The Thoughts Of A Storyteller

Review: Avatar

2009-12-16T22:20:00.010+11:00

I'm struggling to articulate my feelings towards Avatar at the moment.

On one hand this is a milestone achievement. Where other films have already accomplished hyper-realistic computer generated imagery before, Avatar marks the end of the era in which it matters. There wasn't a single frame of this film I didn't believe. It was 100% real down to the most minute detail. In other words, I wasn't thinking about it. In other other words, all I was focusing on was the story.

Which brings me to the other hand. I was bored. Against all probability I was actually bored. The logical part of my mind tells me this was due to all the hype surrounding it, how people were hailing this as the second coming. There was no way Avatar could have lived up to those expectations. I suspect that should I see it a second time I would enjoy it much more. So, wanting to be fair and rational about this, I attempted to break it down to it's core strengths and weaknesses.

It had a solid structure, it was brilliantly shot, the acting was great the writing was decent and it had lots of great little details that helped make it all feel really... well, real. So how come it didn't rock my socks off? I think I know why now.

It was the right message for the wrong time.

Now that might seem like a strange thing to say, especially because of how environmentally aware the world has become and how the oil crisis is coming to a head, but that's the very reason why it's irrelevant. We all know how important our planet is and we're making strides to improve how we live within it. We all know how invading countries for resources is wrong and that's why there's such an uproar whenever our governments move to do so.

James Cameron wrote Avatar back when this stuff wasn't being taken seriously. Then he waited, what, fifteen or so years for technology to "catch up"? Well, in that time the world moved beyond the need for it. Now it just feels like preaching to the choir after the choir boys have all become priests. You're not selling anything mainstream culture hasn't already bought.

Even worse, the message is delivered with all the subtlety and nuance of a sledge hammer to the face. I spent the whole movie drawing effortless parallels between Pandora and our world. Oh, the Navi are just Native Americans. Oh, those creatures they ride are just horses. Oh, those humans are just the worst attributes of Modern America. It's all been done before and usually with more tact.

To quote the darkest depths of the Ain't It Cool News Feedback Section... "It's Pocahontas meets Ferngully in space."

That is a painfully accurate analogy of Avatar. Mind you, despite me saying I was bored at times, it's not as bad as them. Thankfully. It's just by-the-numbers storytelling done well. I could see exactly where it was going from the first minute and, while done with quite a bit of style, it never once surprised me. There are no twists and it plays out exactly the way you think it will.

My only other qualm with the film is that the romantic thread completely diminishes the nobility of the protagonist's actions. It's exactly the same problem I had with Disney's Hercules. If the hero becomes entangled in a romantic relationship with the sympathetic party, their motivations are no longer selfless. They have a personal incentive to save the one they love, and incidentally their people. But that's a pretty fickle personal gripe. Oh, and the villains are one-dimensional in the extreme. But besides that...

The verdict? Avatar tells a very familiar story well and while it's a little thematically dated and heavy-handed it pretty much makes up for it with great action and strong performances.

Just don't go expecting anything new or, sadly, the next Titanic.

PERIOD

2009-12-15T21:51:00.000+11:00

Another One!

2009-10-12T10:03:00.005+11:00

Here's another one of my writing exercises. I just love absurd duos...

If it helps for visualization, it centers around two men in an open desert.

Diplomacy Breaks Down

“Fine,” Andrew calmly responded, searching his immediate surroundings for a sharp, pointy object. He picked up the first stick he could find.
“Woah,” Carl said, taking a step back from Andrew, “I thought we were going to be diplomatic about this!”
Andrew gave an impatient snort and bent over to draw a line in the sand.
“You cannot be serious...”
Andrew stopped mid-line.
“I fail to see the problem with this solution.”
“Well, I can see at least three.”
Andrew raised his eyebrows, skeptical that Carl possessed the mental intelligence to deliver on his promise.
“Firstly, though we are in an unfamiliar desert, we are forced to assume said desert lies within the boundaries of a pre-existing country we ARE familiar with, one with a government that would not appreciate our dividing up of their land.”
At this Andrew stood upright and looked around.
“If that were true then we shall consider this a hostile takeover.”
“What?!”
“Yes. I do not see any military resistance, so we shall take this as a sign of surrender!”
Andrew finished the line in the sand.
“You’re mad.”
“No, I’m the dictator of a new nation which will henceforth be known as Andrewnia.”
Carl looked down at the line, then over into the nation of Andrewnia.
“And where does this nation end?”
“Simple. At the point in which the original country found it’s borders.”
“Right, and where does it begin?”
Andrew furrowed his brow.
“Excuse me?”
Carl smugly drew Andrew’s attention back to the line at their feet. A mild breeze had already washed it away.
“Ah,” Andrew mumbled in understanding, “I see the second problem.”
Andrew stared at the desert floor for a time, unable to fix the fundamental flaw in his plan. Finally he looked back at Carl.
“You indicated there was a third problem?”
“Yes,” Carl grinned as he casually pulled out a pistol and aimed it at Andrew’s cranium, “I have a gun.”
Andrew’s expression did not change and he calmly stared at the pistol in his face. Then, abandoning all diplomacy, he rugby tackled Carl.
“AAARRRGGGHHH!!!”

By Luke Orrin

I'll have to transplant that into one of my scripts.

Woah... Mind Reader

2009-09-29T12:46:00.003+10:00

Okay, I can't speak for anyone else, but this is EXACTLY what goes through my mind when I see a nice girl:

Don't ask my why, but I get a feeling I'm not the only one.

Hesitation

2009-09-23T22:52:00.008+10:00

I cannot recall a time when I tried to write anything purely from a woman's perspective. Obvious reasons aside, I figured it was time to stretch myself in these 30 minute writing challenges and write stuff I normally do all in my power to avoid.

I must confess that I found it to be really fun. Here's my go at it.

Hesitation

“I... I need to go to the toilet,” Adele said, her heart racing faster than she ever thought possible now. John froze absurdly, his lips protruding out expectantly and a look of confusion on his face.
“Really? Right now?” he inquired, as if her bowels could change their mind. She blushed stupidly for a moment before forcing herself up. In the blink of an eye the bathroom door slammed shut and John swore quietly under his breath.

Why now? Why was she hesitating? She’d had strong feelings for John for years. This was exactly what she’d wanted. Even then, while staring anxiously at her own reflection, she could still see John’s heart-meltingly green eyes looking back into hers. She immediately started hating herself for risking John forever associating kissing her with going to the toilet.
She was so pathetic. He was so... understanding of her many faults. She didn’t deserve him. Her mind danced with images of John going to the movies with Kathryn, or having a sleep over with Leia. Just the thought of John being with anyone else made her sick to her stomach, but the thought of her being by his side made her feel oddly guilty, as though her mere proximity to him would somehow diminish all that she loved about him.

“Hellooo?” John’s voice called with a gentle rap on the bathroom door, “are you okay?”
Oh gosh, how long had she been staring into that cursed mirror? She had just left John back there and knowing him, he had probably been worrying about her the whole time.
“Yes! Yes, I’m fine. I just -”
She looked at the freakishly white toilet lid. She hadn’t been lying before when she said she needed to go, but she’d wasted all her time moping at a darn mirror.
“I’m coming out now.”
She’d have to hold it. She’d rather that than having John think she were some sort of... long... toilet going to... person. With a fake flush she straightened her hair and opened the door.

She stopped dead in her tracks to find her face no more than one inch from John’s. He was leaning against the door frame, looking at her with that familiar understanding smile. Adele’s face went a deep crimson and her eyes reflexively fixed upon a rather dull light just behind John’s head.
“I’m sorr -”
John lips, softer than she’d ever imagined, pressed lightly into her own. All thought melted into blissful nothingness. It was like every good feeling she had ever felt all collided in her chest at the same time. Her heart exploded with excitement and yet every muscle relaxed, sedated by the sheer perfection of the moment.

But she relaxed too much and her legs buckled without warning. With a dull thud her rear end made contact with the golden strip dividing the bathroom and living room floor. Any happiness she had just felt was immediately replaced by utter humiliation and self-loathing.
With a hearty laugh, John kneeled down beside her and cupped her chin forcing her to make eye contact with him.
“You’re kinda clumsy, huh?”

By Luke Orrin

A little unoriginal, I know, but how'd I go at writing a chick?

The Screaming Potion/The New Sun/Old Cabin

2009-09-18T13:42:00.008+10:00

I used to love it in school when we were given creative writing time. It was like a sweet, sweet reward for putting up with the rest of the curriculum. One aspect of it's allure, curiously enough, was the time limit. It was like the teacher was setting us a challenge and the objective was to completely outshine our classmates and produce work of such high quality that it would have been considered impossible in such a short time span.

That's how I saw it, anyway. I was quite competitive when it came to creative things.

So when Mutt linked me to a podcast that suggested setting aside 30 minutes every day just for writing whatever I want... well, it felt very nostalgic. The idea is that you don't procrastinate, you don't make excuses or even wait for inspiration to strike. You just write and don't worry about whether it's any good or not. Here's what I wrote on the 16th, the 17th and today.

The Screaming Potion

Marcus closed his eyes fiercely, pressing his palms hard to his ears. It was the most horrible thing he’d ever heard in his life. It was like screams of agony, a woman’s scream, but more guttural and extending beyond mere sound. It was as though a cold, skeletal hand was reaching into Marcus’ chest and clutching at his heart, squeezing it. The pain was unreal. He couldn’t think, he couldn’t even breathe, and if he didn’t stop it at once he was sure he would die.

Unable to unclench his trembling hands from his ears, Marcus let out a mighty yell and forced his arms outward. His ears instantly tore and blood flowed down the sides of his face, but it was nothing compared to the horror emanating from the flask on his uncle’s desk. In one swift motion he swatted the flask from it’s holder and it shattered on the stone-cobbled floor.

Impossibly, the terrible screaming grew louder. Marcus grasped at his chest as his heart felt like it was going to explode with pain... then it suddenly stopped.

Marcus opened his eyes again. What had happened? Why had it stopped? Looking down, he saw the flask’s contents thin as it leaked into the cracks at his feet. With a whimper, the teal potion turned grey and one final tendril of steam marked it’s death.

By Luke Orrin

The New Sun

So this was it. The thing that had haunted his dreams every night of the past thirteen years. It was not horrifying in the least, but rather the most beautiful thing he could ever have imagined. The sand at his feet seemed to take on a voice of their own, a blissful sigh as the grains passed across his skin. The waves before him ceased their turbulence and smoothed out like flawless glass, like he could walk across it’s waters right then and not drown. The horizon... my goodness, the horizon. The sky which was so black and unforgiving rolled back and a new sun, not the sun he knew, cast it away forever. Clouds adopted new formations that spoke of knowing celebration, streaking across the sky as though dancing.

Then the sands began to swirl around him, spinning with great ferocity at first, then slowing to a smoothing drift. One by one the granules of sand rested upon his brutally wounded arm and, without so much as a sound and with no visible transition, his arm was whole again. The pain was gone. He let out a smile without an ounce of self-awareness or cynicism and laughed.

He didn’t understand, he couldn’t, but now he realized that he never did. What a fool he’d been to think he ever could. But that didn’t matter anymore. The desire of understanding faded away and all that mattered was the feeling. It was as though pure joy was flowing not in him, but through him like water. He didn’t care that they didn’t stay, for it was like a never ending stream.

It was right then that he knew he would never want anything ever again. He could stay like this forever. But then the strangest thing happened. In an event that was beyond his comprehension, the joyous stream stripped his soul of something that he never even knew was there. It was like he was looking at himself dissolving into nothing, but not a self he recognized anymore. But just like that it was gone.

That’s when he understood. He was home.

“Do you want to remain here?” asked a voice that seemed to come from all around him.

“Yes please,” he heard himself say with an embarrassingly child-like tone in his voice.

“How curious,” said the voice.

By Luke Orrin

Old Cabin

How many years had it been? Sixty? Seventy? He couldn’t know anymore. He had seen old people as a small boy, and he vaguely remembered how they looked at their age. Squinting at the back of his wrinkly old hand, he pinched the skin and waited to see how long it took to snap back. After five minutes of waiting and a rather disappointed feeling he decided it best to stop waiting.

Gazing around at his worn down old cabin he wondered, as he often did, who had built it and why they had chosen such a horrible set of curtains. He imagined the builder’s nagging wife and her horrible taste in decorations. That always lifted his spirits. With a groan he lifted himself out of his chair and shuffled to the veranda.

Yep, same old view. What once was humbling and awe-inspiring now seemed quite predictable. Was it always this dull and he had only just now noticed? No, he hated all that philosophy mumbo jumbo. He never cared for those stuffy know-it-alls who would talk your ear off about things that didn’t matter. Yet, ironically, a talkative somebody was all he wished for these days. A lady would be nice. She’d have nice brown hair, tied back and not too wild. She’d need to be able to cook and she’d need to like the same things he did.

No... she could like whatever she wanted. In fact, she could have any sort of hair and keep it any way she liked. All that really mattered is that she talked. A lot. As long as they were a talker it didn’t even have to be a lady. No, better it be a man. He wouldn’t know what to do with a woman anyway. Yes, a nice, respectable man who talked a lot. But what if he was selfish and didn’t do any of the hunting? Alright, he’d have to be young. He could do all the hunting.

As long as he wasn’t a philosopher.

Suddenly he came to. The sun had already disappeared behind the mountains. He’d drifted into a daydream again. He regretted becoming aware of that. Daydreams were such a wonderful way to pass the time.

Wandering lazily over to table he collected his hunting knife and started cutting up the deer by the back door. As he went through the motions of skinning and cleaning it he thought a new thought for the first time in a long time.

Nobody else was coming.

Could he think that? Should he think that? No, of course not, that was silly. Of course somebody was coming. Besides, what if somebody were to burst through the front door right now and the place was a mess? Yes, he needed to clean, the cabin had grown awfully dusty.

He looked down at his hand to see the skin on the back clumping stubbornly.

How many years had it been?

By Luke Orrin

Ah, it feels so good to write just for fun again.

DON'T TOUCH IT! IT'S THE HISTORY ERASER BUTTON, YOU FOOL!!!

2009-09-16T16:13:00.005+10:00

Oops... I touched it.

That's right, folks! In an effort to destroy all evidence of my flawed humanity across the interwebz, I have deleted all previous posts on my blog! Now when I say to people "I am perfect" they will be able to say without hesitation "you must be, for I fail to see any evidence on the interwebz to suggest otherwise".

I shall become a god! No one can stop me! All shall love me and despair!! MWA HA HA HA HA HAAAAA!!!

Oh, and here's the appropriate clip.