5 ms·

I think he largely misses the point. Like many other sci-fi pieces, Avatar is a fantasia and not a serious look at our possible future. Much of the human tech

I think he largely misses the point. Like many other sci-fi pieces, Avatar is a fantasia and not a serious look at our possible future. Much of the human technology was obviously modeled after current American military tech, and that was a deliberate choice. This approach allowed Cameron to tap into current feelings and cultural currents. If things had been more 'realistic', then it would have been alien to modern audiences. Really, properly modeling the future would have made the story far more difficult to tell. It's darned hard to make a story that's universally accessible. 'Avatar' is a pretty decent sci-fi movie that's understandable to people all over the world. It will also revolutionize cinematography and filmmaking from this point onward. Any proper analysis of the film should keep those points in mind.

mclin 17y ago
It reminds me of this article from little while ago. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1169875 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1169875 Nerds want every question answered with a reason, even if that question shouldn't have one. Why is Superman strong? He gets his powers from the sun. Why does he get powers from the sun? Because his skin is a solar battery. Well, why is he still strong at night? Well, he's charged up for years as an adolescent, he has a lot of stored power. Ah ha! Well, in issue #626, the Parasite drained him of all energy before Batman saved him - shouldn't he be back to zero and weak by dawn? No, they say, because of...
- derefr 17y ago
  Well, yeah—that's what it means for something to be "science fiction." SF is fiction that not only feels scientific, but can be expected to hold up to genuine, in-depth scientific inquiry on its concepts and progression. If you didn't write a movie/book/whatever that will stand up to such nerdery, you should really stop calling it sci-fi.
  - tree_of_item 17y ago
    I feel as if it's the exact opposite. Do any of Asimov's books on "positronic brains" hold up to genuine, in-depth scientific inquiry? He just glossed over the details of their workings. Does this mean they're not sci-fi?
    - derefr 17y ago
      It's not the setting that needs to be scientific for a work to be SF, though, but rather the conflict. The conflict in the Robot books isn't about "positronic brains," it's about robotic interactions with humanity. The science being employed is sociology. To put it another way—the initial state of the universe when the book starts can be anything you like, with any rules you like. SF is just a strict dedication setting up those rules and following them wherever they may lead. ("Hard" sci-fi additionally requires that those rules be a superset of the rules of our own universe.)
      - rbanffy 17y ago
        > The science being employed is sociology. Perhaps in the case of Avatar, the science would be anthropology with a small bite of psychology and history mixed in. A lot of good sci-fi stories gloss over the details of several sciences (and often violate them in ways that would make a screenwriter turn red) to have the opportunity to examine one specific idea. Or, to put it more concisely, they tell one story while pretending to tell another.
- tolmasky 17y ago
  I don't feel this is true at all. I think people start to question reality when the plot is weak or when the object that in unrealistic is tied to the plot in a significant way. I've never sat through Back to the Future and seen a nerd say "but what exactly does a flux capacitor do in order to enable time travel, this movie is so unrealistic!". I think that as long as a minimal effort is given to explain away these points it is satisfactory to most people as long as those points are not essential to the movie: the physics of time travel is not essential to the story of Back to the Future. However, the more important to the movie, the more time must be spent. Cloning dinosaurs, and specifically how they clone dinosaurs, was pretty important to Jurassic Park. Hence, more effort was placed in explaining this to the audience (they're all girl dinosaurs, fossilized dna, need frog dna, etc etc). This is significantly more involved than "oh we have a flux capacitor for that" explanation. Both are perfectly fine though, since they match their necessity to the movie. I personally felt that Avatar succeeded at this level of explanation. Aside from "unobtanium" somehow making it past the first edit of the script, the technological/biological stuff was fine: Unoriginal? Yes. Uncomfortably unrealistic? No. However, I think absolutely everything else about that movie was pretty subpar. The plot was really uninspired. Its sad, so much gloss on top of such an empty story. On top of that, I really was not that impressed with the graphics. I'm sure plenty of people will tell me I don't know what I'm talking about, but when I'm 70 years old and someone asks me, visual effects-wise, what was the highlight of my movie going career, I'm going to say seeing the brachiosaur in Jurassic Park, and probably won't even remember Avatar.
markbnine 17y ago
I thought the low-tech choices for the military were kind of fun. Especially that huge knife for the exoskeleton. That's not something I've seen before. Also the detachable gun.
- gwern 17y ago
  > Especially that huge knife for the exoskeleton. That's not something I've seen before. Also the detachable gun. Gundam?
- sliverstorm 17y ago
  The american military generally does not follow this stereotype to the least, but there is a long-standing conception of armed forces using somewhat dated, simple technology. The reason of course being reliability and serviceability. Never dated to the point of being useless, but behind the cutting edge. Frankly if I was on some mission light years from civilization, I'd like to have something dead-reliable and easy to fix if it breaks.
tokipin 17y ago
that goes for the creature designs as well. there were "dogs" and "horses" in the movie. and in fact i'd argue that goes for the plot itself. a lot of people criticize the plot, but i think it was a very deliberate choice. a "screwy" or "clever" or too-sophisticated plot would have detracted from the rest of the movie
- gnaritas 17y ago
  I think a more sophisticated plot would have made a better movie, but it'd have killed the box office. Cameron knows his audience. When you make the most expensive movie ever, you better damn well be shooting for a wide audience; the nerds aren't going to get you a positive return on the investment. Avatar was exactly what it needed to be to justify its existence. Once this technology becomes cheap enough, then it'll make economic sense to make really smart movies to chase the long tail of very specific niche audiences, but movies cost too much right now to be able to do that effectively. People who like really smart movies are a tiny niche audience. You have to dumb it down or it'll lose money.
bobbyi 17y ago
His criticisms seem to amount to saying that he doesn't like this genre of movie. Complaining that a fantasy movie doesn't make realistic predictions about the future of technology is like complaining that a romantic comedy didn't have enough action scenes.
- rbanffy 17y ago
  It's very hard to tell a story if you are to make an accurate enough prediction of the future. Raw unadorned reality doesn't lend itself to make great movies.
eagleal 17y ago
The point is: Cameron and the Production (together with the distributors) wanted to make a movie that earned fast enough. They didn't want a masterpiece (I think, the original Avatar manuscript, Proejct 880, is actually a lot better that this version[1]). Because of all the buzz with the "go green" and climate change, this version attracts more people (manuscript freezed before the UNCCC Copenhagen). [1] http://chud.com/articles/articles/21969/1/PROJECT-880-THE-AVATAR-THAT-ALMOST-WAS/Page1.html http://chud.com/articles/articles/21969/1/PROJECT-880-THE-AV...

mclin 17y ago

It reminds me of this article from little while ago. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1169875 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1169875 Nerds want every question answered with a reason, even if that question shouldn't have one. Why is Superman strong? He gets his powers from the sun. Why does he get powers from the sun? Because his skin is a solar battery. Well, why is he still strong at night? Well, he's charged up for years as an adolescent, he has a lot of stored power. Ah ha! Well, in issue #626, the Parasite drained him of all energy before Batman saved him - shouldn't he be back to zero and weak by dawn? No, they say, because of...

derefr 17y ago
Well, yeah—that's what it means for something to be "science fiction." SF is fiction that not only feels scientific, but can be expected to hold up to genuine, in-depth scientific inquiry on its concepts and progression. If you didn't write a movie/book/whatever that will stand up to such nerdery, you should really stop calling it sci-fi.
- tree_of_item 17y ago
  I feel as if it's the exact opposite. Do any of Asimov's books on "positronic brains" hold up to genuine, in-depth scientific inquiry? He just glossed over the details of their workings. Does this mean they're not sci-fi?
  - derefr 17y ago
    It's not the setting that needs to be scientific for a work to be SF, though, but rather the conflict. The conflict in the Robot books isn't about "positronic brains," it's about robotic interactions with humanity. The science being employed is sociology. To put it another way—the initial state of the universe when the book starts can be anything you like, with any rules you like. SF is just a strict dedication setting up those rules and following them wherever they may lead. ("Hard" sci-fi additionally requires that those rules be a superset of the rules of our own universe.)
    - rbanffy 17y ago
      > The science being employed is sociology. Perhaps in the case of Avatar, the science would be anthropology with a small bite of psychology and history mixed in. A lot of good sci-fi stories gloss over the details of several sciences (and often violate them in ways that would make a screenwriter turn red) to have the opportunity to examine one specific idea. Or, to put it more concisely, they tell one story while pretending to tell another.
tolmasky 17y ago
I don't feel this is true at all. I think people start to question reality when the plot is weak or when the object that in unrealistic is tied to the plot in a significant way. I've never sat through Back to the Future and seen a nerd say "but what exactly does a flux capacitor do in order to enable time travel, this movie is so unrealistic!". I think that as long as a minimal effort is given to explain away these points it is satisfactory to most people as long as those points are not essential to the movie: the physics of time travel is not essential to the story of Back to the Future. However, the more important to the movie, the more time must be spent. Cloning dinosaurs, and specifically how they clone dinosaurs, was pretty important to Jurassic Park. Hence, more effort was placed in explaining this to the audience (they're all girl dinosaurs, fossilized dna, need frog dna, etc etc). This is significantly more involved than "oh we have a flux capacitor for that" explanation. Both are perfectly fine though, since they match their necessity to the movie. I personally felt that Avatar succeeded at this level of explanation. Aside from "unobtanium" somehow making it past the first edit of the script, the technological/biological stuff was fine: Unoriginal? Yes. Uncomfortably unrealistic? No. However, I think absolutely everything else about that movie was pretty subpar. The plot was really uninspired. Its sad, so much gloss on top of such an empty story. On top of that, I really was not that impressed with the graphics. I'm sure plenty of people will tell me I don't know what I'm talking about, but when I'm 70 years old and someone asks me, visual effects-wise, what was the highlight of my movie going career, I'm going to say seeing the brachiosaur in Jurassic Park, and probably won't even remember Avatar.

markbnine 17y ago

I thought the low-tech choices for the military were kind of fun. Especially that huge knife for the exoskeleton. That's not something I've seen before. Also the detachable gun.

gwern 17y ago
> Especially that huge knife for the exoskeleton. That's not something I've seen before. Also the detachable gun. Gundam?
sliverstorm 17y ago
The american military generally does not follow this stereotype to the least, but there is a long-standing conception of armed forces using somewhat dated, simple technology. The reason of course being reliability and serviceability. Never dated to the point of being useless, but behind the cutting edge. Frankly if I was on some mission light years from civilization, I'd like to have something dead-reliable and easy to fix if it breaks.

tokipin 17y ago

that goes for the creature designs as well. there were "dogs" and "horses" in the movie. and in fact i'd argue that goes for the plot itself. a lot of people criticize the plot, but i think it was a very deliberate choice. a "screwy" or "clever" or too-sophisticated plot would have detracted from the rest of the movie

gnaritas 17y ago
I think a more sophisticated plot would have made a better movie, but it'd have killed the box office. Cameron knows his audience. When you make the most expensive movie ever, you better damn well be shooting for a wide audience; the nerds aren't going to get you a positive return on the investment. Avatar was exactly what it needed to be to justify its existence. Once this technology becomes cheap enough, then it'll make economic sense to make really smart movies to chase the long tail of very specific niche audiences, but movies cost too much right now to be able to do that effectively. People who like really smart movies are a tiny niche audience. You have to dumb it down or it'll lose money.

bobbyi 17y ago

His criticisms seem to amount to saying that he doesn't like this genre of movie. Complaining that a fantasy movie doesn't make realistic predictions about the future of technology is like complaining that a romantic comedy didn't have enough action scenes.

rbanffy 17y ago
It's very hard to tell a story if you are to make an accurate enough prediction of the future. Raw unadorned reality doesn't lend itself to make great movies.

eagleal 17y ago

The point is: Cameron and the Production (together with the distributors) wanted to make a movie that earned fast enough. They didn't want a masterpiece (I think, the original Avatar manuscript, Proejct 880, is actually a lot better that this version[1]). Because of all the buzz with the "go green" and climate change, this version attracts more people (manuscript freezed before the UNCCC Copenhagen). [1] http://chud.com/articles/articles/21969/1/PROJECT-880-THE-AVATAR-THAT-ALMOST-WAS/Page1.html http://chud.com/articles/articles/21969/1/PROJECT-880-THE-AV...