Tag Archive for 'my stupid ideas'

How One Simple Cut Could Have Made Avatar’s Story Excellent and Let It Win Best Picture

WARNING: The following post discusses key story points in Avatar. They are not “spoilers” per se, because everyone has already seen this movie (if not literally, then figuratively).

Avatar’s story is the one thing that has elicited a near-universal “meh” from the entire world. We’ve all heard it before: hero infiltrates enemy, learns the enemy is his friend and his friends are the enemy, helps former enemy fight former friend, and said fight is a standard progression of hero almost succeeds, then he fails, but then he miraculously succeeds. Archetypes like this aren’t a bad thing; after all, we humans have been telling this same basic story for thousands of years, keeping it fresh with minor variations (i.e. Avatar’s transhuman motifs), and it’s always interesting if not particularly groundbreaking. But with all the love and attention Avatar’s visuals got over the alleged 14 years James Cameron worked on them, the script is admittedly less polished. That’s probably one of the big reasons why Avatar didn’t win Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

There are many little things which Cameron could have done to twist the Hero’s Journey archetype — perhaps Jake Sully should have betrayed the Na’vi willingly before feeling remorse later on, for example — or simply cleaning up some of the dialogue and filling some plot holes would have sufficed. But perhaps the best thing Cameron could have done to Avatar is to make one simple removal, changing nothing else. This one removal would make Avatar’s criticisms of the War on Terror, racism, technology, and destruction of the environment immensely more powerful.

Following the scene after Hometree’s destruction, when we see slow-motion shots of Jake and Grace being wrestled out of the avatar links, Grace shouting “you murderer!” at Parker, fade to black. Roll credits.

Okay, that may be a “simple” cut, but it’s pretty major. Still, it would have made Avatar a much better film. Here’s why:
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Why a World In Which Movie Piracy Were Legal Would Have No Drawbacks Whatsoever

Why a World In Which Movie Piracy Were Legal Would Have No Drawbacks Whatsoever — Average US movie ticket price: $7.50; Time the decision to pay this price is made: Before the movie; Total US gross of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: $402,111,870; How much money would it have made if the decision to pay $7.50 were made AFTER the movie? See? No drawbacks.

Sources:
» Ticket Price
» Gross

Just In Case I Hadn’t Made Myself Clear, Your Face is a Saxophone

I suppose this isn’t much clearer, but here it is three more times just for the hell of it:

Thumbnail of YFIAS poster with Kevin   Thumbnail of YFIAS poster with Blake.   Thumbnail of YFIAS poster with the Boss.

This February, Your Face is a Saxophone

Just thought you should know.
Your Face is a Saxophone — February 2010 poster

Furries and the Art of Surviving in a Post-Copyright World

That was originally an empty kumquat jar but it's such an appropriate picture otherwise that I just had to Photoshop it to this.
Let’s be realistic here: copyright is dead. At least, it’s dead in the sense of “the right to make copies.” Once a piece of media is digitized — be it textual, visual, audible, or interactive — copying it costs exactly zero dollars (or -45,000 euros at the current exchange rate). Because of this, the perception of art not as a product but as information is rapidly reentering the collective human psyche after about 100 years of technical difficulties.

So this means artists who hope to make a living will now have to rethink their business models, because basing your livelihood on the assumption that all people will pay you for the privilege of merely experiencing your work is on par with Young Earth creationism in la-la-la-I-can’t-hear-you factor. But never fear, artistic community, because a ton of niche nerd fandoms have come to terms with that assumption since the heyday of Usenet (because many of them probably had a hand in inventing it). They all operate with similar conventions, but because everything is better with cartoon purple foxes, the example I will explain is the furry subculture.
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