
SF author Greg Egan reviews Avatar - arundelo
http://www.gregegan.net/ESSAYS/AVATAR/Avatar.html
======
dylanz
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.

~~~
lionhearted
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.

~~~
defen
Glad to see I wasn't the only one who felt like he was watching a Nazi
propaganda movie - with the Na'vi as the pure, beautiful, harmonious Aryans,
and the humans as the evil rapacious mongrel race.

~~~
lionhearted
Edit: Wow, comment turned out to be very long, background on lots of
historical periods. tl;dr is that propaganda and flimsy motives is by no means
a Nazi thing, not at all. It's standard operating procedure for most causes
and almost all wars in history. History is re-written afterwards to make the
story simpler and easier to follow, but most wars and fights had flimsy
motives and two sides when they were started. Later, the loser is deemed to be
"evil", and the winner's cause was just and never in doubt. Some history with
links that might be interesting for other people who enjoy learning history.

Personally, I'm a large fan of learning about all sorts of things, and history
is one of the things I love the most. What got me interested in history was
learning about Sengoku Japan -

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sengoku_period>

Now, the Japanese people have some strong ideas about Sengoku, but they're
mixed ideas with conflict and debate about who the "good guys" were. It's
funny because I'd made my conclusions and opinions on a number of the leaders
of the era, only to find out that many Japanese people have much greater or
worse opinions on certain people. By learning from a true outsider's
perspective, I feel like I got more of the legitimate story than the
propaganda. Besides, there's no debate as to the merits of the caste system,
or whether power is better consolidated under the Emperor who is God-on-Earth,
or the Shogun, who is ostensibly the chief servant of the Emperor, Head of the
Military, and Head of the Economy.

So, by getting into 1600's Japanese history and seeing how complicated and
nuanced it was, it gave me a much greater and more interesting view of Western
European and American history. What's interesting is that typically has "good
guys" and "bad guys" and it's very clear who is who.

For instance, take the American Civil War. Under the American Constitution,
Federalism, Representative Democracy, and under classical international law,
the Confederate Secession was legal, and the attempt to re-supply Fort Sumpter
was illegal. The total war/slash and burn Union campaign was brutal. In the
North, they also suspended habeas corpus, arrested people who spoke against
the war (including Senators, yikes!), conscripted people against their will,
and generally did some very bad shit.

The war is taught and sold as a civil rights thing - really, looking back on
primary and secondary sources, it wasn't. Here's Lincoln's First Inaugural
Address, right after the Confederacy started.

<http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres31.html>

Here's what he thinks about slavery at that point:

> It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses
> you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that— I have
> no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of
> slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to
> do so, and I have no inclination to do so.

Here's Lincoln toeing the line on whether the Northern states should be
mandated to return fugitive slaves:

> There is some difference of opinion whether this clause should be enforced
> by national or by State authority, but surely that difference is not a very
> material one. If the slave is to be surrendered, it can be of but little
> consequence to him or to others by which authority it is done. And should
> anyone in any case be content that his oath shall go unkept on a merely
> unsubstantial controversy as to how it shall be kept?

His whole speech, he goes on trying to mediate and defend slavery. Why the war
then?

> I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the
> Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed,
> in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert
> that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its
> own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our
> National Constitution, and the Union will endure forever, it being
> impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the
> instrument itself.

He then makes a really interesting and somewhat crazy argument that the
Articles of Confederacy are still legally binding, and that's why the South
can't secede, and trying to would be an act of war:

> In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the
> momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can
> have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath
> registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most
> solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it."

And YET, despite that, I think Lincoln absolutely was doing the right thing. I
believe the Union invasion of the Confederacy was illegal under any definition
of legal at the time, the President authorized breaking all sorts of laws, and
yet, it was the right thing to do. I'll bite that bullet - President Lincoln
broke the law, did some vicious things, but it was still in retrospect the
correct course of action. Most people won't bite that bullet - so they want to
claim that there's clear good guys and bad guys. I'd encourage them to read
Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, it's simply too wild and crazy not to read.
It doesn't match what I read in my high school "U.S. History" textbook very
well, but yet, that was legitimately what he said. Crazy stuff.

I like reading speeches from early leaders to get at their motivations. Later,
when audio and video recordings are available, I watch them. All the WWII
countries went on and on about their propaganda. Had the Axis won, right now,
we'd be reading about the evil imperialist Allies who sought to enslave the
noble Germanic people.

I've seen FDR's speeches, Churchill's speeches, and Hitler's speeches.
Churchill was generally pretty honest - he was a military man, and spoke
rather plainly. He was put in after his predecessor failed - Prime Minister
Chamberlain was more of a politician and not much of a military man, so he
stepped down and Churchill became PM. He spoke simple, plain, about fighting
for England and winning and courage.

Roosevelt and Hitler, though, they whooped all sorts of emotions about how
American/German way of life were under attack by brutal enemies. Both lied,
frequently, about enemy plans. Here's a totally comic forged map that FDR
presented as Nazi intelligence:

[http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2008/03/01/250-who-put-
the-...](http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2008/03/01/250-who-put-the-gau-in-
gaucho-a-forged-map-of-nazi-south-america/)

(The Nazis were a lot of bad things, but if you look at their war plans, they
really didn't care so much about the West. They invaded Poland, violating the
Treaty of Versailles really really badly, and then England and France declared
war on Germany. Germany didn't care so much about Western Europe or North
America - Hitler was desperately afraid of and hated the Soviets, and all
their plans were designed around going East. That's why they launched
Operation Barbarossa - the invasion into the USSR - even though they couldn't
come to a cease fire with England beforehand)

Hmm, this comment is turning out to be quite long. I wanted to set a stage for
the kind of speeches people give - Hitler's were always the evil, evil un-
human oppressors of Germany. He talked about "the rape of the Germany people
in 1918" and the hordes that wanted to destroy the German race. Really, the
Nazis were very evil, but they weren't openly evil the way The Empire is in
Star Wars - Nazi rallying speeches sounded a lot like Soviet rallying speeches
sounded a lot like American rallying speeches. They hate us... seek to destroy
out way of life... this is a fight to the death... but we're proud and strong
and courageous and we'll win... give yourself over to the greater good and
victory is assured... we're righteous and right is on our side...

> Glad to see I wasn't the only one who felt like he was watching a Nazi
> propaganda movie - with the Na'vi as the pure, beautiful, harmonious Aryans,
> and the humans as the evil rapacious mongrel race.

So yeah, that turned out to be a long comment. But it's not so much a Nazi
propaganda movie - just a standard propaganda movie, like any political group
in history would use. The enemy is evil, has no heart or soul, nothing human
about them, and they'll completely destroy us for completely faulty reasons if
we don't completely destroy them first. Standard us-vs-them total genocidal
war propaganda. Though, it is a little disconcerting to see in a mainstream
film in the year 2009.

~~~
defen
Wow...thanks for taking the time to put together that comment!

For the most part, I agree heartily with your statements. On the topic of the
Civil War, I'd disagree slightly - I'm not sure I agree that the price paid
was worth it, but I appreciate that you've weighed the actual evidence and
concluded otherwise. Most people just accept what they read in their high
school textbook, or cling to "The South will rise again" fantasies.

The reason I drew a comparison to Nazi movies, rather than generic propaganda
films, is the racial nature of the conflict in _Avatar_. The fundamental Big
Lie of Nazism was that Aryans were superior to, and being oppressed by, the
lesser races. The Big Lie of Soviet Communism, on the other hand, was about
the oppression of one _class_ of people by another, and the inevitability of a
classless society. It has a human universalism that Nazism lacks.

To make my point in another way, the movie could just as easily (speaking as
someone who is not James Cameron) have featured two warring factions of Na'vi
- traditionalist and technological - in which case I probably wouldn't have
drawn the Nazi movie comparison.

And now, I'm off to learn more about the Sengoku period :-)

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RiderOfGiraffes
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.

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~~~
Shamiq
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
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.

------
fgimenez
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
yeah pretty neat. but then i thought, why not two scrollbars?

~~~
numbchuckskills
then I thought, why implement something so useless in the first place?

~~~
deafmetal
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.

------
anigbrowl
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> Java Applets:
<http://www.gregegan.net/APPLETS/Applets.html>

~~~
matasar
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.

~~~
abecedarius
I recommend three of them: Permutation City, Diaspora, and Axiomatic. Here's
the opening chapter of Diaspora:

[http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/DIASPORA/01/Orphano...](http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/DIASPORA/01/Orphanogenesis.html)

~~~
stavrianos
no Quarantine?

~~~
abecedarius
I liked Quarantine. The only Egan novel I thought a complete waste of time was
Teranesia. But I'd recommend one of the three I listed first to see if he's
for you.

------
seldo
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.

~~~
emmett
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.

~~~
ars
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)>

~~~
anatoly
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
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!

------
lsd5you
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
The plot was the weakest part of Avatar, partly because Cameron has shown
himself capable of creating good stories that engage the audience.

------
bitwize
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
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_
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
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.

------
Ixiaus
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
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.

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

~~~
brandnewlow
Can't upvote this enough. All I could think about during the movie was Fern
Gully.

------
elblanco
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.

------
radley
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
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
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.

------
DLWormwood
> 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
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.

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

~~~
randallsquared
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.

~~~
gnaritas
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> 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.

~~~
anigbrowl
I'd heard of that film but forgotten about it. Thanks for the reminder.

~~~
randallsquared
I saw The Man From Earth a coupla years ago; it's interesting.

------
michaelneale
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.

------
Sapient
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.

------
brown9-2
Is it a waste to see this movie in 2D?

~~~
archon
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
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
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.

------
viggity
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.

