((I don't usually complain about things I have next to no idea about, but this really got under my skin. I sat there fuming for half a minute, blinking back tears of hate and dreaming of convoluted vengeance schemes against the whole universe, probably involving the Anti-Life Equation. But then I decided to write a blog instead.))
Not literally remake it, but he is making a video-game-and-movie both called Avatar, which is about a world on which the ignorant, invasive humans clash with the peaceful, nature-loving Na'vi, and a human goes from being part of the oppressive human force to joining up with the locals. If this doesn't sound like a certain Kevin Costner flick, you haven't been paying attention. (It's also the same as The Last Samurai, but Dances With Wolves is the better movie, and I'm standing by that statement.)
To make matters worse, a BBC News story on the movie-and-game quotes a producer: "'Our industry has not created a new universe in 32 years,' said Mr Landau. 'We have now.'"
You can't be serious. I've already played this game. It's called Starcraft, in which the wise and benevolant Protoss come into conflict with the expansionistic, greedy Terrans, and the hero Jim Raynor switches sides when he realizes what a bunch of toads his leaders really are. In fact, when I first saw a vaunted screenshot from Avatar, I had a reaction very similar to that.
"Oh, look. It's a Terran Marine standing next to a Goliath. I guess they're shooting at Zerg."
Now, I'm no scholar, but this is a common storyline--and recognized trope--in science fiction. It appears in Ender's Game and that whole nonsense. It's pretty much the whole film Princess Mononoke. It's even in the first Final Fantasy movie, and you don't want to be associated with that, do you?
And, of course, this goes back at least as far as Gulliver's Travels, in which Gulliver figures out how greedy, corrupt, and cruel humans are and ends up siding with a bunch of super-intelligent horses. And when you'd rather hang out with horses than humans, that's pretty bad.
Dr. Jonathan Swift wants his cut of the profits, Mr. Cameron.
Horses are evil.
ReplyDeleteThe remark about horses reminded me of this passage about Lafayette:
"Indeed it is the Romantic vein of his autobiography, which depicts the young Marquis as a child of nature empathizing with the free and untamed, that gives the best clue to his subsequent political infatuations. The craggy, forested uplands of the Auvergne where he grew up were about as far from the urbane civilities of Parisian society as could be imagined, and in that setting Lafayette's Romantic imagination was left to run happily wild. In 1765, when he was eight, a beast known as the "hyena of the Gevaudan," described in warning notices as "of the size of a young bull," was not only slaughtering livestock but reputedly "attacking by preference women and children and drinking their blood." Bands of peasants were sent in pursuit of this "monster," but the boy Lafayette identified with the fugitive carnivore and together with a friend roamed the woods in the hope of a chance encounter. "Even at the age of eight," he wrote, "my heart beat in sympathy with the hyena." Years later, when attending the ex-Jesuit College du Plessis in Paris, he was asked to write an essay describing the perfect horse. In response, Lafayette eulogized an animal that bucked, reared and unseated his rider as soon as he sensed the whip--a piece of impertinence for which he himself was duly flogged."
Simon Schama, Citizens, 26.
Dances with Wolves is a much better film.
ReplyDelete"Our industry has not created a new universe in 32 years," the dude said. "Which, coincidentally, is exactly the length of time I have had my head up my ass."
ReplyDelete