the state of publishing. Mil-Tech Bard stated:

"The Networks seem to have the same problem as the publishing industry.

They both don't have people at the first book/script reader or the higher acquisition editor levels who knows beans about what straight males want.

Jim Baen formed Baen Books with the specific mandate to write science fiction books drawing on a more 'traditional' heroic motif. This is why Baen Books dominates (owns really) the 15-55 year old male audience in SF. The key is that Baen books has a tiny staff with no bureaucracy to protect value-subtracted idiots.

This is why Baen Books is successful.

Large organizations like Time-Warner, CBS, ABC & NBC all provide niches for value-subtracted idiots to hide in, and the bureaucracies to protect them. The publishing industry case in point, according to the writers I know, is the following:

"...the vast majority of first readers and acquisition editors can not recognize a story that straight men and boys may like, because those readers and editors are for the most part twenty-something females.

They are female because entry-level editorial jobs at major American publishers pay just a wee bit better than a summer internship -- and the jobs require one to live within commuting distance of some of America's most expensive cities.

The pay sucks so badly because every year, teeming masses of young women graduate from college with degrees in fields that don't lead to any clear, immediate career path. Thousands of them decide to move to New York City and get a job in publishing because, after all, they majored in English Literature. They all apply for the same seven first-reader positions that happen to be open at the time. The delighted publishers then hire the ones who will work for the lowest salaries. When promotional opportunities open up, the publishers hire from within -- i.e., from the pool of people of who have demonstrated an eager desire to work for an unbelievably low salary.

Guys who've graduated from college (with the exception of those who want to work on Broadway or in commercials) don't move to NYC for $25,000 a year jobs. Chicks do. Because NYC is glamorous, as is publishing.

So we wind up with a situation in which a huge portion of America's literary output is being filtered by young women who don't have a clue as to what straight boys and men like to read. Not surprising that what comes out of the filters is stuff that straight girls and women like to read."

Author John Ringo is now Baen's primary profit generator. Baen being so small was the key to their recognizing Ringo & pulling him out of the first rejection slush piles.

Ringo's first novel was rejected by a young woman who had followed that exact career path listed above. Jim Baen overrode that decision (and fired said first reader) because he read Ringo's stuff on the Baen fan board. They had a fan fiction section there and the fanboys there were all talking about how good Ringo's stuff was.

Baen went there, read it, found out what happened and the rest, as they say, is history. Baen used his bulletin board fans as his unpaid [...] first readers and simply followed those with the best track record to promising new talent."

That actually explains why a novel like "Twilight" (and yes, I have read it) gets published, even though Stephenie Meyer's sole literary accomplishment (and that is no small feat, I recognize that) with that novel was finishing it. The story is bland, the characters are even blander, and in the light of the quote above it seems perfectly reasonable to assume that the only way this came to being published was that it appealed to the fantasy of one of those female first readers. Now arguably, "Twilight" is an example for that fact that feminism only runs skin-deep (all those "independent" and "self-reliant" modern teens and tweens craving the idea of being the wife of the beautiful and immortal vampire and the byzantine machinations of the Vampire society instead of true equality in life and workplace) and that you can make shit to gold. It has spawned a multi-million dollar franchise, but is a perfect example for the point above, for it has spawned a whole subgenre (even though that had been alive before with the "Anita Blake" novels and Anne Rice's vampire books) that basically is written by women for women while other demographic groups (read: men and boys) of course are treated with quite a bit less enthusiasm.

If women control the entry positions in the publishing industry through which the works of most aspiring writers most go (and the western world's reservoir of talented, industrious amateur writers is nearly infinite) it is no wonder that entrepreneurial souls like the late Mr. Baen pretty much single-handedly take over whole sectors of fiction. Pretty much all the military and adventure-orientated science fiction and fantasy runs through Baen Books, be that juggernaut David Weber with his best-selling "Honor Harrington" saga and his other assorted works, or Eric Flint's ongoing "1632" series, or William R. Forstchen's or John Ringo's books. These works all appeal to a broad male audience with sales in the millions of copies, yet major publishing houses seem unable to generate or process comparable works of their own - and now we know why.

It is largely unlikely that a young, female first reader enthralled by the idea of the glamour of New York and of publishing will see the value in a script about a rural Virginia community transplanted into the Thirty Years War in Germany, for even though there are strong female characters in it, most of the plot is naturally driven by men (hardly avoidable in Renaissance Europe) and deals with war and conflict, both physical and in the way of a profound culture shock. So you have time travel, you have rural values and hardiness, and you have war and conflict, none of which are themes the average tween girl will embrace or recommend or even have a cursory interest in.

Likewise, it is just as unlikely that the same first reader would consider the value of, say, Amethyst (starts with post #23), which deals with a complex political background, corporate intrigue and a rather hard sci-fi tech setting and is set in our solar system, featuring an impeding showdown between the USA and China. "Amethyst" is only one of many excellent stories that author, going by the nickname of Lightning Count, most of them of a far higher quality and complexity than "Twilight" could ever hope to achieve (see, for example The Last Star). Still, it is people like him, men like him, that will most likely never get published, and we as the audience will be all the poorer because of that, for there will be nobody except the guys at Baen Books to jump into the gap.

And I don't think that is going to change, even if one of the bigger publishers were to buy one of the successful smaller ones, for its structural deficits would simply be transplanted to the nwely aquired asset and thus eliminate the reason for the purchase after the deed was done. I would also argue that's a process which has also happened in the electronic media sector, especially for PC games, but that is the topic for another post...

Review: Risen

Risen is the newest product of the team behind the excellent "Gothic" series of role-playing games, Pyranha Bytes, and it shows, as the style 'feels' very similar to the acclaimed series, which does not have to be a bad thing. I played the English version of the game, and one of my usual gripes, the voice acting, does not have to be adressed here for it turns out to be, at least, adequate.

Still, there is much to be criticized here. The first two chapters are really the best parts of the game, after that the weaknesses that the early awe has hidden become apparent. For one, after the second chapter I had pretty much already explored and looted 90% of the beautifully animated but ultimately small and boring island. There were two moderate settlements on the island, the one being the harbour village (let's face it, it was a walled village) and the monastery, and neither seemed too lively to me. Aside from that, you have three, maybe four hermits out there and the two farms that are run by the Inquisition. The whole game world covers less territory than a district in Oblivion!

I always feel irritated when a modern RPG doesn't even present such nice atmospheric, yet substantial things like NPCs with daily routines that simulate the feel of a living, breathing world. After all, that's more or less the bar for good RPGs since, well, Ultima VII, and that was 15 years ago! With the exception of maybe the crate haulers nobody ever seemed to do anything except get to bed and get up again in the morning + one random, NPC dependant thing (like sitting on a bench, standing at a desk, etc.). Sorry, but after Ultima VII, and especially from the guys who basically did the Gothic series, I can and do expect more! The way it is, Harbour Village and the rest of it looked nice at first glance, but turned out to be just superficial.

That the NPCs didn't seem to have any sort of personality, or never developed a stronger relation to the PC except somewhat for Patty, and that the character animations and models were in fact worse and fewer than those of titles like the 2 year old Witcher didn't help the game a lot either. I mean, Vasili and Nico at the tavern almost look the same, fer god's sake! And the clothing styles can't have been more than twenty in maybe four different colours - for all human NPCs and the PC.

I guess what bothered me the most was a) that my actions had no consequences and b) that so little lore was given. I mean, you had a good setup with the power struggle between the bandits and the Inquisition, but it basically lead you nowhere. Even if I cleansed the village for the Inquisition and then went back to the swamp camp, the worst I got was a reproachful look. In Oblivion, even the teensy-weensy sidequests had effects, like the one where you fend of two goblin tribes to help some settlers, and when you get back there after a while, they have started to actually build their settlement. Or in NWN 2, when you managed Crossroads Keep, and got the feel that you were erally achieving something.
And there was so absolutely little info on the world itself given it was frustrating, and took away the sense of dread that the designers hoped to create. Hey, we are all starving inside the village's walls because we have no money left to pay for the ever shrinking food supply...so let's get drunk in the tavern! We are all fishermen, but because of the storms we can't sail out of the harbour with our... two little boats! The bandits in the village are a real problem, since they... sit around all day long! We are hunters, and we make sure the bandit camp gets fed... by standing or sitting idly around 24/7. But hey, thank god we still have a miller... who is also an alchemist... and a brewer... brewing beer from mariuhana...?! And we are plotting our return to the city here by... sending our limited group of workers into ruins unprotected so that they die while unearthing gold with which the bandits can't do a thing because they can't hire anybody with it... because of the storms!

And there are simply far too few side quests, and the except the one with the vassal rings the ones that exist are really basic ones. Again, after Oblivion's superb sidequests and The Witcher's mature content I can expect more from a finished product nowadays. That, and the whole "Saurians appearing from nowhere and are now THE EVILZ THREAT" was neither explained very well nor did it have tangible effects on the world and the NPCs as a whole.

Then the game also has balance and gameplay issues. The magic system is lacklustre and really limited, the combat system is largely arbitrary and turns fights especially against later opponents into unending click- and quicksave-orgies. That, even with maxed-out stats and armour, generic lizard people can kill you in three strikes while it takes you endless sword play to kill them (if you can even hit them with all the blocking going on), and that you are in dire straits once there are three of them really takes away from the gratification of levelling up. I'm not sure if using my 3rd level fighter with the simple blade and the small wooden shield instead of the 23rd level combat mage with the top blade and the super shield would have made much of a difference, for there were no observable effects to the contrary! In general, the levelling and skilling system appears to have only superficial effects (aside from lockpicking and acrobatics), and is a strange piece of work on top of that. The learning points system just has not grown on me, and it's outright stupid once you are in the employ of a faction - which then still demands you pay for their services! It's like working for a company which then charges you extra for the working material it is supposed to supply to you as part of the job!

And the end fight sucked, as did the lacklustre outro.

Summary: It's a solid little game that drastically loses steam halfway through and is devoid of many features I would consider standard and good tone nowadays, especially for RPG specialists like Pyranha Bytes. On the pro side, it's completely bug free (at least it ran that way for me).

Quote Of The Day

Sci-Fi related.

How much is a Tesla? For comparison. - synx

One Weber per square meter.- hyzmarca

Yes, I know, I'm such a nerd.

"Predator" Remake?

The idea of a reboot of the "Predator" franchise has been been floating around for at least half a decade by now. I remember reading a thread on it as early as 2005. That thread, and the site it took its information from, have long since passed over into the Web's limbo, but things seem to be shaping up to be more substancial right now.

It is basically old new, dating back to late January 2009, but even old news is good enough for me to rant about it (there may be new developments already, but I could not be bothered to check up on those):

"A reliable source dropped us a line revealing to us that Robert Rodriquez and his Troublemaker Studios will be producing the Predator reboot for 20th Century Fox. Now here' the kicker, the pitch being sent around town implies that the reboot will have more than one predator. "In the reboot a team of commandoes face down a mysterious race of vicious monsters." No writer has been attached yet - and there is no script."

Says BD Horror News.

Probably now with more sassy female leads! Yay! /sarcasm

And probably an even more ethnically and culturally diverse team. Cannot be insensitive now, can we (despite the fact that the US forces overwhelmingly recruits from the white middle class, as opposed to the myth that it takes its men from the underpriviliged fringes)? Maybe we'll have a lesbian Eskimo (oh, sorry, I meant "Inuit"), hardass Michelle Rodriguez as the leaderette, a goofy white guy with a redneck accent, a resolved black guy full of ghetto wisdom and an asian tech guy who also is an ace in Kung Fu and radiates Zen philosophy. And there will of course be a corporate conspiracy involved, with ties to the CIA/NSA/other acronym agency that during the last third of the movie will try to kill both sides because they want to "keep the secret".

And a team of commandos vs. race of vicious monsters? Seriously?

The first movie worked so well because you had the tension of watching a team of the baddest motherf*ckers on the planet carrying enough weapons to wage a succesful campaign against France fall, one after the other, to a single skilled alien trophy hunter!

Given the ridiculous amount of planning, luck, ingenuity and firepower it took to take down a single Predator, how is this money supposed to be longer than 20 minutes? Especially if we consider the "modern commando" angle, meaning we are looking at people who at best will use silenced G36 carbines, 5.56mm.

To make this work, they will have to seriously rewrite the original concept of the movie and of the Predator itself. Which begs the question: if they have to do that anyway, why not make a sequel, a Predator 3, instead of a reboot?

Because it was the concept that made the movie. It was, at its heart, the ultimate man versus the ultimate Predator. The gladiators of two species fighting it out, first with the top of their respective technologies, later only with their wits and muscles and sharpened sticks.

So, how are you supposed to remake Predator? What made Predator so awesome was that you had a team of the most outrageous 80's action star muscle men with a combined mass of ordinance weighing in at 1400 pounds fighting against a 7 foot invisible monster ninja.

How do you recreate that with sissy modern actors? Just the word "commandos" puts me in a tailspin. Commandos, in the 80s, meant a completely different thing than it does now (watch Schwarzenegger's Commando). Hell, a lot of the appeal of it was that it was a red meat 1980's commando action movie gone horribly wrong. Nowadays, you associate the term "Commando" with Jason Bourne, or even the new James Bond.

Seriously, what will this whole thing be good for anyway? If there were massive technological advancements between the original and the remake like in The Thing (if you have not seen John Carpenter's version: go and get it!) or so, it would at least halfway make sense. There is absolutely no need for a remake of Predator. That was an awesomely iconic movie.

They'll probably have Dutch be "50 Cent" or something.

Hollywood is so desperate and so spineless that apparently the decision has been made instead of doing sequels which would require, you know, at least a little creativity to come up with a new story, they will just re-make movies and recycle the same story with lots of fake-looking CG effects. And I would bet my right testicle that they will inject some stupid hip-hop/EA trax theme to pull in the masses of 20-something MTV retards. Or Linkin Park.

I hate Hollywood.

Awesome Cover

What happens, when one of my favourite bands does a tribute cover of one of the great legends of guitar music history? Awesome ensues!

In Extremo - I Disappear (Metallica)

Islam Day in Hawaii

Via Pamela's Atlas Shrugs.

HONOLULU.

Hawaii's state Senate overwhelmingly approved a bill Wednesday to celebrate "Islam Day" - over the objections of a few lawmakers who said they didn't want to honor a religion connected to Sept. 11, 2001.
...
"We are a state of tolerance. We understand that people have different beliefs," said Sen. Will Espero, a Democrat. "We may not all agree on every single item and issue out there, but to say and highlight the negativity of the Islamic people is an insult to the majority" of believers "who are good law-abiding citizens of the world."

Yeah, I bet they are. It's not like every one of them abides a system based on the Code Napoleon or the British Common Law. Since when has obeying the law become a factor in judging hostile ideologies?!? Germans under National Socialism also widely obeyed the law, and somehow I do not see us run around nowadays making excuses for them - quite the contrary, in fact.

"The bill seeks to recognize "the rich religious, scientific, cultural and artistic contributions" that Islam and the Islamic world have made."

From the top of your head: name ten. ... Yeah, thought so.