7 ms·

SF author Greg Egan reviews Avatar

118 points by arundelo 17y ago

seldo 17y ago
Many of the reviews of Avatar have focused on the (over-)simplicity of the plot. I don't understand these people. Avatar is packed with so much visual confection that I could barely process half of what I was seeing; I wouldn't have had any brain left over to _understand_ a plot. Who cares about the plot? It's beautiful. Amazingly, wonderfully, brilliantly beautiful.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- emmett 17y ago
  Egan gets your point entirely, and laments that it hasn't been put in service of something better. The best technology in the world deserves to be joined with a great script, not a severely impaired one.
  - akkartik 17y ago
    An awesome example of script+effects: Who Framed Roger Rabbit
  - mwerty 17y ago
    and non-cringeworthy dialogues.
  - ars 17y ago
    All new technologies are first paired with non-risky material. So they use a non-risky script, with nothing objectionable in it. Once the technology matures you can use a better script. The price of better is that sometimes it's worse, that's why it's a risk. If it was a sure thing everyone would do it, but it's not easy to create something great. You can try, and sometimes you'll make it, and other times you'll flop. Which is too much of a risk for a new technology - better to have something good enough, with little risk. Remember: Everyone thinks what they are doing is great. But if you are wrong, and it's a flagship product you are doomed. For example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavens_Gate_(film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavens_Gate_(film)
    - hugh_ 17y ago
      So they use a non-risky script, with nothing objectionable in it. How did we get to the point where "Humans are evil, kill them all!" is a non-risky script with nothing objectionable in it?
      - gnaritas 17y ago
        Because it wasn't a humans are evil, kill them all plot, it was a standard corporations are evil and stupid and scientists are good and help the natives plot. Humans were the good guys here as well as the bad.
    - Daniel_Newby 17y ago
      That would be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven%27s_Gate_%28film%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven%27s_Gate_%28film%29 Joe Valdez at This Distracted Globe has a good review: http://thisdistractedglobe.com/2009/01/01/heavens-gate/ http://thisdistractedglobe.com/2009/01/01/heavens-gate/ TL;DR version: quit perfecting and ship it!
    - anatoly 17y ago
      Why are you repeating the points Egan already made as though they were novel? He says in his review the same things as you're saying. "Sometime in the next twenty years or so, the technology that enabled Avatar will become cheap enough to risk employing alongside a moderately intelligent script." - it's right there in the review. It's frustrating when this happens: Author: A, yet also B. You may think that C, but I'd argue that D makes that untenable. Commenter: He said A, but clearly C. Another commenter: Hmm, C you say? But what about D? Another commenter: y'all are too swept up in your As and Cs and Ds, have you even stopped to consider B?
      - cousin_it 17y ago
        Digression: I felt this comment of yours sounded much more natural than the Russian translation you posted on your blog, even though you're a native Russian speaker. And people still ask me why I prefer to make complex arguments in English!
- michael_nielsen 17y ago
  Complaining about the plot does seem like complaining about the font in a copy of War and Peace. Avatar is a combination of world-building and world-rendering on a scale never before seen.
  - winthrowe 17y ago
    I plan to see the film tomorrow, but the video game does give credit to the world-building aspect. I was quite ambivalent about the key materiel being called unobtainium at first, but after reading a backstory article, it seems quite appropriate. Perhaps the movie itself is just part of it, but overall he seems to have brought forth a detailed universe, even if it is only glossed over in the movie.
- lsd5you 17y ago
  I would argue it is to do with the medium. The feature length film needs a plot to sustain interest, for me and apparently at least a few other people. If it's just a technology demo then it can be over and done with in 10 minutes - in Avatar they could have just started with the final battle. If Avatar were such a tech demo, then your comment would be unassailable, but as it is as a film is a bit lack-lustre.
- jacoblyles 17y ago
  If you're reviewing a movie then the weakness of the plot is something valid to comment on. Plot is usually considered an important part of a movie. I was enthralled by the movie from beginning to end; my friend was squirming in his seat and commenting on how long it was. Different people like different things about movies.
- plinkplonk 17y ago
  "Who cares about the plot?" I do. (Sorry for being ...uh .... different). yes it looks cool. Some of us expectt more in a movie. Sorry about that. I personally found the warmed over "Stupid White Man penetrates exotic closed society and rises to be leader of it, seducing the native woman" plot tiresome, repetitive and tedious, especially with the clunkiest dialogue I've heard in a decade, and insufficiently compensated for by the technology/visuals. I found the "noble savages" idea and infantile hippy politics and preaching tiresome too. For some of us lesser mortals good graphics/special effects is just one element of a good Scifi/fantasy movie, and then not the most important aspect. (from the review) " what it really felt like to me was a fourth movie in the Shrek franchise, pipping the yet-to-be-released Shrek Forever After to extrapolate that series' twin curves of rising technical achievement and plumetting wit to their logical endpoint: a near-immaculate feat of visualisation, accompanied by a staggeringly awful plot in which clunky genre conventions triumph completely over plausibility and originality. Avatar even boasts its very own love story where societal expectations and superficial barriers of size and pastelicity are overcome by generous helpings of pixie dust." This expresses my feelings perfectly, but I wouldn't be so polite. I think Avatar is a terrible movie with gorgeous visuals and nothing else. Aliens != Red Indians in fancy dress. The movie insults my intelligence on multiple levels. Yes I know, Caveat Emptor and all that, but I guess it must be because I am one of "these people"?
  - elblanco 17y ago
    Netflix also rents our pedantic art house flicks so you never have to be troubled by what the rest of us mortals watch for escapism. I'm sure you can find some overwrought deconstruction of modern human sexuality retold as 4 movements of the lives of people in positions of authority but no power, politicians of the modern era in a mock nuclear stand-down, a 30 minute continuous scene of a single flower, in water, as people pass by blurred in the bokeh of an extreme depth of field and the audio recorded so poorly you can't actually hear what anybody is saying, and a clinically shot orgy with a clown stepping in at minute 11 to juggle, seemingly unaware of his own environs -- driven by the effort to juggle so many balls. In the end, the clown drops the balls and close to credits. The credits of course will flow up and will be in a mix of Italian and French. Each scene of course representing impotence, sexual drive, narcissism as a sexual trait, and lust and the struggle to balance a polygamous relationship with three waitress and a gay hairdresser at the same time (as the director was experiencing while he shot this film). The credits of course flow up in Italian and French as a both symbols of ejaculation and of salad dressing. Enjoy the search! http://www.netflix.com/ http://www.netflix.com/
- blhack 17y ago
  Who cares about the plot? It's beautiful. Amazingly, wonderfully, brilliantly beautiful. There is a wonderfully realistic, fully immersive, 3D environment right outside my office window right now, but I don't care. Want to know why? Because the plot is boring. I get out of my chair, walk to my car, go to the gas-station, and then go home to play with my dog and go to bed. The end. People go to movies because it is better than reality. Perhaps those who never leave their couch are wowed by images that look exactly like reality, but Avatar's visual effects wowed me only in a "well, it looks like they finally did it properly!" sense. No offense to anyone who worked on this film, it is a staggering technical achievement, but it doesn't really do anything that reality doesn't. /this might be due to my being a bit bitter that I can't see the 3D version due to my non-stereoscopic vision :(.
  - elblanco 17y ago
    > but it doesn't really do anything that reality doesn't. Apparently you live on Pandora, where you can look at the office window right now and see the alien planet with floating mountains, giant six legged carnivores, pack hunters, bio-luminescent forests, two kinds (count them 2) of flying dragons and 12 foot tall blue skinned people with tails and braids with autonomous nerve endings at the end that can mentally bond with all of the above (sans the flying mountains).
    - theli0nheart 17y ago
      Awesome.
- sever 17y ago
  The point is that the movie could have been so much more. The visuals are incredible, I think the best ever done so far, that's what makes it all the more unfortunate that the story was weak. With a strong plot, and the visuals this movie could have been over the top, goosebumps incredible. Instead I went out of the movie theater sad that all this incredible artistry was wasted and what a shame that was. I think Cameron lost it. The story was a nothing, and there were a few lines in there so bad, you don't even often see their equal on terrible sitcom TV. They were cheesy video game cut scene bad, only the godhead visual prevented me from wincing. I'd still recommend for folks to see this movie, it is incredible, but what a shame...
anigbrowl 17y ago
Upvoted not just for the insightful and non-snarky review, but because Greg Egan is a) the best science-fiction writer most people have never heard of - it's practically impossible to find his work in a US bookstore - and b) an interesting writer on both science and code. Science: http://www.gregegan.net/FOUNDATIONS/index.html http://www.gregegan.net/FOUNDATIONS/index.html Java Applets: http://www.gregegan.net/APPLETS/Applets.html http://www.gregegan.net/APPLETS/Applets.html
- emmett 17y ago
  Greg Egan is my favorite sci-fi writer. Read http://www.amazon.com/Axiomatic-Greg-Egan/dp/0061052655 http://www.amazon.com/Axiomatic-Greg-Egan/dp/0061052655 and have your mind blown.
  - Estragon 17y ago
    There's also a bunch of free online stuff (some of included in that anthology) here: http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/BIBLIOGRAPHY/Online.html http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/BIBLIOGRAPHY/Online...
- matasar 17y ago
  Are his books as overwritten as this review? Honest question, as I found the review pretty leaden, but I'm always looking for interesting sci-fi.
  - Estragon 17y ago
    He's actually my favorite author, but yeah, when it comes to the actual wordsmithing, he's no Gene Wolfe. The ideas are always great, though, and stories usually are.
  - idlewords 17y ago
    Yeah, unfortunately this is pretty representative.
  - ionfish 17y ago
bitwize 17y ago
Despite it being a rehash of Great Nature vs. Technological Fucking Civilization, Avatar has going for it a much better plot than Titanic, a completely hokey, treacly, implausible film that won eleven Oscars and is still uncontested in terms of box-office revenues.
- pyre 17y ago
  You're forgetting that Titanic was like the Twilight of its time. Tween/teen girls flocked to watch the movie multiple times to watch Leonardo DiCaprio in his love story. IIRC, I remember a claim that one girl saw the movie 13 times. Without the 'teenage heart-throb' factor, I wonder if it can match up to Titanic in terms of numbers.
  - hugh_ 17y ago
    I knew a girl who had seen it twenty-something times. She had issues. Personally, though, I still think it's quite a good film. Some aspects of the love story grate a little (in particular Leonardo DiCaprio's always-perfect character) as does the characterization of all first class passengers as snooty jerks and all third class passengers as idealized salt of the Earth (come to think of it, that's pretty much the same problem as Avatar) but as soon as the ship starts sinking it becomes a fairly gripping story. Hardly the greatest film in history, but perfectly watchable and rewatchable even if you're not a 17-year-old girl.
    - pyre 17y ago
      I'm not comparing it with Twilight as far as crap factor goes. I couldn't stomach more than 20 minutes of Twilight. I was able to sit through Titanic without feeling like I had wasted 3 hours of my life, but I wasn't about to see the movie in theaters 20 some-odd times either.
- msg 17y ago
  This is better: All time box-office adjusted for inflation. http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm Gone with the Wind #1, Star Wars #2, The Sound of Music #3. Titanic #6.
fgimenez 17y ago
I had to upvote simply because of how brilliant the text width resizing mechanism is. Hint: click the radio inputs at the top of the text.
- diN0bot 17y ago
  yeah pretty neat. but then i thought, why not two scrollbars?
  - numbchuckskills 17y ago
    then I thought, why implement something so useless in the first place?
    - deafmetal 17y ago
      It's actually not useless at all. The human eye reads optimally at about 70 characters per line, more and the eye has to work harder to locate and skip back to the beginning of the next line, less and there aren't enough characters for your brain to successfully pre-scan the line. So, depending on your font size it is very handy to be able to adjust the column width to display approx. 70 chars a line.
- Splines 17y ago
  Neat effect, but those little radio buttons are hard to click accurately. A nicely styled table running across the top of the article might do better (IANAD).
- RyanMcGreal 17y ago
  Clever concept, but it took me a little while to figure out that the left and right margins were independently controlled by the radio buttons to the left of centre and the radio buttons to the right of centre, respectively. I think a single group of radio buttons to control both sides would have made more sense.
- travisp 17y ago
  I love it. As newspapers discovered long ago, it's often much easier to read text that isn't a foot wide (less necessary eye movement).
dylanz 17y ago
He recommends Princess Mononoke. It's that fact alone that makes me take his review into consideration. If you haven't seen Princess Mononoke, I'd highly recommend it. Actually, I'd recommend all the Studio Ghibli films. My wife and I have the entire collection, and are in the middle of watching the last one we haven't watched yet, Porco Rosso (which is so far, fantastic). "These" are the kinds of animations I, personally, want to watch. - Visually stunning, without the need for CG. - Not overwhelming, ie: Not too spastic or overwhelming, commercial-esque, scene switching. - No overly annoying characters. - Original content. You can find the entire Studio Ghibli series online at your favorite Bay of Pirates, but, I'd recommend you actually buy them all, as they are simply amazing. (My Neighbor Totoro is the kid friendliest, and the others aren't necessarily). My apologies if this wasn't specific to Avatar, but I'm just about to finish all of Studio Ghibli's works, and am simply amazed at these films. Fantastic.
- ardit33 17y ago
  Thanks. Gonna watch it tonight: http://www.veoh.com/collection/phanviet/watch/v6364398zH9eBNdw http://www.veoh.com/collection/phanviet/watch/v6364398zH9eBN...
- lionhearted 17y ago
  Yeah, Princess Mononoke is really a lovely film. I thought when Spirited Away came out and became popular that people would naturally go back and check out Mononoke, but it didn't happen that much. Definitely worth a watch. As for Avatar - My two biggest complaints: 1. It paints it as black and white, good vs. evil. This is such a common source of human misery and brainwashing that I thought we'd started to move past in cinema. Every leader worth anything tries to play the underdog card. Ask yourself about every cause you sincerely respect and believe in - do any of your leaders not paint it as you vs. the world? The New York Yankees are the only organization I can think of that don't try to play the underdog external evil enemies card. All the world religions do, all political parties do, all nations do, and so on. 2. My housemate had a great quote - he said, "They completed de-humanized the humans before doing all the violence to them." It's quite right - the evil military industrial capitalist marines have no family members, loved ones, passions, or good about them. They exist to be eaten by dinosaurs, shot by arrows, crushed, beaten, and shredded. There's no marine who signed on for a security job, got a little freaked out what's happening, and died due to the complex violent decisions of the leaders. Nope, all the marines are not even human or worth sympathizing with at all - destroy the expoiters, make violence on them, and they deserve all the hells we can visit upon them. When you take "we're completely good and they're completely evil" and mix it with "our enemies aren't even human", you get a recipe for horrible atrocities. I watched a documentary of what the Imperial Japanese Army soldiers was thinking at Nanking. They regarded their cause as God's work, and their Chinese enemies as not human. Never mind the specific politics. Do we really want our epic, landmark art to assert that there is in fact pure good, pure evil, and the people with different views than us are pure evil and aren't even human? I kept trying to think of if I had a kid, how I'd talk to him or her after watching that to understand that the "clear good and evil" thinking leads to very bad places.
nearestneighbor 17y ago
What puzzles me is why, with their $237e6 budget, they couldn't afford a decent script.
- randallsquared 17y ago
  So many expensive movies reportedly have terrible dialogue and scripts that there must be a reason other than the obvious. Maybe it's really, really hard to tell if a script is good before it's filmed? I dunno.
  - Dove 17y ago
    Maybe that it's hard for the audience to tell if the script is good before they see the movie?
  - ars 17y ago
    See my reply here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1009207 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1009207
  - gnaritas 17y ago
    It's pretty simple really, most people can't follow a complex plot. For a big blockbuster movie to make money it has to attract the widest audience possible, and that requires dumbing it down so the average person can follow along and not get confused. This technology however, once it becomes more widespread and cheaper, will enable future movies to be made so cheaply that it'll become profitable to chase the more targeted audience. You can't make a smart movie for 300 million dollars, you'll lose your ass; there just aren't that many smart people out there that would appreciate it. But when you can eliminate the actors, and their salaries, and just CG everything and hire a bunch of voice actors, and get that 300 million movie down to 1-10 million, then you can target highly selective audiences with something aimed directly at them profitably. Take for example Man From Earth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_from_Earth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_from_Earth shot for 200k, exactly the opposite of Avatar, virtually no budget and a fantastic plot. A movie I loved but couldn't get most people to sit through if I tried, they just wouldn't appreciate the plot and would complain about how cheap it looked. I loved Avatar by the way, but not for the plot, it was exactly as weak as I expect all blockbuster plots to be, but it was fucking beautiful visually and technically stunning.
Ixiaus 17y ago
I thoroughly enjoyed Avatar. While its plot wasn't complex, deep, and enriching; it still had a plot. One that was blended well with other sub-plots. It also served well with the world building. The plot didn't distract from it and the eye candy didn't distract from the plot. It was a perfect balance in my opinion for what it is. A beautiful film that is opening the doors for fresh and new science fiction (which has been lacking).
- swernli 17y ago
  I too enjoyed the movie quite a bit. I can agree that the plot was simplistic, but I for one did not find the dialog horrible. Like the review points out, it comes off like something mixing elements of Disney movies like "The Lion King" and "Pocahontas," which admittedly are movies I get a little choked up at. For me personally, that gave it a certain innocence and heartfelt quality. Is it predictable?Sure, but that doesn't neccessarily make it bad. I was emotionally engaded as well as visually stimulated, if not intellectually challenged by the film. For better or worse, that made it great for me.
lsd5you 17y ago
I have a theory that artists do not have the same desires as the public. In cinema a bias towards cinematography and SFX could arise because the plot actually does not interest the artists as much as it perhaps should. Even a good plot will not remain interesting after many hours of work and so the artists lose sight of the prize and indulge themselves with technical aspects of their craft. (This is not supposed to be a complete explanation of what led Avatar to lack in original plot and verisimilitude).
- fnid 17y ago
  The plot was the weakest part of Avatar, partly because Cameron has shown himself capable of creating good stories that engage the audience.
michaelneale 17y ago
If you can find any Egan books, read them. you will probably love them, I find myself day dreaming about them YEARS after I have read them, and then have to go back to read them again. He is a genius.
brown9-2 17y ago
Is it a waste to see this movie in 2D?
- bjelkeman-again 17y ago
  No. It is a fun romp and visually gorgeous in 2D.
- ericd 17y ago
  It is mind blowing in 3D on an IMAX screen. Occasionally bothersome plot aside, I found it to be the most immersive movie I've seen in years, and I think it's largely due to the excellent 3D.
- archon 17y ago
  I've seen it now in both 3D and 2D. You lose some of the wow factor of the visuals in 2D, but it's still beautifully rendered either way. I also found that the 2D seemed to have more color depth than the 3D, but that might just have been my eyes trying to adjust to the 3D glasses.
  - ericd 17y ago
    It might be because each eye only sees every other frame in the 3D version (assuming this is on a single projecter with an alternating polarizer and not two projectors with different film and different polarization).
albertcardona 17y ago
Spot on: perfect teeth, realistic actors to the point of looking like real actors with paint on their bodies, beautiful living landscape (particularly at night), and a horrendous script.
astine 17y ago
I don't know why people keep comparing this film to Pocahontas; It's really more like FernGully in space.
- stcredzero 17y ago
  A friend of mine once called Princess Mononoke "Pocahontas done Right"
- brandnewlow 17y ago
  Can't upvote this enough. All I could think about during the movie was Fern Gully.
radley 17y ago
Greg Egan reviewing Avatar is like Jakob Nielsen reviewing the 2Advanced website. Totally different levels and types of craft, as many seem to forget.
- blehn 17y ago
  There's a certain degree subjectivity in any review. That said, I'd have to say that beyond the obvious usability failures, 2Advanced is a rather dreadful website.
  - radley 17y ago
    Uhm... ok. BTW, the current 2Advanced website was a fluke. Their previous site (which won tons of awards and business) had been around for 5+ years. Eric Jordan, their founder and lead designer was doing a series of matte paintings just for fun. Someone on the team said they'd make great artwork for the website and thus v4.
elblanco 17y ago
Me thinks Egan is reading too much into things. This is the complexity and imagination of a 1960's 12 year old who grew up reading golden-age sci-fi and then grew up and built his imagination with modern tech. Critically analyzing this is like critically analyzing a 12 year old's day dreams. That's about it. It's a thrilling and wild ride, a great place to be for a bit north of 2 hours, and that's it. It's a spectacle with a plot no deeper than Star Wars. But also no less fun that Star Wars.
Sapient 17y ago
The minute I read about Avatars plot, I thought of Call me Joe by Poul Anderson. Glad I wasn't the only one. I would highly recommend reading it.
DLWormwood 17y ago
> the only real flaw in the preposterously humanlike Na'vi is their preposterously perfect teeth. This is an accurate, but unfair, criticism. Humans tend to be most comfortable reading and watching stories about other humans, or barring that, human like creatures. (Think talking animals or Star Trek "aliens.") I seriously doubt a Hollywood film could effectively draw a large enough audience to cover development costs if the aliens were too far abstract or alien for viewers to identify with or try and read body language from. (I think this partly is why hard sci-fi is so rare. People might mistakenly think the film's horror if the aliens were more like Pierson's Puppeteers or other non-humanoid creature.)
- Tichy 17y ago
  Hm, I was thinking Star Wars still wins, because of the Ewoks - they have fur. Nothing on Pandora had fur, I guess the rendering engines still can't handle hair. So it seems humans can at least identify with cuddly bears.
RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
Massive, massive spoiler alerts!! If you haven't seen the film and want to see the film and don't want to know every detail before-hand, don't read this thread. It (the thread) has taught me to avoid HN when there's a new film around. Most likely this comment will sink to the bottom and not serve its purpose of protecting the casual browser (person, not application), but for as long as it stays at or near the top, it may save a few people. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
- Shamiq 17y ago
  You get my up-vote. Only a few more days before the SO and I can get out to the theater. And I'll give you a few more lines so that it'll cover larger screens (i've got 1200 pixels to make up for).
  - RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
    Thanks. Someone either disagrees or had a slip of the finger, because they down-voted it. Perhaps it was deliberate and they want the spoilers to be here. Who knows. However, if people want to keep the spoiler protector in place, but not give me the karma for it, feel free to upmod the spoiler protector and downmod this comment to balance it.
viggity 17y ago
He has a problem with their "perfect teeth"? wtf. If I was looking for something believable, I wouldn't be watching a movie about 10 foot tall blue aliens. Yes the plot was fairly simple, but more importantly I don't think it had any gigantic gaping holes. I'd rather have a straight forward plot that I can understand than one so full of twists I can't comprehend any of it. I loved it. I'll be seeing it several more times in the theater.

118 points by arundelo 17y ago

seldo 17y ago

Many of the reviews of Avatar have focused on the (over-)simplicity of the plot. I don't understand these people. Avatar is packed with so much visual confection that I could barely process half of what I was seeing; I wouldn't have had any brain left over to _understand_ a plot. Who cares about the plot? It's beautiful. Amazingly, wonderfully, brilliantly beautiful.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
emmett 17y ago
Egan gets your point entirely, and laments that it hasn't been put in service of something better. The best technology in the world deserves to be joined with a great script, not a severely impaired one.
- akkartik 17y ago
  An awesome example of script+effects: Who Framed Roger Rabbit
- mwerty 17y ago
  and non-cringeworthy dialogues.
- ars 17y ago
  All new technologies are first paired with non-risky material. So they use a non-risky script, with nothing objectionable in it. Once the technology matures you can use a better script. The price of better is that sometimes it's worse, that's why it's a risk. If it was a sure thing everyone would do it, but it's not easy to create something great. You can try, and sometimes you'll make it, and other times you'll flop. Which is too much of a risk for a new technology - better to have something good enough, with little risk. Remember: Everyone thinks what they are doing is great. But if you are wrong, and it's a flagship product you are doomed. For example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavens_Gate_(film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavens_Gate_(film)
  - hugh_ 17y ago
    So they use a non-risky script, with nothing objectionable in it. How did we get to the point where "Humans are evil, kill them all!" is a non-risky script with nothing objectionable in it?
    - gnaritas 17y ago
      Because it wasn't a humans are evil, kill them all plot, it was a standard corporations are evil and stupid and scientists are good and help the natives plot. Humans were the good guys here as well as the bad.
  - Daniel_Newby 17y ago
    That would be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven%27s_Gate_%28film%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven%27s_Gate_%28film%29 Joe Valdez at This Distracted Globe has a good review: http://thisdistractedglobe.com/2009/01/01/heavens-gate/ http://thisdistractedglobe.com/2009/01/01/heavens-gate/ TL;DR version: quit perfecting and ship it!
  - anatoly 17y ago
    Why are you repeating the points Egan already made as though they were novel? He says in his review the same things as you're saying. "Sometime in the next twenty years or so, the technology that enabled Avatar will become cheap enough to risk employing alongside a moderately intelligent script." - it's right there in the review. It's frustrating when this happens: Author: A, yet also B. You may think that C, but I'd argue that D makes that untenable. Commenter: He said A, but clearly C. Another commenter: Hmm, C you say? But what about D? Another commenter: y'all are too swept up in your As and Cs and Ds, have you even stopped to consider B?
    - cousin_it 17y ago
      Digression: I felt this comment of yours sounded much more natural than the Russian translation you posted on your blog, even though you're a native Russian speaker. And people still ask me why I prefer to make complex arguments in English!
michael_nielsen 17y ago
Complaining about the plot does seem like complaining about the font in a copy of War and Peace. Avatar is a combination of world-building and world-rendering on a scale never before seen.
- winthrowe 17y ago
  I plan to see the film tomorrow, but the video game does give credit to the world-building aspect. I was quite ambivalent about the key materiel being called unobtainium at first, but after reading a backstory article, it seems quite appropriate. Perhaps the movie itself is just part of it, but overall he seems to have brought forth a detailed universe, even if it is only glossed over in the movie.
lsd5you 17y ago
I would argue it is to do with the medium. The feature length film needs a plot to sustain interest, for me and apparently at least a few other people. If it's just a technology demo then it can be over and done with in 10 minutes - in Avatar they could have just started with the final battle. If Avatar were such a tech demo, then your comment would be unassailable, but as it is as a film is a bit lack-lustre.
jacoblyles 17y ago
If you're reviewing a movie then the weakness of the plot is something valid to comment on. Plot is usually considered an important part of a movie. I was enthralled by the movie from beginning to end; my friend was squirming in his seat and commenting on how long it was. Different people like different things about movies.
plinkplonk 17y ago
"Who cares about the plot?" I do. (Sorry for being ...uh .... different). yes it looks cool. Some of us expectt more in a movie. Sorry about that. I personally found the warmed over "Stupid White Man penetrates exotic closed society and rises to be leader of it, seducing the native woman" plot tiresome, repetitive and tedious, especially with the clunkiest dialogue I've heard in a decade, and insufficiently compensated for by the technology/visuals. I found the "noble savages" idea and infantile hippy politics and preaching tiresome too. For some of us lesser mortals good graphics/special effects is just one element of a good Scifi/fantasy movie, and then not the most important aspect. (from the review) " what it really felt like to me was a fourth movie in the Shrek franchise, pipping the yet-to-be-released Shrek Forever After to extrapolate that series' twin curves of rising technical achievement and plumetting wit to their logical endpoint: a near-immaculate feat of visualisation, accompanied by a staggeringly awful plot in which clunky genre conventions triumph completely over plausibility and originality. Avatar even boasts its very own love story where societal expectations and superficial barriers of size and pastelicity are overcome by generous helpings of pixie dust." This expresses my feelings perfectly, but I wouldn't be so polite. I think Avatar is a terrible movie with gorgeous visuals and nothing else. Aliens != Red Indians in fancy dress. The movie insults my intelligence on multiple levels. Yes I know, Caveat Emptor and all that, but I guess it must be because I am one of "these people"?
- elblanco 17y ago
  Netflix also rents our pedantic art house flicks so you never have to be troubled by what the rest of us mortals watch for escapism. I'm sure you can find some overwrought deconstruction of modern human sexuality retold as 4 movements of the lives of people in positions of authority but no power, politicians of the modern era in a mock nuclear stand-down, a 30 minute continuous scene of a single flower, in water, as people pass by blurred in the bokeh of an extreme depth of field and the audio recorded so poorly you can't actually hear what anybody is saying, and a clinically shot orgy with a clown stepping in at minute 11 to juggle, seemingly unaware of his own environs -- driven by the effort to juggle so many balls. In the end, the clown drops the balls and close to credits. The credits of course will flow up and will be in a mix of Italian and French. Each scene of course representing impotence, sexual drive, narcissism as a sexual trait, and lust and the struggle to balance a polygamous relationship with three waitress and a gay hairdresser at the same time (as the director was experiencing while he shot this film). The credits of course flow up in Italian and French as a both symbols of ejaculation and of salad dressing. Enjoy the search! http://www.netflix.com/ http://www.netflix.com/
blhack 17y ago
Who cares about the plot? It's beautiful. Amazingly, wonderfully, brilliantly beautiful. There is a wonderfully realistic, fully immersive, 3D environment right outside my office window right now, but I don't care. Want to know why? Because the plot is boring. I get out of my chair, walk to my car, go to the gas-station, and then go home to play with my dog and go to bed. The end. People go to movies because it is better than reality. Perhaps those who never leave their couch are wowed by images that look exactly like reality, but Avatar's visual effects wowed me only in a "well, it looks like they finally did it properly!" sense. No offense to anyone who worked on this film, it is a staggering technical achievement, but it doesn't really do anything that reality doesn't. /this might be due to my being a bit bitter that I can't see the 3D version due to my non-stereoscopic vision :(.
- elblanco 17y ago
  > but it doesn't really do anything that reality doesn't. Apparently you live on Pandora, where you can look at the office window right now and see the alien planet with floating mountains, giant six legged carnivores, pack hunters, bio-luminescent forests, two kinds (count them 2) of flying dragons and 12 foot tall blue skinned people with tails and braids with autonomous nerve endings at the end that can mentally bond with all of the above (sans the flying mountains).
  - theli0nheart 17y ago
    Awesome.
sever 17y ago
The point is that the movie could have been so much more. The visuals are incredible, I think the best ever done so far, that's what makes it all the more unfortunate that the story was weak. With a strong plot, and the visuals this movie could have been over the top, goosebumps incredible. Instead I went out of the movie theater sad that all this incredible artistry was wasted and what a shame that was. I think Cameron lost it. The story was a nothing, and there were a few lines in there so bad, you don't even often see their equal on terrible sitcom TV. They were cheesy video game cut scene bad, only the godhead visual prevented me from wincing. I'd still recommend for folks to see this movie, it is incredible, but what a shame...

anigbrowl 17y ago

Upvoted not just for the insightful and non-snarky review, but because Greg Egan is a) the best science-fiction writer most people have never heard of - it's practically impossible to find his work in a US bookstore - and b) an interesting writer on both science and code. Science: http://www.gregegan.net/FOUNDATIONS/index.html http://www.gregegan.net/FOUNDATIONS/index.html Java Applets: http://www.gregegan.net/APPLETS/Applets.html http://www.gregegan.net/APPLETS/Applets.html

emmett 17y ago
Greg Egan is my favorite sci-fi writer. Read http://www.amazon.com/Axiomatic-Greg-Egan/dp/0061052655 http://www.amazon.com/Axiomatic-Greg-Egan/dp/0061052655 and have your mind blown.
- Estragon 17y ago
  There's also a bunch of free online stuff (some of included in that anthology) here: http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/BIBLIOGRAPHY/Online.html http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/BIBLIOGRAPHY/Online...
matasar 17y ago
Are his books as overwritten as this review? Honest question, as I found the review pretty leaden, but I'm always looking for interesting sci-fi.
- Estragon 17y ago
  He's actually my favorite author, but yeah, when it comes to the actual wordsmithing, he's no Gene Wolfe. The ideas are always great, though, and stories usually are.
- idlewords 17y ago
  Yeah, unfortunately this is pretty representative.
- ionfish 17y ago

bitwize 17y ago

Despite it being a rehash of Great Nature vs. Technological Fucking Civilization, Avatar has going for it a much better plot than Titanic, a completely hokey, treacly, implausible film that won eleven Oscars and is still uncontested in terms of box-office revenues.

pyre 17y ago
You're forgetting that Titanic was like the Twilight of its time. Tween/teen girls flocked to watch the movie multiple times to watch Leonardo DiCaprio in his love story. IIRC, I remember a claim that one girl saw the movie 13 times. Without the 'teenage heart-throb' factor, I wonder if it can match up to Titanic in terms of numbers.
- hugh_ 17y ago
  I knew a girl who had seen it twenty-something times. She had issues. Personally, though, I still think it's quite a good film. Some aspects of the love story grate a little (in particular Leonardo DiCaprio's always-perfect character) as does the characterization of all first class passengers as snooty jerks and all third class passengers as idealized salt of the Earth (come to think of it, that's pretty much the same problem as Avatar) but as soon as the ship starts sinking it becomes a fairly gripping story. Hardly the greatest film in history, but perfectly watchable and rewatchable even if you're not a 17-year-old girl.
  - pyre 17y ago
    I'm not comparing it with Twilight as far as crap factor goes. I couldn't stomach more than 20 minutes of Twilight. I was able to sit through Titanic without feeling like I had wasted 3 hours of my life, but I wasn't about to see the movie in theaters 20 some-odd times either.
msg 17y ago
This is better: All time box-office adjusted for inflation. http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm Gone with the Wind #1, Star Wars #2, The Sound of Music #3. Titanic #6.

fgimenez 17y ago

I had to upvote simply because of how brilliant the text width resizing mechanism is. Hint: click the radio inputs at the top of the text.

diN0bot 17y ago
yeah pretty neat. but then i thought, why not two scrollbars?
- numbchuckskills 17y ago
  then I thought, why implement something so useless in the first place?
  - deafmetal 17y ago
    It's actually not useless at all. The human eye reads optimally at about 70 characters per line, more and the eye has to work harder to locate and skip back to the beginning of the next line, less and there aren't enough characters for your brain to successfully pre-scan the line. So, depending on your font size it is very handy to be able to adjust the column width to display approx. 70 chars a line.
Splines 17y ago
Neat effect, but those little radio buttons are hard to click accurately. A nicely styled table running across the top of the article might do better (IANAD).
RyanMcGreal 17y ago
Clever concept, but it took me a little while to figure out that the left and right margins were independently controlled by the radio buttons to the left of centre and the radio buttons to the right of centre, respectively. I think a single group of radio buttons to control both sides would have made more sense.
travisp 17y ago
I love it. As newspapers discovered long ago, it's often much easier to read text that isn't a foot wide (less necessary eye movement).

dylanz 17y ago

He recommends Princess Mononoke. It's that fact alone that makes me take his review into consideration. If you haven't seen Princess Mononoke, I'd highly recommend it. Actually, I'd recommend all the Studio Ghibli films. My wife and I have the entire collection, and are in the middle of watching the last one we haven't watched yet, Porco Rosso (which is so far, fantastic). "These" are the kinds of animations I, personally, want to watch. - Visually stunning, without the need for CG. - Not overwhelming, ie: Not too spastic or overwhelming, commercial-esque, scene switching. - No overly annoying characters. - Original content. You can find the entire Studio Ghibli series online at your favorite Bay of Pirates, but, I'd recommend you actually buy them all, as they are simply amazing. (My Neighbor Totoro is the kid friendliest, and the others aren't necessarily). My apologies if this wasn't specific to Avatar, but I'm just about to finish all of Studio Ghibli's works, and am simply amazed at these films. Fantastic.

ardit33 17y ago
Thanks. Gonna watch it tonight: http://www.veoh.com/collection/phanviet/watch/v6364398zH9eBNdw http://www.veoh.com/collection/phanviet/watch/v6364398zH9eBN...
lionhearted 17y ago
Yeah, Princess Mononoke is really a lovely film. I thought when Spirited Away came out and became popular that people would naturally go back and check out Mononoke, but it didn't happen that much. Definitely worth a watch. As for Avatar - My two biggest complaints: 1. It paints it as black and white, good vs. evil. This is such a common source of human misery and brainwashing that I thought we'd started to move past in cinema. Every leader worth anything tries to play the underdog card. Ask yourself about every cause you sincerely respect and believe in - do any of your leaders not paint it as you vs. the world? The New York Yankees are the only organization I can think of that don't try to play the underdog external evil enemies card. All the world religions do, all political parties do, all nations do, and so on. 2. My housemate had a great quote - he said, "They completed de-humanized the humans before doing all the violence to them." It's quite right - the evil military industrial capitalist marines have no family members, loved ones, passions, or good about them. They exist to be eaten by dinosaurs, shot by arrows, crushed, beaten, and shredded. There's no marine who signed on for a security job, got a little freaked out what's happening, and died due to the complex violent decisions of the leaders. Nope, all the marines are not even human or worth sympathizing with at all - destroy the expoiters, make violence on them, and they deserve all the hells we can visit upon them. When you take "we're completely good and they're completely evil" and mix it with "our enemies aren't even human", you get a recipe for horrible atrocities. I watched a documentary of what the Imperial Japanese Army soldiers was thinking at Nanking. They regarded their cause as God's work, and their Chinese enemies as not human. Never mind the specific politics. Do we really want our epic, landmark art to assert that there is in fact pure good, pure evil, and the people with different views than us are pure evil and aren't even human? I kept trying to think of if I had a kid, how I'd talk to him or her after watching that to understand that the "clear good and evil" thinking leads to very bad places.

nearestneighbor 17y ago

What puzzles me is why, with their $237e6 budget, they couldn't afford a decent script.

randallsquared 17y ago
So many expensive movies reportedly have terrible dialogue and scripts that there must be a reason other than the obvious. Maybe it's really, really hard to tell if a script is good before it's filmed? I dunno.
- Dove 17y ago
  Maybe that it's hard for the audience to tell if the script is good before they see the movie?
- ars 17y ago
  See my reply here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1009207 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1009207
- gnaritas 17y ago
  It's pretty simple really, most people can't follow a complex plot. For a big blockbuster movie to make money it has to attract the widest audience possible, and that requires dumbing it down so the average person can follow along and not get confused. This technology however, once it becomes more widespread and cheaper, will enable future movies to be made so cheaply that it'll become profitable to chase the more targeted audience. You can't make a smart movie for 300 million dollars, you'll lose your ass; there just aren't that many smart people out there that would appreciate it. But when you can eliminate the actors, and their salaries, and just CG everything and hire a bunch of voice actors, and get that 300 million movie down to 1-10 million, then you can target highly selective audiences with something aimed directly at them profitably. Take for example Man From Earth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_from_Earth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_from_Earth shot for 200k, exactly the opposite of Avatar, virtually no budget and a fantastic plot. A movie I loved but couldn't get most people to sit through if I tried, they just wouldn't appreciate the plot and would complain about how cheap it looked. I loved Avatar by the way, but not for the plot, it was exactly as weak as I expect all blockbuster plots to be, but it was fucking beautiful visually and technically stunning.

Ixiaus 17y ago

I thoroughly enjoyed Avatar. While its plot wasn't complex, deep, and enriching; it still had a plot. One that was blended well with other sub-plots. It also served well with the world building. The plot didn't distract from it and the eye candy didn't distract from the plot. It was a perfect balance in my opinion for what it is. A beautiful film that is opening the doors for fresh and new science fiction (which has been lacking).

swernli 17y ago
I too enjoyed the movie quite a bit. I can agree that the plot was simplistic, but I for one did not find the dialog horrible. Like the review points out, it comes off like something mixing elements of Disney movies like "The Lion King" and "Pocahontas," which admittedly are movies I get a little choked up at. For me personally, that gave it a certain innocence and heartfelt quality. Is it predictable?Sure, but that doesn't neccessarily make it bad. I was emotionally engaded as well as visually stimulated, if not intellectually challenged by the film. For better or worse, that made it great for me.

lsd5you 17y ago

I have a theory that artists do not have the same desires as the public. In cinema a bias towards cinematography and SFX could arise because the plot actually does not interest the artists as much as it perhaps should. Even a good plot will not remain interesting after many hours of work and so the artists lose sight of the prize and indulge themselves with technical aspects of their craft. (This is not supposed to be a complete explanation of what led Avatar to lack in original plot and verisimilitude).

fnid 17y ago
The plot was the weakest part of Avatar, partly because Cameron has shown himself capable of creating good stories that engage the audience.

michaelneale 17y ago

If you can find any Egan books, read them. you will probably love them, I find myself day dreaming about them YEARS after I have read them, and then have to go back to read them again. He is a genius.

brown9-2 17y ago

Is it a waste to see this movie in 2D?

bjelkeman-again 17y ago
No. It is a fun romp and visually gorgeous in 2D.
ericd 17y ago
It is mind blowing in 3D on an IMAX screen. Occasionally bothersome plot aside, I found it to be the most immersive movie I've seen in years, and I think it's largely due to the excellent 3D.
archon 17y ago
I've seen it now in both 3D and 2D. You lose some of the wow factor of the visuals in 2D, but it's still beautifully rendered either way. I also found that the 2D seemed to have more color depth than the 3D, but that might just have been my eyes trying to adjust to the 3D glasses.
- ericd 17y ago
  It might be because each eye only sees every other frame in the 3D version (assuming this is on a single projecter with an alternating polarizer and not two projectors with different film and different polarization).

albertcardona 17y ago

Spot on: perfect teeth, realistic actors to the point of looking like real actors with paint on their bodies, beautiful living landscape (particularly at night), and a horrendous script.

astine 17y ago

I don't know why people keep comparing this film to Pocahontas; It's really more like FernGully in space.

stcredzero 17y ago
A friend of mine once called Princess Mononoke "Pocahontas done Right"
brandnewlow 17y ago
Can't upvote this enough. All I could think about during the movie was Fern Gully.

radley 17y ago

Greg Egan reviewing Avatar is like Jakob Nielsen reviewing the 2Advanced website. Totally different levels and types of craft, as many seem to forget.

blehn 17y ago
There's a certain degree subjectivity in any review. That said, I'd have to say that beyond the obvious usability failures, 2Advanced is a rather dreadful website.
- radley 17y ago
  Uhm... ok. BTW, the current 2Advanced website was a fluke. Their previous site (which won tons of awards and business) had been around for 5+ years. Eric Jordan, their founder and lead designer was doing a series of matte paintings just for fun. Someone on the team said they'd make great artwork for the website and thus v4.

elblanco 17y ago

Me thinks Egan is reading too much into things. This is the complexity and imagination of a 1960's 12 year old who grew up reading golden-age sci-fi and then grew up and built his imagination with modern tech. Critically analyzing this is like critically analyzing a 12 year old's day dreams. That's about it. It's a thrilling and wild ride, a great place to be for a bit north of 2 hours, and that's it. It's a spectacle with a plot no deeper than Star Wars. But also no less fun that Star Wars.

Sapient 17y ago

The minute I read about Avatars plot, I thought of Call me Joe by Poul Anderson. Glad I wasn't the only one. I would highly recommend reading it.

DLWormwood 17y ago

> the only real flaw in the preposterously humanlike Na'vi is their preposterously perfect teeth. This is an accurate, but unfair, criticism. Humans tend to be most comfortable reading and watching stories about other humans, or barring that, human like creatures. (Think talking animals or Star Trek "aliens.") I seriously doubt a Hollywood film could effectively draw a large enough audience to cover development costs if the aliens were too far abstract or alien for viewers to identify with or try and read body language from. (I think this partly is why hard sci-fi is so rare. People might mistakenly think the film's horror if the aliens were more like Pierson's Puppeteers or other non-humanoid creature.)

Tichy 17y ago
Hm, I was thinking Star Wars still wins, because of the Ewoks - they have fur. Nothing on Pandora had fur, I guess the rendering engines still can't handle hair. So it seems humans can at least identify with cuddly bears.

RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago

Massive, massive spoiler alerts!! If you haven't seen the film and want to see the film and don't want to know every detail before-hand, don't read this thread. It (the thread) has taught me to avoid HN when there's a new film around. Most likely this comment will sink to the bottom and not serve its purpose of protecting the casual browser (person, not application), but for as long as it stays at or near the top, it may save a few people. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Shamiq 17y ago
You get my up-vote. Only a few more days before the SO and I can get out to the theater. And I'll give you a few more lines so that it'll cover larger screens (i've got 1200 pixels to make up for).
- RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
  Thanks. Someone either disagrees or had a slip of the finger, because they down-voted it. Perhaps it was deliberate and they want the spoilers to be here. Who knows. However, if people want to keep the spoiler protector in place, but not give me the karma for it, feel free to upmod the spoiler protector and downmod this comment to balance it.

viggity 17y ago

He has a problem with their "perfect teeth"? wtf. If I was looking for something believable, I wouldn't be watching a movie about 10 foot tall blue aliens. Yes the plot was fairly simple, but more importantly I don't think it had any gigantic gaping holes. I'd rather have a straight forward plot that I can understand than one so full of twists I can't comprehend any of it. I loved it. I'll be seeing it several more times in the theater.