When All Else Fails, you call Mousa the 14, that one ranting geek.
Ever notice the geeky activity (i.e. video games, card games, role playing, anime, cartoons, etc) you're most likely to see a high number of women in is anime and manga? Not an objective fact necessarily (though it might be and I just don't know), just an observation. In fact I may see more girls into anime and manga than I go guys. I've been to quite a few anime conventions and the stereotype of fat sweaty guys in sailor moon cosplay (costume play to those not in the loop) is like 1 to 200. Most of the slack is picked up by hordes and hordes of women. They're the male characters, the female characters, the animal characters, The furries(I've only ever seen male fursuiters so far.) everything! The artist's alley tables is filled largely with women, The anime club I ran in high school was primarily female/potentially primarily female (Even though there were more male regulars in the club, there were more girls in the school in general that were anime fans. It was a small school so I could gauge this easily.), and the anime club at the college I'm attending now is primarily female, and my the demographic of my anime-related videos on youtube is primarily female (Assuming they're telling the truth of their sex.).
Anecdotal evidence: it's right and wrong.
Anyhow, I thought this was fascinating because you always hear about how there are less girls in gaming (at least we used to) and there are all these articles on sexism in game, why the games that try to draw in girls are stupid, etc, etc. My dorm is filled to the brim with Magic: The Gathering geeks but not a single one is a girl. This is the same with the anime clubs I've been in. And When I'm in bookstores I see more ladies (though people in general) perusing the manga rather than the section where the Bone and Tintin compilations are. Tabletop RPGs are a different monster, there are definitely ladies in that area. In fact I think the ladies are drawn more towards JRPGs, not sure why, just a thought.
Anyhow, let's assume my observations have a modicum of truth, why are things the way they are? I can think of a few good reasons:
1) Marketing demographics
2) Most geeky activities have always had a "boy's club" exclusionary feel to them. 3) Handsome Men
4) Variety
1) Marketing demographics.
What's the difference between American comic books (Yes, Europe, I see The Beano, Tintin, and Asterix and I love those, but I need to go with what I know here.) and Japanese comic books? Well besides the fact when I say American comics you immediately think Superhero comics, you're more likely to find comic books in Japan that appeal to everyone and every interest. American comics used to do this until the comic code fiasco occurred and effectively purging the comic book scene of almost everything but surreal superhero comics. Nowadays you have tons of superhero comics that overshadow your occasional very good independently made comic. But in Japan, while the shounen (term for young boys) demographic is large, it doesn't necessarily overshadow everything else. I mean, I own a manga that teaches you statistics! There isn't exactly a limit to what is made there (due mostly to cheap production values).
This means there is a larger percentage of stuff, manga and their anime counterparts, geared primarily towards the ladies. In video games their attempts towards getting more girls involved have been a little... sexist. Not all of them are bad shovelware, but most of them are pretty bad stereotypical pink shovelware. That is not how you do it, game industry. You make things more gender neutral or gender inclusive in your games, that's how you draw the ladies in. I mean come on, who in the world is kidding themselves, The Spartans in Halo or the protagonist in any and all first person shooter is a dude. Or games like God of War where, what's this? A male protagonist? Why couldn't the god of war be a chick? Chicks too flimsy? What's that I hear? There's sex scenes and naked ladies in your game? What's wrong with doing a complete reversal? I'm not asking for people to just switch the sex around for all the popular game, I'm saying try to get into what a girl may like in a game without always going stereotype or... doing a cop-out like in pokemon where you just choose "Are you a boy protagonist or a girl protagonist" and the game be exactly identical, men and women experience things differently.
Card games I'm not involved in enough to figure out why it's a sausage fest. But superhero comics. Oh superhero comics... Obviously they're big fat teeanged boy power fantasies, look no further than nerdy loser Peter Parker becoming awesome yet nerdy when he becomes Spider-man and gets all the ladies. You get your muscular manly men and women that look like supermodels with more tracts of land. Gee, such respectful depictions of our fair ladies, I wonder why girls aren't interested. True, some are dressed more modestly and well characterized but really they're more likely to be the male power fantasy's object of desire than a female power fantasy.
2) Most geeky activities have always had a "boy's club" exclusionary feel to them.
Most geeky activities are fairly 'boys only" clubs. For some reason most of the stuff is advertised towards boys while the girls get dolls, fashion, pink, baby care, etc. Totally equal. So obviously for years, women have not been growing up with geeky things geared towards them due to sexist standards that never end.
Most of this is covered in section 1 but additionally, not only have these things been geared towards boys for years, they're hard to get into for people with casual interest, i.e. girls who mostly haven't been given a reason to be interested in thee things to begin with. Video games aren't hard to get into that's more of covered in section one. Everything else has years of continuity and rules. Superhero comic books have years of annoying continuity I'll explain next essay, tabletop RPGs have editions and edition wars, Magic the Gathering have different editions and rules and card types and card colors and for some insane reason people are able to memorize a bazillion of these, and different entry levels for different interests. Like my sister finds even the most basic and self contained fantasy or sci-fi to be "too complex" and I can see each different one as their own thing, but I think she sees it all as a single conglomerate she has to get attempt to understand all of. I mean Elves, orcs, vulcans, dwarves, wookies; to the casual viewer it's all the same to them and if it's not their cup of tea it makes even less sense.
But manga and anime are just single stories, every thing is right there for you like a book and since they're done by a single person (with their assistants) you have consistency unless the author says so. As as stories they have a beginning and an end, simple as that but with all the complexity you need in a story. No easy exclusion.
3) Handsome Men
This was partly a joke, but seriously, our space marines and superheroes are usually rugged male power fantasies, they're not there to look good for the ladies, guys don't know what attract ladies, that's why we suck so much and try so hard. But since it appears some manga writers/artists are women so they know exactly what they're doing and doing it right.
There's just something about the anime and manga art style, specifically of pretty boy that seem to draw girls in. I'd like to see say God of War's Kratos right next to Kyo Kara Maoh's Gwendal in an attractiveness poll and I'm almost willing to bet real money that Gwendal would win by a landslide.
And you know what else is abundant with beautiful men? The Video game equivalent of an Anime: BOOM! Japanese Role Playing Games. Final Fantasy, The Tales series, Even Kingdom Hearts.
So Is this silly? Yes. But does it have merit? Potentially. I suggest a study should be done; handsome men bringing in the ladies into geek oriented things. It's a stupid idea but I'm just spit balling like I always do.
4) Variety
So most card games are rooted in fantasy or sci-fi, same with video games because video games can be outlandish (they have things like dating sims, racing games, some first person shooter, etc, of course, it's the principle of the matter.), superhero comics, the books geeks tend to read and the movies they tend to watch.
Anime and Manga are like every other sort of book only with picture which tells you a lot about it's variety, like the aforementioned one that teaches you statistics. Which means whatever you could be interested in is potentially in that format. Cooking, action, adventure, mystery, romance, magical realism, historic fantasy, it's going to be there, trust me. There are some limitations due to Japan being sort of isolated but it's still a lot of stuff.
So in conclusion, yeah, just something to think about, check around your organizations involving geeky activities, and measure out the guy to girl ratio and get back to me, I'm rather curious about this and this is something you can take a look into too. Obviously things have diversified over the years, that's just the way things go, but these things go slowly so my observations might still be sound.
-Good Bye, Good Luck, and Imagination is Your Greatest Power
Mousa the 14
Showing posts with label fantasy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fantasy. Show all posts
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Geek Rant Topic 09: The Last Airbender
When All Else Fails, you call Mousa the 14, that one ranting geek.
The jokes could go on and on. And on. And on. And on. And on.
Avatar, The Last Airbender was an insanely popular animated series on Nickelodeon and their last hurrah before they would descend into mediocrity and Spongebob Squarepants again. The characters were interesting, complex, and funny; the plot was involving and mature, especially for a kid's show; it took it's audience seriously without doing too much or doing too little. Avatar was good. Insanely Good. In my cynical tweens I thought Nick was attempting to cash in on the anime boom by trying to release a series with a poor story and poor characters and try to draw people in based on Asian references and anime-type art style alone. I was wrong on more levels than I can even comprehend.
However, it was LONG. Or Long-ish. It had three seasons with 20 episodes in each season (except the last which had 21.). That's approximately 25 minutes an episode multiplied by 20... That's 500 minutes a season, That's 8 hours and 20 minutes per season give or take. aka A whole school/work day and we all know how long those feel.
So when it was announced to be a movie we all know it would be poor. You can't compress 8 hours of subtext, filler, and foreshadowing into 1.5-2.5 hours. Especially when a lot of that filler was dedicated to building the world, the characters, and not actually filler but more foreshadowing or filled with characters who will recur later on and be important to movie the story along (Yeah, the writers cared that much, for a kid's show mind you.). You'd have to cut a butt load out, make the plot more straight foreword, utilize Characterization Marches On (An odd but common of concept involving using the developed versions of a character's personality, or the most well know aspects, in an adaptation rather than starting from how they were in the beginning and letting them develop as such. It's sort of how like caricatures are made.) in order to keep the characters consistent and skip using movie time to develop them properly, but remove some of the foreshadowing and world building, you know, that sort of thing. Could've been a mediocre or average movie series.
But you can't trust anything in the hands of M. Night Shyamalan, can you? I have not seen his movies, I was a kid and didn't care about anything that was released. I hear The Sixth Sense was good and the one or two that came after were adequate or great, and everything following was worse than poor. M. Night Shamland is apparently a good director and technician but can't write anything worth crap has been flanderized as the "twist ending" guy. And he has arrogance too. I mean who stars themselves as the misunderstood hero of a movie you're directing? Anyhow, he's possibly so arrogant he finds only what he himself writes is worth directing. And that's when Last Airbender starts coming apart at the roots.
Now, I'm going to sound silly since I myself have not seen the movie. However I have good reason for this. I have heard from friends, trusted acquaintances, internet reviewers, official reviewers, and Roger Ebert that either this movie is poor and/or it does not do it's source material justice. The only guy I know who is contrary to this fact is.... well... My supposedly beloved Game Overthinker a.k.a. MovieBob is trying to desperately to give M. Night a chance. Poor deluded fool. Or perhaps I'm wrong. I don't study film, I'm going to be an engineer with an art and writing background. Perhaps technically it is good and the plot is poor due to compression. It's so hard to judge such things sometimes. Perhaps I'll rent the movie on a future date, but giving it money is the last thing I want to do right now.
So without further do, using the internet and half-baked research, I'm going to enumerate the changes M. Night made to the Last Airbender and why they're a problem...
1) The Bending.
If you watch the series it's difficult to see how in the lord's prayer he screwed that up. Bending is a lot like martial arts in the show, heck, let's not use technicalities here, it is martial arts, based off of real fighting styles. How it differs from martial arts is basically proximity to your opponent. With real martial arts you're going up and actually hitting your opponent. With bending you're making similar movements, to move your respective element. You're not going up to hit a guy, you're making the motions to hit a guy and then the element does the hitting for you. It's supposed to make sort of flowing motions, conforming to how you're moving. Sounds like a simple enough concept to grasp: Hire some real martial artists in those particular styles or styles similar, train your actors, make sure your choreography looks good and make your CGI flow with the moves.
No, instead we get spell casting. And by that I mean you stand around and to some cool movements and then your desired effect will occur after the fact, so basically like casting a spell. Heck, it doesn't even look like fighting in the movie, they're basically doing an interpretative dance and then BOOM, element moves!
Wow, all that dancing to move a single solitary rock? Apparently this is called Flynning. Aang almost had the right idea, though the entire "arm wiggling" thing looked a little silly and but with air bending it's meant to be more flow-y with the whole body. In this final battle scene it seems they finally got bending to look right, but why all the slo-mo?
Now real earthbending looks a lot like this:
You can really see the flow and if you watch other compilations you'll see just how this works and how M. Night Shy ruined it.
And the firebenders were just poor looking, I mean it makes you wonder how some silly looking and incompetent guys almost took over the world. I mean seriously, how did they when their bending takes so freaking long to perform? In fact, let's talk about the fire nation
2) The Fire Nation and the Firebenders.
In light of my previous "Interpretive dance" statements, I want to note how strange it seems that the fire people were able to conquer the world with such slow moving techniques. I mean when you think about it, fire is one of the least substantial elements, a wall of water, earth, or Air would've taken them down. The fire nation must have had some sort of edge, and i would predict those would be 1) The element of surprise (Who else was preparing for war, eh?), 2) superior battle tactics, 3) numbers, 4) something their element has the others don't. Number three is unlikely because the fire nation is a small mountain/volcano area, dwarfed by the sheer size of the other nations, separated or combined. It was obviously better battle tactics like kidnapping all the water benders, putting earthbenders in places like metal cells or rigs in the middle of the ocean so they have nothing to bend, and killing all the airbenders. I mean, you would need to have better tactics to take on the earth nation, they're flipping huge. The earth kingdom is like Russia, hampered only by the fact that it's cities are far few in between for them to be a singular coherent unit. The firebenders had strategic edge and military might.
But they had something else too. They didn't need a source for their fire, they were the source. At a first glance, M. Night Shanghai's decision for them to have a specific source was reasonable. all the other benders needed a source, naturally, so would the firebenders. Unfortunately this meant they carried around lanterns. Never mind this looked silly, it took away a bit of plausibility for what made the fire benders so fearsome. You could take earthbenders away from their earth by surrounding them in iron or taking them to sea and land-bound waterbenders need to take water with them at all times or they're pretty much screwed. The airbenders were monks, 'nuff said. The firebenders make their fire from their life, their chi, it's literally the heat of their energy is burning form. These guys had some sort of edge. and when Sozin's comet comes in their power is amplified greatly. In the movie it just gave them the same abilities they had in the TV show. Laaaaaaaaame. Compounded by how long it takes to bend anything in this movie, these guys shouldn't have been able to take over diddlysquat.
3) Race.
I shouldn't have to talk about this, but I want to talk about this. I realize everybody has talked this topic to death but I have an op non too. And yes, I am fully aware of the purity camp and the anti common courtesy-, er, "Anti-Political correctness" camp. And I say, I am not a centrist who thinks this is all silly and yet, I kind of am. When I first saw the announced cast all I could think was "They better damned good actors for M. Night Shyamalan to change their ethnicities or skin colors as it were." I was wrong. I have read enough reviews, talked to enough people, and seen enough clips to know that these kids cannot act. Or if they can, they were given too much exposition to express genuine emotion. either way, M. Night Sham screwed up with his casting choice. Except apparently, the actors for Iroh and Zuko. Strange the best actors in the movie are the bad guys. Even stranger that they're Indian. Like M. Night.
CONSPIRACY!
Anyway, jokes aside, Why would M. Night distract from the fans by doing something silly like change the characters ethnicities? To what end? All it did was invoke unfortunate implications since the bad guys are all dark skinned and the good guys are all white. I mean, if he really couldn't find enough Inuits or Native Americans to be Sokka, Katara, or the rest of the water tribes, he could've have at least used Indians; he's clearly in no short supply of them and I'd bet Dev Patel could be a far better Sokka, I can totally imagine it. At least Dev can act.
Why are the Fire Nation Indian anyway? Is it the Indian people's penchant for spicy food? Why not Latinos then if we're going to go with completely arbitrary choices based solely on how spicy the food is? I mean, judging by their architecture and clothing/armor style it's pretty clear that the Fire Nation are based off of Japanese people and I doubt it would have hurt them to use their East Asian surplus from the Earth Nation to make up the Fire Nation.
Speaking of Earth Kingdom, that big ol' conglomerate of Korean/Chinese outfits, is big enough and varied enough that frankly, I don't care what M. Night or anyone does with them. The Earth Kingdom is large enough and wide enough that you could use a plethora of actors to represent them; black, Indian, east Asian, Arab, it would all fit depending on the area you're in the Earth Kingdom, and that place is huge.
Aang I can understand, the kid is rather pale. The Air Nomads are equivalent to Tibetans, but I think he could be white or east Asian. But they picked poorly. You know how M. Night chose the actor for Aang? The kid sent in a Tae Kwan Do video of himself. M. Night picked the kid because he could look good bald, he was young, and he could do Tae Kwan Do.
4) Characters.
So how did M. Night Shame screw up the characterization? Well let's start with Prince Zuko. Oh no, apparently his character is fine, but the hair. You see, Zuko's hair was a symbol of his development. One can note how angry and villainous he was when he was bald and had that tiny topknot. As he starts growing out of his "shame" and starting to see the error of his ways, he grows his hair out. Was Dev Patel too afraid to ruin his precious hair? They have make-up techniques for that sort of thing.
Katara, our faithful narrator didn't do anything. I mean, why follow the trend of women that are too good at everything or don't do anything. Why can't she be a competent team Mom like she was intended to be? Instead you give her prominent and important moments to Aang (like the liberation of the Earth Benders) and you even make Aang a better bender than her, even though he's new at this. Have you no Logic? I mean, apparently Sokka did more in combat than Katara did. Sokka!
And now for our Aang. Want to know the real reason for him leaving the monks? Let me give you a hint, it has nothing to do with usual Monk traditions like not having a family. He left because he was a scared little kid who didn't want to be the Avatar and didn't want to be a responsible adult so early. Certainly not a silly thing like "can't have a family". And Also, Aang? Serious? seriously, M. Night? that's the approach you take with the optimistic, happy go-lucky protagonist? Did you "forgot" your Prozac every-time you write Aang's part? I mean, i get it, kid running away form responsibility, weight of the world on his shoulders, his entire people has been eradicated; But did you really have to take away from his core personality? You can make Aang sad and angry, but remember, he's also a pretty fun kid!
Sokka was supposed to be the smart guy. He's funny and incompetent for the first season but there's an allusion to it in the first season: The Southern Air temple where people had colonized the temple and were using technology to emulate flight. The top Engineer there needed some help with some ideas and Sokka was the guy who helped the Engineer progress with his ideas. This was the first seeds of Sokka's "idea man" status. Also, Sokka's silliness was one of the few things great about him. Before Toph came along, he was the main deadpan snarker. He was clumsy, irritable, sarcastic, annoyed by the supernatural, and consistently overcompensated for his "useless" status as a non-bender. Sokka is funny!!! Which reminds me...
5) Darker and Edgier.
Why? just Why, M. Night. What possessed you to turn a light-hearted war story into something darker and edgier? IT'S A KID'S SHOW! it may be an intelligent show that takes it's audience seriously, but it's still a kid's show with loads of laughs, fun, and a whimsical and cheery protagonist. I can understand the need to make Aang's reactions more real or serious, but to take away from his personality? And Sokka? make him serious, will ya? How dare you! He's the heart of the show's comedy!
Perhaps he was looking for an Oscar or something and the only way he thought he could be taken seriously wa if he made the movie serious. I think he just really wanted to make the show's fans really really angry. Darker and Edgier is not a bad concept. Unfortunately people have this horrible tendency of abusing the concept and suing it incorrectly, over-exaggerating how dark and edgy something is and losing sight of the core of what they're doing. That's what happened with this movie.
6) Length.
So about how long is this movie anyway?
103 Minutes. That's an hour and 43 minutes.
...
Where da heck did the other 17 minutes go? Or 47 minutes if M. Night Shade wanted to make this a longer movie (which he should have by the way.)? He had 8+ hours he had to force into feature length film, what was stopping him from using as much time he was allowed to use? I mean, I'm pretty sure an 2 hours and like 5-20 minutes is like the maximum anybody has a movie out in theaters be. I mean Watchmen was 162 minutes, a whopping 2 hours and 42 effing minutes and it was still a decent adaptation of the graphic novel. He should have been maximizing every second, if not for fitting in the filler and Chekhov's guns (stuff brought up earlier in a narrative of no real significance and then crucial much later), to at least make the characters actual characters. Perhaps there's something I'm missing or don't know about. I mean, I'm not going to film school here, I'm a commentator pointing out flaws. If you film buffs can come up a plausible reason for this time issue then by all means please, let me know, because I'm a little confused about why M. Night Shaman wouldn't use more time when movies have gone on longer. It's like he was actively trying to make this as bad as putting a big middle finger on the screen for an hour and a half.
Now, there are like, a bazillion other things wrong with this movie that I cannot even begin enumerate. I wanted to go over the moon spirit thing and how General Zhao was killed, but I'm getting tired of dwelling on this subject. I need to see the movie to know all the other problems, many other websites have brought them up, and honestly, I am too lazy to do any more research. This took far longer than I had planned because I have other geek rant ideas lined up I want to get started on and this way overdue and probably no longer relevant. I'm simply here to note the things about the movie's changes that annoyed me the most.
I'm tired of this, next time it's gonna be...
Wait, Namco isn't sending us Tales games anymore? What gives?
-Good Bye, Good Luck, and Imagination Is Your Greatest Power
Mousa the 14
The jokes could go on and on. And on. And on. And on. And on.
Avatar, The Last Airbender was an insanely popular animated series on Nickelodeon and their last hurrah before they would descend into mediocrity and Spongebob Squarepants again. The characters were interesting, complex, and funny; the plot was involving and mature, especially for a kid's show; it took it's audience seriously without doing too much or doing too little. Avatar was good. Insanely Good. In my cynical tweens I thought Nick was attempting to cash in on the anime boom by trying to release a series with a poor story and poor characters and try to draw people in based on Asian references and anime-type art style alone. I was wrong on more levels than I can even comprehend.
However, it was LONG. Or Long-ish. It had three seasons with 20 episodes in each season (except the last which had 21.). That's approximately 25 minutes an episode multiplied by 20... That's 500 minutes a season, That's 8 hours and 20 minutes per season give or take. aka A whole school/work day and we all know how long those feel.
So when it was announced to be a movie we all know it would be poor. You can't compress 8 hours of subtext, filler, and foreshadowing into 1.5-2.5 hours. Especially when a lot of that filler was dedicated to building the world, the characters, and not actually filler but more foreshadowing or filled with characters who will recur later on and be important to movie the story along (Yeah, the writers cared that much, for a kid's show mind you.). You'd have to cut a butt load out, make the plot more straight foreword, utilize Characterization Marches On (An odd but common of concept involving using the developed versions of a character's personality, or the most well know aspects, in an adaptation rather than starting from how they were in the beginning and letting them develop as such. It's sort of how like caricatures are made.) in order to keep the characters consistent and skip using movie time to develop them properly, but remove some of the foreshadowing and world building, you know, that sort of thing. Could've been a mediocre or average movie series.
But you can't trust anything in the hands of M. Night Shyamalan, can you? I have not seen his movies, I was a kid and didn't care about anything that was released. I hear The Sixth Sense was good and the one or two that came after were adequate or great, and everything following was worse than poor. M. Night Shamland is apparently a good director and technician but can't write anything worth crap has been flanderized as the "twist ending" guy. And he has arrogance too. I mean who stars themselves as the misunderstood hero of a movie you're directing? Anyhow, he's possibly so arrogant he finds only what he himself writes is worth directing. And that's when Last Airbender starts coming apart at the roots.
Now, I'm going to sound silly since I myself have not seen the movie. However I have good reason for this. I have heard from friends, trusted acquaintances, internet reviewers, official reviewers, and Roger Ebert that either this movie is poor and/or it does not do it's source material justice. The only guy I know who is contrary to this fact is.... well... My supposedly beloved Game Overthinker a.k.a. MovieBob is trying to desperately to give M. Night a chance. Poor deluded fool. Or perhaps I'm wrong. I don't study film, I'm going to be an engineer with an art and writing background. Perhaps technically it is good and the plot is poor due to compression. It's so hard to judge such things sometimes. Perhaps I'll rent the movie on a future date, but giving it money is the last thing I want to do right now.
So without further do, using the internet and half-baked research, I'm going to enumerate the changes M. Night made to the Last Airbender and why they're a problem...
1) The Bending.
If you watch the series it's difficult to see how in the lord's prayer he screwed that up. Bending is a lot like martial arts in the show, heck, let's not use technicalities here, it is martial arts, based off of real fighting styles. How it differs from martial arts is basically proximity to your opponent. With real martial arts you're going up and actually hitting your opponent. With bending you're making similar movements, to move your respective element. You're not going up to hit a guy, you're making the motions to hit a guy and then the element does the hitting for you. It's supposed to make sort of flowing motions, conforming to how you're moving. Sounds like a simple enough concept to grasp: Hire some real martial artists in those particular styles or styles similar, train your actors, make sure your choreography looks good and make your CGI flow with the moves.
No, instead we get spell casting. And by that I mean you stand around and to some cool movements and then your desired effect will occur after the fact, so basically like casting a spell. Heck, it doesn't even look like fighting in the movie, they're basically doing an interpretative dance and then BOOM, element moves!
Wow, all that dancing to move a single solitary rock? Apparently this is called Flynning. Aang almost had the right idea, though the entire "arm wiggling" thing looked a little silly and but with air bending it's meant to be more flow-y with the whole body. In this final battle scene it seems they finally got bending to look right, but why all the slo-mo?
Now real earthbending looks a lot like this:
You can really see the flow and if you watch other compilations you'll see just how this works and how M. Night Shy ruined it.
And the firebenders were just poor looking, I mean it makes you wonder how some silly looking and incompetent guys almost took over the world. I mean seriously, how did they when their bending takes so freaking long to perform? In fact, let's talk about the fire nation
2) The Fire Nation and the Firebenders.
In light of my previous "Interpretive dance" statements, I want to note how strange it seems that the fire people were able to conquer the world with such slow moving techniques. I mean when you think about it, fire is one of the least substantial elements, a wall of water, earth, or Air would've taken them down. The fire nation must have had some sort of edge, and i would predict those would be 1) The element of surprise (Who else was preparing for war, eh?), 2) superior battle tactics, 3) numbers, 4) something their element has the others don't. Number three is unlikely because the fire nation is a small mountain/volcano area, dwarfed by the sheer size of the other nations, separated or combined. It was obviously better battle tactics like kidnapping all the water benders, putting earthbenders in places like metal cells or rigs in the middle of the ocean so they have nothing to bend, and killing all the airbenders. I mean, you would need to have better tactics to take on the earth nation, they're flipping huge. The earth kingdom is like Russia, hampered only by the fact that it's cities are far few in between for them to be a singular coherent unit. The firebenders had strategic edge and military might.
But they had something else too. They didn't need a source for their fire, they were the source. At a first glance, M. Night Shanghai's decision for them to have a specific source was reasonable. all the other benders needed a source, naturally, so would the firebenders. Unfortunately this meant they carried around lanterns. Never mind this looked silly, it took away a bit of plausibility for what made the fire benders so fearsome. You could take earthbenders away from their earth by surrounding them in iron or taking them to sea and land-bound waterbenders need to take water with them at all times or they're pretty much screwed. The airbenders were monks, 'nuff said. The firebenders make their fire from their life, their chi, it's literally the heat of their energy is burning form. These guys had some sort of edge. and when Sozin's comet comes in their power is amplified greatly. In the movie it just gave them the same abilities they had in the TV show. Laaaaaaaaame. Compounded by how long it takes to bend anything in this movie, these guys shouldn't have been able to take over diddlysquat.
3) Race.
I shouldn't have to talk about this, but I want to talk about this. I realize everybody has talked this topic to death but I have an op non too. And yes, I am fully aware of the purity camp and the anti common courtesy-, er, "Anti-Political correctness" camp. And I say, I am not a centrist who thinks this is all silly and yet, I kind of am. When I first saw the announced cast all I could think was "They better damned good actors for M. Night Shyamalan to change their ethnicities or skin colors as it were." I was wrong. I have read enough reviews, talked to enough people, and seen enough clips to know that these kids cannot act. Or if they can, they were given too much exposition to express genuine emotion. either way, M. Night Sham screwed up with his casting choice. Except apparently, the actors for Iroh and Zuko. Strange the best actors in the movie are the bad guys. Even stranger that they're Indian. Like M. Night.
CONSPIRACY!
Anyway, jokes aside, Why would M. Night distract from the fans by doing something silly like change the characters ethnicities? To what end? All it did was invoke unfortunate implications since the bad guys are all dark skinned and the good guys are all white. I mean, if he really couldn't find enough Inuits or Native Americans to be Sokka, Katara, or the rest of the water tribes, he could've have at least used Indians; he's clearly in no short supply of them and I'd bet Dev Patel could be a far better Sokka, I can totally imagine it. At least Dev can act.
Why are the Fire Nation Indian anyway? Is it the Indian people's penchant for spicy food? Why not Latinos then if we're going to go with completely arbitrary choices based solely on how spicy the food is? I mean, judging by their architecture and clothing/armor style it's pretty clear that the Fire Nation are based off of Japanese people and I doubt it would have hurt them to use their East Asian surplus from the Earth Nation to make up the Fire Nation.
Speaking of Earth Kingdom, that big ol' conglomerate of Korean/Chinese outfits, is big enough and varied enough that frankly, I don't care what M. Night or anyone does with them. The Earth Kingdom is large enough and wide enough that you could use a plethora of actors to represent them; black, Indian, east Asian, Arab, it would all fit depending on the area you're in the Earth Kingdom, and that place is huge.
Aang I can understand, the kid is rather pale. The Air Nomads are equivalent to Tibetans, but I think he could be white or east Asian. But they picked poorly. You know how M. Night chose the actor for Aang? The kid sent in a Tae Kwan Do video of himself. M. Night picked the kid because he could look good bald, he was young, and he could do Tae Kwan Do.
4) Characters.
So how did M. Night Shame screw up the characterization? Well let's start with Prince Zuko. Oh no, apparently his character is fine, but the hair. You see, Zuko's hair was a symbol of his development. One can note how angry and villainous he was when he was bald and had that tiny topknot. As he starts growing out of his "shame" and starting to see the error of his ways, he grows his hair out. Was Dev Patel too afraid to ruin his precious hair? They have make-up techniques for that sort of thing.
Katara, our faithful narrator didn't do anything. I mean, why follow the trend of women that are too good at everything or don't do anything. Why can't she be a competent team Mom like she was intended to be? Instead you give her prominent and important moments to Aang (like the liberation of the Earth Benders) and you even make Aang a better bender than her, even though he's new at this. Have you no Logic? I mean, apparently Sokka did more in combat than Katara did. Sokka!
And now for our Aang. Want to know the real reason for him leaving the monks? Let me give you a hint, it has nothing to do with usual Monk traditions like not having a family. He left because he was a scared little kid who didn't want to be the Avatar and didn't want to be a responsible adult so early. Certainly not a silly thing like "can't have a family". And Also, Aang? Serious? seriously, M. Night? that's the approach you take with the optimistic, happy go-lucky protagonist? Did you "forgot" your Prozac every-time you write Aang's part? I mean, i get it, kid running away form responsibility, weight of the world on his shoulders, his entire people has been eradicated; But did you really have to take away from his core personality? You can make Aang sad and angry, but remember, he's also a pretty fun kid!
Sokka was supposed to be the smart guy. He's funny and incompetent for the first season but there's an allusion to it in the first season: The Southern Air temple where people had colonized the temple and were using technology to emulate flight. The top Engineer there needed some help with some ideas and Sokka was the guy who helped the Engineer progress with his ideas. This was the first seeds of Sokka's "idea man" status. Also, Sokka's silliness was one of the few things great about him. Before Toph came along, he was the main deadpan snarker. He was clumsy, irritable, sarcastic, annoyed by the supernatural, and consistently overcompensated for his "useless" status as a non-bender. Sokka is funny!!! Which reminds me...
5) Darker and Edgier.
Why? just Why, M. Night. What possessed you to turn a light-hearted war story into something darker and edgier? IT'S A KID'S SHOW! it may be an intelligent show that takes it's audience seriously, but it's still a kid's show with loads of laughs, fun, and a whimsical and cheery protagonist. I can understand the need to make Aang's reactions more real or serious, but to take away from his personality? And Sokka? make him serious, will ya? How dare you! He's the heart of the show's comedy!
Perhaps he was looking for an Oscar or something and the only way he thought he could be taken seriously wa if he made the movie serious. I think he just really wanted to make the show's fans really really angry. Darker and Edgier is not a bad concept. Unfortunately people have this horrible tendency of abusing the concept and suing it incorrectly, over-exaggerating how dark and edgy something is and losing sight of the core of what they're doing. That's what happened with this movie.
6) Length.
So about how long is this movie anyway?
103 Minutes. That's an hour and 43 minutes.
...
Where da heck did the other 17 minutes go? Or 47 minutes if M. Night Shade wanted to make this a longer movie (which he should have by the way.)? He had 8+ hours he had to force into feature length film, what was stopping him from using as much time he was allowed to use? I mean, I'm pretty sure an 2 hours and like 5-20 minutes is like the maximum anybody has a movie out in theaters be. I mean Watchmen was 162 minutes, a whopping 2 hours and 42 effing minutes and it was still a decent adaptation of the graphic novel. He should have been maximizing every second, if not for fitting in the filler and Chekhov's guns (stuff brought up earlier in a narrative of no real significance and then crucial much later), to at least make the characters actual characters. Perhaps there's something I'm missing or don't know about. I mean, I'm not going to film school here, I'm a commentator pointing out flaws. If you film buffs can come up a plausible reason for this time issue then by all means please, let me know, because I'm a little confused about why M. Night Shaman wouldn't use more time when movies have gone on longer. It's like he was actively trying to make this as bad as putting a big middle finger on the screen for an hour and a half.
Now, there are like, a bazillion other things wrong with this movie that I cannot even begin enumerate. I wanted to go over the moon spirit thing and how General Zhao was killed, but I'm getting tired of dwelling on this subject. I need to see the movie to know all the other problems, many other websites have brought them up, and honestly, I am too lazy to do any more research. This took far longer than I had planned because I have other geek rant ideas lined up I want to get started on and this way overdue and probably no longer relevant. I'm simply here to note the things about the movie's changes that annoyed me the most.
I'm tired of this, next time it's gonna be...
Wait, Namco isn't sending us Tales games anymore? What gives?
-Good Bye, Good Luck, and Imagination Is Your Greatest Power
Mousa the 14
Monday, July 19, 2010
Geek Rant Topic 02: Furry Hate
When all else fails, you call Mousa the 14, That One Ranting Geek.
Everybody hates Furries! Geeks hate them, normal people hate them, the media hates them, apparently CSI hates them but I'd rather kill myself than watch that utterly uninteresting show.
Why exactly? I mean seriously, why?
I want to say you all have no reason to, but honestly you have many reasons to.
1) They are easy to get a rise out of
2) They act like a repressed minority when they are at a minimum hobbyist, and at the most a subculture, but not a real one, but like how "gamers" and "Otakus" are subcultures.
3) Otherkin. 'Nuff said
4) You had a bad first experience with one and are projecting on them all because you are a deaf bigot.
5) There was furry porn and you assumed all of them were sexual deviants.
6) The furry porn thing part 2: They like animal-people, ergo, They are into bestiality, the sick perverts.
Obviously the last 3 are not legitimate reasons but they're real reasons nevertheless. I can understand why normal people would alienate them.
However I do not understand why we, the Geeks and Nerds, do. Why would we, the guys who love X-men (an allegory for tolerance), hate on a group of people based on their interests? Need I remind why why we're called Geeks and Nerds? Because we are ostracized by mainstream and popular people for having non-mainstream interests. Oh, and because a vocal minority of you refuse to maintain decent hygiene but that's a rant for another day.
But as I was saying, we enjoy fantasy, science-fiction, video games, superheroes, comic books, card games, anything that comes from Japan, and so muc hmore, and we're ridiculed for it or rather, we're ignored to the point of making use exiles. In fact, this is it, isn't it? That's the reason.
Geeks have a persecution complex!
We have always been considered pretty low on the frikkin' "food chain". And That sucks. We supposedly learned to deal with it. But then we find something even we consider too strange and we come down on it like a ton of bricks.
Need I remind you of the Geek Heirarchy?
Here's the Unabridged version. Either way, Furries get a raw deal. And for what reason? They're easy to troll? Well that's mean-spirited and non-nonsensical, but then, not everybody can be rational, tolerant, and not living proof of GIFT. Oy vey...
So anyhow, where was I? Ah yes, we were bullied so we bully someone even lower than we are. Now that's mature. I'm so proud that a group supposedly filled with intellectuals or at least reasonably smart people can be such idiots. I mean what are we, Republicans?
I mean seriously, why should we direct our fury at them when they did nothing to us? If anything we should be raging against the mainstream, the cool kids, the popular people, the sportsmen, all those guys, not our fellow shut-ins. But then, maybe we just don't like each other.
I mean us geeks are a divisive group. Besides a common interest in Science Fiction and Fantasy, our interests beyond that get pretty diverse and divided. we get further away from the common genre and become more interested in our particular niches. I mean how do you enjoy expressing your interests in genre fiction? Video Games? Reading? writing? Magic The Gathering? Anime? See? Our methods are so divided we have no reason to like each other. I've seen it all before. Everybody's got to hate on something from the "Weeaboos" to the "Casual/Hardcore/Retro Gamers", it gets pretty silly. We shouldn't be doing this. We enjoy stuff that practically bleeds, breaths, and sweats tolerance. Why aren't we learning?
So I guess all I'm saying is, we've been out-casted for our interests, so why all the hate?
-Good Bye, Good Luck, and Imagination Is Your Greatest Power.
Mousa The 14
Everybody hates Furries! Geeks hate them, normal people hate them, the media hates them, apparently CSI hates them but I'd rather kill myself than watch that utterly uninteresting show.
Why exactly? I mean seriously, why?
I want to say you all have no reason to, but honestly you have many reasons to.
1) They are easy to get a rise out of
2) They act like a repressed minority when they are at a minimum hobbyist, and at the most a subculture, but not a real one, but like how "gamers" and "Otakus" are subcultures.
3) Otherkin. 'Nuff said
4) You had a bad first experience with one and are projecting on them all because you are a deaf bigot.
5) There was furry porn and you assumed all of them were sexual deviants.
6) The furry porn thing part 2: They like animal-people, ergo, They are into bestiality, the sick perverts.
Obviously the last 3 are not legitimate reasons but they're real reasons nevertheless. I can understand why normal people would alienate them.
However I do not understand why we, the Geeks and Nerds, do. Why would we, the guys who love X-men (an allegory for tolerance), hate on a group of people based on their interests? Need I remind why why we're called Geeks and Nerds? Because we are ostracized by mainstream and popular people for having non-mainstream interests. Oh, and because a vocal minority of you refuse to maintain decent hygiene but that's a rant for another day.
But as I was saying, we enjoy fantasy, science-fiction, video games, superheroes, comic books, card games, anything that comes from Japan, and so muc hmore, and we're ridiculed for it or rather, we're ignored to the point of making use exiles. In fact, this is it, isn't it? That's the reason.
Geeks have a persecution complex!
We have always been considered pretty low on the frikkin' "food chain". And That sucks. We supposedly learned to deal with it. But then we find something even we consider too strange and we come down on it like a ton of bricks.
Need I remind you of the Geek Heirarchy?
Here's the Unabridged version. Either way, Furries get a raw deal. And for what reason? They're easy to troll? Well that's mean-spirited and non-nonsensical, but then, not everybody can be rational, tolerant, and not living proof of GIFT. Oy vey...
So anyhow, where was I? Ah yes, we were bullied so we bully someone even lower than we are. Now that's mature. I'm so proud that a group supposedly filled with intellectuals or at least reasonably smart people can be such idiots. I mean what are we, Republicans?
I mean seriously, why should we direct our fury at them when they did nothing to us? If anything we should be raging against the mainstream, the cool kids, the popular people, the sportsmen, all those guys, not our fellow shut-ins. But then, maybe we just don't like each other.
I mean us geeks are a divisive group. Besides a common interest in Science Fiction and Fantasy, our interests beyond that get pretty diverse and divided. we get further away from the common genre and become more interested in our particular niches. I mean how do you enjoy expressing your interests in genre fiction? Video Games? Reading? writing? Magic The Gathering? Anime? See? Our methods are so divided we have no reason to like each other. I've seen it all before. Everybody's got to hate on something from the "Weeaboos" to the "Casual/Hardcore/Retro Gamers", it gets pretty silly. We shouldn't be doing this. We enjoy stuff that practically bleeds, breaths, and sweats tolerance. Why aren't we learning?
So I guess all I'm saying is, we've been out-casted for our interests, so why all the hate?
-Good Bye, Good Luck, and Imagination Is Your Greatest Power.
Mousa The 14
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