bloodyrosemccoy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bloodyrosemccoy) wrote2010-01-10 05:59 pm
bloodyrosemccoy) wrote2010-01-10 05:59 pm
Entry tags:
Avatar
First off, I want to thank James Cameron for complicating my life, since I am also re-watching the entire series of Avatar: The Last Airbender, which is a mouthful to specify.
The movie was … well, for the Highest-Budget Highest-Grossing Movie Ever, with elements Relevant To My Interests,* there is no getting around that the story was basically a giant, special-effects-laden, two-hour-and-forty-two-minute rehash of FernGully: The Last Rainforest. You want race relations with aliens,** check out CJ Cherryh or Poul Anderson or someone of that ilk.
I’ll give it one thing, though—the worldbuilding was magnificent. I get as big a charge out of seeing a constructed world onscreen as I get out of hearing people converse in constructed languages. The worldbuilder in me who is satisfied with deliciously extrapolated ecosystems and what-ifs was all over this movie. Even the culture gets some bonus points—I have this image of James Cameron waving a stack of cash at a team of anthropologist consultants demanding “Make me a race of noble savage blue people!” and the consultants valiantly trying to give some verisimilitude to the Na’vi anyway.
Basically, if I had my way with the movie, it’d be a documentary. No plot except maybe Sigourney Weaver doing field anthropology or something.
I know, I know, it’s as much wishful thinking as wishing the Prime Directive were something that people would actually follow, but I can dream, can’t I?
*Special effects, worldbuilding, and blue people, for a start. Also my well-aged fancrush on Sigourney Weaver, and my burgeoning one on Zoë Saldaña. But “DOES IT HAVE ALIENS IN IT?” is the trump card.
**This actually really drives me nuts, that writers and readers of sci-fi so often equate race with species, to the point where they use the words interchangeably. There are indeed parallels, but there’s also, quite literally, a world of difference between humans and alien species. You don’t get a different evolutionary psychology (the real kind, not the pseudoscientific Stephen Jay Gould’s Strawman kind) or a different-shaped brain when you’re talking about two groups of humans. With aliens, well, we come back around to the GOOD sci-fi writers.
The movie was … well, for the Highest-Budget Highest-Grossing Movie Ever, with elements Relevant To My Interests,* there is no getting around that the story was basically a giant, special-effects-laden, two-hour-and-forty-two-minute rehash of FernGully: The Last Rainforest. You want race relations with aliens,** check out CJ Cherryh or Poul Anderson or someone of that ilk.
I’ll give it one thing, though—the worldbuilding was magnificent. I get as big a charge out of seeing a constructed world onscreen as I get out of hearing people converse in constructed languages. The worldbuilder in me who is satisfied with deliciously extrapolated ecosystems and what-ifs was all over this movie. Even the culture gets some bonus points—I have this image of James Cameron waving a stack of cash at a team of anthropologist consultants demanding “Make me a race of noble savage blue people!” and the consultants valiantly trying to give some verisimilitude to the Na’vi anyway.
Basically, if I had my way with the movie, it’d be a documentary. No plot except maybe Sigourney Weaver doing field anthropology or something.
I know, I know, it’s as much wishful thinking as wishing the Prime Directive were something that people would actually follow, but I can dream, can’t I?
*Special effects, worldbuilding, and blue people, for a start. Also my well-aged fancrush on Sigourney Weaver, and my burgeoning one on Zoë Saldaña. But “DOES IT HAVE ALIENS IN IT?” is the trump card.
**This actually really drives me nuts, that writers and readers of sci-fi so often equate race with species, to the point where they use the words interchangeably. There are indeed parallels, but there’s also, quite literally, a world of difference between humans and alien species. You don’t get a different evolutionary psychology (the real kind, not the pseudoscientific Stephen Jay Gould’s Strawman kind) or a different-shaped brain when you’re talking about two groups of humans. With aliens, well, we come back around to the GOOD sci-fi writers.
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...maybe THAT'S why I started re-reading the Chanur books over break. Reaction to Avatar.
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Actually, I think the main thought in my head at the end of the movie was "DEAR GOD the Avatars must be all KINDS of Uncanny Valley to the Na'vi. An extra finger? EYEBROWS?"
I mean, imagine a human with eyes just a bit too wide set, and hands only built to have three fingers, and no eyebrows, coming up to you and saying "We are here to study your people and assimilate you into our culture."
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Although actually, I thought Grace's avatar was just the most adorable uncanny valley thing ever. Maybe they thought so, too.
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...well, and she's Sigourney Weaver and oh god fancrush.