TRON LEGACY: FORMED TO FUNCTION

Form over function. Style over content. Looking good vs thinking good .. gooder .. well .. whatever.

Does one trump the other, are they mutually exclusive, these are questions that have been kicking around for a long time. Almost as long as: Which came first, the chicken or the egg OR If a tree falls in the forest does it make a sound OR If Donald Trump is one of the richest men in the world why the fuck doesn't he get a better weave?

But let us shy away from any heady philosophical question (you do know which blog you are read correct?) and remain in a context that I understand. No, not beer, movies.

This is certainly an old topic of discussion when it comes to movie. There have always been those movies that looked great, from stunning full colour vistas to eye dazzling CGI effects but once you strip away the eye candy, all you had left was a crunchy frog .. that was a Monty Python reference, just to see if you were paying attention

A few years ago, Jennifer Lopez starred in a movie called The Cell, which concerned a woman who was able to get inside people's dreams, to help them with psychological issues

The concept was enticing, and the imagery was breathtaking .. even aside from Ms Lopez. There was an attempt at establishing an emotional connection, the plot involved Lopez "rescuing" someone from a serial killer. But in the long run, I felt more attention was paid to the visuals than the story, or even to the concept itself

Last year we saw Inception, another movie about people who are able to enter someone's dreams and alter their reality.

Certainly, the visuals, the look of the movie was breath taking. Like The Cell, this story also had an emotional connection but it's concept was about as fully realized as anything I've ever seen in a movie. This elevates the movie. You don't need the effects, the look, for this film to be compelling, the story (along with the fine ensemble acting) did that.

So, story over look, form over function? For me, usually, but not always. Film is, after all, a visual medium, and there are some film makers how can use the visual to tell their story.

Probably one of my favorite examples of this is Blade Runner directed by Ridley Scott

Blade Runner is one of those movies that had an immediate impact on and that has lasted for many years. There is a story here, sort of in a way if you really want there to be. I will not delve into the rumour that this movie was based on the Phillip K Dick novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. I in fact do not want to delve into the situation of all the movies that have been based, if that is the term, on the works of one of my favorite authors of all time. That will be a rant for another post (and it will be ugly, if I ever publish it, you may want to look away.
I prefer to consider Blade Runner as an entity all unto itself. And yes, it is an entity with a story. Beyond all the gobbly gook in the film (and my goodness there is a lot of gobbly gook) it is an examination of what makes a human, human. Or it is supposed to be. The script only lightly dwells on this topic and much of the action seems entirely unconnected with the basic premise.

But then there is the look of the movie. From the sets, to the camera work, to the costumes, the film had a very distinct look. It put you in a time and place, which is cool, because it is a time and place that never existed. That movie was very much about the look. The grimy, multi cultural, used up, low tech, environment trashed look of the thing said more about this world. While the plot unfolds it is the constant rain, the bombardment of commercial messages, the babel of many languages, the "worn out" high tech that informs us about this world as much as any dialogue.

Then you have Avatar. Another world, one entirely dependent upon effects.

The planet of Pandora is, of course, artificial. In more ways than one. Movies have always created pretend worlds but this was one of the first where not only every aspect of the planet existed in a computer, so did some of its most important characters.

I love this movie and I love its story. It is filled with emotion, with a sense of wonder, with a sense of outrage and in the character of Jake Sully, it is a story of redemption, one of my favorite themes. But it is also gorgeous to look at. But it is not just eye candy. James Cameron needed all the detail so that we were sucked into his world, that we totally bought Pandora and, more importantly, that we soon forgot that the Na'vi are computer generated fantasies and not flesh and blood creatures and allows us to fully experience the emotional core of the story

Which brings me to the movie that inspired all this ponderous pondering: Tron Legacy.

Tron, I think, is very much like Blade Runner in that the stunning visuals are integral to the telling of the story. Much of Tron takes place inside a computer, a place as artifical as the planet Pandora but a place that we have to "buy", that we must believe in, in order to care about the characters and the story. Both of which, by the way, are worth taking note.

We saw Tron in 3D and it was as good as Avatar, an immersive experience that totally makes sense to the setting. Some of the movie takes place in the real world and those scenes are in 2D. Inside the Grid, the computer, the scenes are in 3D. The film has a definite colour pallette, with lots of blacks and muted colours with sudden and dramatic splashes of bright yellow and neon blue. It all makes sense to the story, its all there for a purpose.

The look of this movie is important, the colours are like a kind of code that begin to make sense as the story unfolds. The colours and the animation are like a kind of dialogue, as much as the costumes and lighting designs of Blade Runner.

As I side, movies are a visual medium. M Night Shyamalan used the colour of red in The Sixth Sense to indicate when we were in the presence of a ghost. Kansas is black and white, Oz is in colour. In the original Stairway to Heaven, earth was in technicolour, Heaven was black and white. What we see can tell us a story as well

So form over function? You still need a story and characters and chicks with swords .. ok, maybe that last part is just for me. But you see my point. But in some cases, the form serves a function.

And there is never a function that cannot be served by a chick with a sword ...

Ahem.

AVATAR: CIRCLE THE STARSHIPS, PILGRIM

Over the Christmas holidays, Collette and I saw Avatar. We actually saw it twice. I wasn't going to blog about it, or not at this juncture but some recent media articles have sort of forced my hand (yeh, like I need to be forced to express my opinion or rant a little, just shut up about it)

My review of Avatar, if you could call it that, is that it was a highly enjoyable popcorn movie, a movie whose plot was derivative, "message" simplistic but was very well acted, particularly Sam

Rothwell as the main protagonist, the disabled marine assigned to the extraterrestial avatar and Zoe Saladana as his alien love interest. James Cameron stalwarts Sigournie Weaver and Michelle Rodriguez show up doing what they do so well and Wes Studi does stand out work as the alien chief. The actors who play the villains in the story get let down by the weak script, they are basically presented as evil ciphers, with no redeeming qualities. Still, the overall quality of the acting is quite outstanding.

But let's face fact, millions of people are not going to see Avatar for the script or the acting, they are going for the visual experience and let me tell you, its pretty spectacular. Lately I've been tiring of CGI in movies, I think its way over done, and I think most of it looks pretty sad. I particularly dislike extensive CGI in movies like the last Fast and the Furious and the last Die Hard movie, to me it seems a cheap and cheesy way to use a computer to simulate what older movies would do with real cars and actual stunt men. Quantum of Solace was not my favorite James Bond movie, but I did appreciate the fact that most of its big action set pieces, like the opening car chase and the airplane battle, were done with very little CGI, or computer effects so good, they seamlessly blended with the action.

Science fiction movies of course are a different matter. You have to resort to effects to render aliens, space ships, etc. I still don't often like sci fi movies that are solely dependent on effects. Forbidden Planet is a 50 or so old movie that still looks good but is more memorable for its story. I enjoyed JJ Abrahms take on Star Trek, the effects looked great but it was the story and more importantly, the characters that made the story for me. I disliked 300; not only was the story incredibly moronic (I'm a history buff and yes I know the source was a graphic novel but I don't understand why mythological monsters are more captivating than real flesh and blood humans) but I thought the green screen effects just looked cheesy. A B movie without the necessary humour.

And this brings me to Avatar. I did enjoy the story though it wasn't strong, the acting made up for a lack of written depth in the characters but damnit, this is the best looking movie I have seen in ages. Hands down, the greatest and most effective computer generated characters I've ever seen. It wasn't long before I forgot that these aliens weren't real. The details are incredible, from hair follicles in their ears, to the the vertical striations on their thumbnails. Even the eyes, where CGI characters usually fall down, are liquid and expressive. And the scenes where the CGI characters interact with the flesh and blood actors, are the most seamless I've ever seen.

You get to a point in the movie where the effects and the world created, are so effective, you forget they are indeed effects. And yes, I really enjoyed the digital 3D. It's not like the cheesy 3D with which I grew up and Cameron resists (mostly) the urge to throw objects out into the audience The 3D effect is immersive, in one scene, where the forest is burning down, I found myself trying to brush floating ash off my face ... And yes, the glasses gave me a mild headache, but it faded pretty quickly. If you can see it in IMAX 3D do so, it's pretty amazing.

So now, what prompted me to write this Avatar post now? In short, its the stench of over amped, opportunistic political correctness that's hovering over this movie like smog.

Be advised, the rest of this post may involve spoilers (oh get over it, even the rock you live under has heard about this movie)

For those of you who don't know, the plot of Avatar is like a retelling of the Pocahontas story, with a big fat slice of Dances With Wolves. As I've said, it's derivative. Big bad corporate, profit minded humans come to alien paradise Pandora and want to exploit it for its mineral wealth, natives be damned. Human marine takes control of an alien body to help with said exploitation, becomes entranced by the alien paradise, turns his back on humanity and all Hell breaks loose. He uses his human tactics and hoo-raw jarheadness to help fight his own kind.

While watching the movie I was very interested in the fact that the marine is a paraplegic, injured in war, using a wheelchair. In a future where we have faster than light travel and giant robots, they can't repair the man's spine? It's explained that as a poor jarhead, he isn't rich enough to get legs and there is some bitter truth to that, disabled veterans do seem to go to the back of the line. As the alien avatar, the marine has a fully functional body and it struck me that maybe he would rather live as an able alien than a disabled human ...

But that's not the PC brush being used to paint this movie.

The card being played here is the race card. The movie is (rightly I feel) being seen as a parallel to the white man's oppression of Native Americans, as I said, it is more than reminiscent of Dances With Wolves. The fact that the fine Native actor Wes Studi plays one of the aliens was not lost on me (no one ever accused James Cameron of being subtle). The criticism here is that its the white man (or the human) who rescues the Natives (or the ET's) who otherwise would be unable to write their own destiny.

Let's put this in context. What were are talking about here is a difference in cultures (human capitalism vs alien cooperative/natural living. The natives of Pandora live in a natural world, where existing takes up a great deal of their lives, they don't need tech because the planet itself provides then with what the need. No need to invent flight, we have dragons to fly us around. Humans are dependent on tech. They need it just to survive on Pandora (the planet's atmosphere is poisonous to humans) and they need it to exploit their capitalistic needs

So the aliens are faced with two wars; a war of ideology and a war of technology. Like the Aztecs and the Plains Indians The natives of Pandora are not stupid or backward or primitive, they just literally live in a different world. Our human history is peppered with a race of people being overwhelmed by another race because of these kinds of differences; not just the advanced tech, but the different mindset behind it. The American Revolution and the Boer War are examples of a larger, better equipped army being defeated by a smaller army due in large part to a difference in tactics; farmers and hunters using those skills as guerrilla fighters to overcome large professional armies.

Yes, the human in Pandora uses his knowledge of human behaviour and human technology to help the ET's in their war Not because he's superior, but because he just has the understanding that the aliens cannot access. On the other hand, the aliens use their form or tech (some kind of planet wide biological symbionce) to aid the human.

But there are humans on this world who are seeing Avatar as racist, a prime fantasy of white man's guilt .. well fuck, we better have a lot of guilt about how our ancestors ran rampant over a good chunk of this planet. And if we have fantasies of how we wish we could have better handled those past events, what's wrong with that

One of the criticisms is how the human in this movie is portrayed at the superior savior of the poor primitive aliens Again, I view the marine's advantage not one of racial superiority but just a better understanding of his own culture. And of course not all the humans are saviors No doubt about it, the bad guys here are all white .. I mean human .. to the point where they approach parody And we never see a truly evil alien. So most humans evil, even the good humans are damaged by their own culture and can only become good by, literally, becoming human and none of the aliens are truly evil... um, wait .. isn't that sort of racist?

It isn't lost on me that some of the more vocal dissonance of this movie is coming from ethnic actors and movie makers, the old "why did Kevin Costner get to make a movie about Native Americans, when the Natives themselves don't have that kind of access to the movie making machine .." A very very fair question indeed

But I'll wait to hear from the giant, blue skinned alien forum to pass a judgement here

I'm a fan of Westerns (gosh Vic really) and I find a lot of them difficult to watch now, the racism is pretty terrible. As a rule, I don't buy Westerns where its cowboys vs Indians because they just make me puke So movies have a lot to answer to in the way our history is portrayed

But lay off Avatar. Yes, I know, its not a move that exists in a bubble. It may be science fiction but the parallels to human history are out there in your face. So comments are warranted. But is this the cross you want to die on? Or is it just because this movie is so huge any comment made will likely be picked up by the media, especially disparaging comments. Its called an opportunity, just as the humans in Avatar use opportunity to exploit that planet ...

Oh golly, can we say "irony"?

By the way: How DO disabled people feel about this movie and how the crippled Marine is portrayed? I was impressed on how his legs looked so thin, a nice attention to detail. The first showing we went to, there were three people in wheelchairs in the audience. I'm very curious how those people viewed the film