We Can Make Him Better; We Have The Technology

James Cameron's Avatar is...an experience. It's not uncommon for me to disagree with the "real" movie critics, but I'm particularly passionate about this one. Most people I've spoken with like the movie, but it can be tough to explain why. I'll try.

Movies are, and have always been, a means of traveling to an otherwise-unobtainable place, seeing what never occurred, knowing what cannot be. Movies define escapism. Enter a dark room and sit quietly while staring forward. Then leave having had fun. It's the most basic of entertainments.

James Cameron took me on a trip when I was certain I'd rather stay home. I wanted to hate the ride. I've heard people draw comparisons with Pocahontas and Fern Gully...not the highest praise in my book. Guess what: an unnamed big corporation is even exploiting the environment to please their investors. To top it off, the main character is a paraplegic! There's not much to like on paper, but oh MY: the execution makes up for it.

Not in recent memory have I wanted more desperately to be the guy who hates this movie. And for only the third time I can think of, the credits had barely finished when I wanted to turn around and watch it again.

I got into an...argument with a friend recently. We had rather different opinions of Avatar. There was merit to the opposing argument, but I dare you to go to the theater. Sit in the chairs with or without the silly glasses. I dare you to allow your mind to wander back to the days when anything was possible and only a daydream away. I dare you to sit through Avatar and not enjoy the trip, the scenery, or the imagination.

It's a long movie. Plan your snacks accordingly.

An Addendum

Immediately after my previous post, I went downstairs and completed the campaign (story-mode) for Modern Warfare 2. It's simply not as good as Modern Warfare 1. MW2 is a bit prettier and smoother, but as stories go, the sequel pales to the source. That said, the game sold almost 4 million (4,000,000) copies in a single day, making Activision (the game's publisher) more than $300 million--in a single day! As a comparison, Transformers 2 made just over $400 million between June and October.

It's a good game, and there are some multiplayer elements that I want to try, but the story forces my imagination to a place I don't want it to be. I am thrilled that games have come to a point where plot devices like this can work. I am thrilled that the airport sequence made it into the final game. Movies and books have long had implicit permission to make their consumers go to a place they'd rather not be, and video games' doing it shows the evolution of the art.

Now, my appreciating the significance and defending the developers' decision is not the same as my enjoying the fruits of their labors. Infinity Ward (MW1&2's developers) did fantastic things with an ailing genre and added some much-needed variety to a segment of games increasingly dominated by space marines and aliens. Infinity Ward has created two games that celebrate the effect an individual can have on the course of history. They've created experiences that underscore the difference between Right and Wrong, while reminding that the former is not always the easier path. If nothing else, their contribution to bringing video games beyond the waka-waka platformers of yesteryear is to be celebrated.

It's just a shame I don't much like their newest game.

Chris' Holiday Gift Guide for Tweens and Younger

I really like video games. I enjoy books and movies and art and all that stuff, too. But it's video games that truly have my heart. All forms of art have the power to elicit emotions. Even better: those emotions vary from person to person! It's a fantastic aspect of human creativity to create media that speaks to everyone, but says something different each time. Video games take that a step further by allowing the consumer to participate.

However, it's only recently that the technology behind video games allowed for a dynamic experience. Dragon Age: Origins is my favorite game right now because the choices I make matter. I can truly play the game as I want. Each character in my party is a dynamic personality that responds to everything I do. I can create a strong friendship so we can fight shoulder-to-shoulder with confidence or I can make an enemy who will try to slay me in my sleep. This is a game that has real (virtual) consequences to all my decisions.

I am compelled to play this game because the characters are interesting enough that I start to think about what I do next. Sure, killing this person may be amusing, but what will Morrigan think? In that case, she probably wouldn't mind, but it's an extra bit of immersion that I love.

Great games are the ones that make me swear at defeat and cheer at victory. I want to win the big battles and beat the main bosses and be the Ultimate Badass of my virtual empire. It's the perfect catharsis to wade into a sea of virtual bad guys (one could imagine them as managers, exes, or former gym teachers) and demolish them all with my ultimate badass weapon of badassery.

I've been saying for years that I want more games that make me care about whatever I'm doing. I want to feel the character's pain and share their triumph. I played a game that makes me wonder if a line has been crossed.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is the sequel to my second-favorite First-Person Shooter (behind Halo) and has been more-than-a-little anticipated for a while now. The story: the uber-nationalist terrorists are bad and need to be destroyed.

MW1 took a bold chance by killing off a seemingly-main character early in the game. He gets caught in a nuclear explosion after stopping to rescue a stranded comrade. He didn't die immediately. You, the player, see the explosion and mushroom cloud just a moment before the pressure wave knocks your helicopter out of the sky. You wake up unable to walk, stranded in the smoldering chopper. You can crawl out to see the devastation, the razed homes and blown-out skyscrapers. All that's left is the swirling, Hellish wind that dares even stone to persist. And you. You keep crawling. Maybe there's a safer place to be. Maybe there's a health pack nearby (that magically survived). Maybe there's a checkpoint to reach. No, all that's left is death. You linger with your character as he gradually succumbs to burns and radiation before the screen goes white and the next level begins.

Nothing like that had ever happened before. Especially in an FPS. MW1 earned rave reviews for turning the players' perspectives and creating a new experience within a still-fantastic game.

MW2 keeps the momentum going, but with an interesting twist. As the game first boots up, the player is greeted with a disclaimer warning against objectionable material. That's pretty standard by now. After agreeing, the player gets another "are you sure?" sort of message. There's lots of ass-covering; I have to see what's gonna happen!

The second(-ish) level is the potentially-objectionable one in which the player--in deep cover--accompanies the uber-nationalist bad guys on their latest terrorist strike: powerful automatic weapons in a crowded airport.

Part of the success of MW1 is that it was, and still is, prescient. I've done some traveling recently and I have friends and family who travel quite often. For the first time in a long time, a video game made me uncomfortable. Even once the level loads, the player may pause and skip the level or simply not participate. There are hundreds of passengers.

I've never bought into most of the anti-video game rhetoric. Killing pixels is just different than killing people. The passengers are pixels and programming with no families, friends, pets, or soul. Inflicting enough mathematical damage so their renders are instructed to slump on the "floor" is a throw-away action for a gamer.

It was only afterward that I realized that's how our enemies see us. Perhaps sans the "mathematics" and "rendering" parts, but as, for all practical purposes, non-beings. It's a startling mindset to find and I know that it's a mindset that could be indoctrinated into the easily-influenced.

That said, I still don't believe video games are bad. Rather, they emphasize the importance of teaching kids right from wrong, real from fake as early as possible to keep fantasy from merging too permanantly with reality. Without that boundary, how does one perceive the "hordes of virtual bullies" that are so easily quashed in the game from just "the bully" tomorrow at school?

There's a reason video games come with ratings.

I Represent the Lollipop Guild

Every now and then, I'll rail against a movie and be accused of "not getting it."  That's often not true.  I'm almost always perfectly aware of how a film fits into history--either the one it's creating or the one in which it was created--but that's not enough to keep me interested or affect my ultimate opinion.  An important film isn't necessarily a good film.  My undying love for the source material does not mean I'll enjoy the movie adaptation.  My persistent ambivalence toward some source material does not mean I can't fall in love with movie adaptations.  I wish I could come up with a set of criteria for what I like in a movie, but there's always that "X-Factor" that can elevate a ho-hum film to the highest peaks of Stuff I Love, or doom a film to live in the darkest corner of The Land of Forgotten Internet Memes.

I've been watching lots of movies lately.  Some have been good.  Some have redefined the opposite of good.  In either case, there are six movies that earned some strong opinion.

The movie that first inspired this post was Speed Racer.  I was never a fan of the cartoon and the Wachowski brothers have gone to some lengths to punish my enjoying the first Matrix.  And yet, I wanted to see this movie.  Speed Racer had no chance of being a good movie, but I would have been satisfied with fun.  Even after lowering the bar, I was disappointed.  The characters are about as interesting as their animated originals--not very.  Trixie doesn't talk quite so obnoxiously fast anymore, but they still have a chimp as a co-star.  I love technology more than the average person, but the distinctive shoot-everything-on-green-screen look actively pushed me out of the story.  The big twist (seen from twenty miles away) and presumably the climax of the movie--not that I felt any different from the preceding 90 minutes--is so poorly delivered that I laughed.  Sitting in a dark, otherwise-empty room with nobody else to get me into the make-fun-of-it frame of mind, I laughed at this movie's biggest Wow moment.  The best part, ironically enough, was the bit right before the credits.  The last five minutes or so when Speed stops his whining and just drives the damn car is a lot of legitimate fun, but that's the biggest concentration I could find.  Stay away from this one.

One of my very favorite movies--period--is Taken from earlier this year.  It's just a hair over 90 minutes, but they're almost perfect.  Liam Neeson is amazing.  The story is pretty simple: bad people kidnap his daughter while she's visiting Paris.  Fortunately, he's very good at finding bad people and getting information from them.  Neeson's character is absolutely ruthless.  He's brutal on the people who have information, fights dirty when he needs to, and I'm completely fine with that.  He's not really fighting for justice , he's not really trying to right a wrong, he's not even trying to punish the people threatening his family, he just wants his daughter back safe and sound.  If someone gets in his way though, they might die where they stand.  This could have easily been a two-hour movie by tying up all the loose ends, but I'm happy for the more focused story.  We see only what Neeson sees and know only what he knows and care only for what he does.  I love this movie.  It hit DVD and Blu-Ray on May 12th.  Go buy it.

There are some iconic movies before my time I feel the occasional obligation to see.  That's made easier when those movies have decent reviews to back them up.  Blade Runner is one such movie that is ingrained enough in the geek culture that I had to see it.  I wanted to be a part of that experience, even decades after the fact.  This movie sucks.  I managed to fight off napping through it, but only just.  The story doesn't make any damn sense: "We have four super-strong human-ish sociopathic Replicants on the loose.  Harrison, we want you, and you alone, to find them and kill them."  Inexplicably, Harrison agrees.  This felt like a season finale more than a movie.  The story--using the term loosely--is riddled with sentences that I can only accept as English if I assume they're talking about stuff I'm supposed to know.  At the end of it, I didn't care about anyone and I truly wished all the characters would just die.  If you're the sort who likes playing with the line between man and machine, watch Ghost in the Shell, I, Robot, or Wall-E--not Blade Runner.

J. J. Abrams' adaptation of Star Trek is flat-out brilliant.  The characters are not impressions or caricatures; they're simply younger versions of the originals.  The new actors captured the essence of what made McCoy, Kirk, or Spock who they were.  The special effects are amazing.  It's a paste-you-to-your-seat kind of fast paced without feeling rushed.  I laughed.  I cried.  I paid to see it twice.  Go find a showing right now.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is the only one of this list that I've really heard varying opinions on.  It's a definite box-office success (in spite or because of the leak, I'm not sure, but I have a hunch), but I really didn't like it.  The effects were pretty lame.  The big explosions came straight out of the Cliche Handbook.  There are lots of practical effect problems--the wrong sounds, for example--that pushed me out of what little narrative there was.  My biggest gripe is really that they strayed so very far from the source--seemingly for the sake of easier movie-making.  There might be an alternate history I've not read that inspired this, but I doubt it.  Putting characters together who aren't to meet each other for years is annoying.  Completely fabricating the origin of another character is annoying.  Foisting gimmicky 1980s-esque technology as anything approaching state-of-the-art (for any time) on an unsuspecting audience is annoying.  A ten-minute love story being the inspiration for Wolverine going on a revenge-driven murdering spree is annoying.  I can't really say this is a bad movie, it's just a quintessential "Summer Movie."  It's fun enough, I guess.  Go see it if you're bored and get tired of using paychecks as kindling.

I just finished watching A Scanner Darkly.  I want to think that I really just don't get this one.  It's clearly an homage to a book I've not read, but it's done nothing to convince me it's a book I need to read.  I realized about 40 minutes in that I didn't really care about any of the characters.  The closest I came to liking someone was Winona Ryder's character, but mostly because she's still pretty cartoon-ized.  There's a pretty good twist that I honestly didn't see coming, but then it doesn't really pay off.  There's about ten minutes of "woe-is-me, how could we do this to someone so innocent" bullshit that does nothing but make me wonder why not devote that time to telling me what the hell is going on.  There's enough here that I really want to like it, but I can't really.  Keanu Reeves gives another version of his classic Spaced-Out-But-Apparently-Still-Very-Important character--it's like a breath of fresh air...that's been recycled thousands of times because the future sucks like that.  Robert Downey Jr. is really the reason to watch this at all.  I didn't care about his character, but I enjoyed watching the mannerisms and hearing the inflections that lent some erg of life to a mostly dull cast.

From the "History-ish" Channel?

For all my talk of skepticism, I really like the idea of aliens visiting Earth, Bigfoot roaming forests, and Chupa-thingy eating cows or whatever. Whenever one of these shows hits TV, I'll pretty much always tune in. Two nights ago was the first time this started to bother me. The thesis of this show was that aliens have visited Earth in the past with fantastic technologies, were worshiped as gods, then left and are remembered only through cryptic, dubious "evidence."

There are enormous figures carved into a plateau in Nazca, Peru (Nazca Lines) that can only be seen from the air...an impossibility until fairly recently. There are Maya carvings that show something that looks kinda like a modern rocket. Construction of the Great Pyramid was, of course, aided by extraterrestrials. Even the great Incan city of Cusco must have had the help of super-advanced visitors, else how could they erect their super precise walls?--it's a perfect fit with no mortar!

Are our egos so fragile that so many must simply reject the notion that ancient people were smart? Just because we were unable to do something until recently (if at all) doesn't mean others couldn't figure it out. I have it on good authority that I'm a pretty smart guy (I test well anyway) but I've known plenty of people who are way better in any number of things than I am. Some people just understand machines. Some people read music like I read a book. Some can even do serious math in their heads just because the numbers make sense. Why is it so difficult to believe that these ancient people were just really good at what they did?

The how of the Nazca Lines seems pretty straightforward--rub something against the ground until a line is made. Such straight lines are apparently impossible to create...and yet, there they are. Mountains were leveled off (I'm willing to believe) without hydraulics. These were people with nothing but time, strong backs, and religious fervor. Such people can quite literally do anything, especially in large numbers. The why really doesn't matter much. Why do I write this blog? I don't really have a compelling reason. I just write. People needn't always have reasons for what they do.

The Maya carving is probably a pretty serious case of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The people who see a shuttle launch in this slab are the same sorts who go into Maya ruins looking specifically for evidence of aliens. When someone like this goes into ruins and finds such evidence, I might be more swayed.

The Great Pyramid is a feat of construction without modern parallel. It's hard to imagine something--anything that massive. There's no doubt in my mind though that it was built by many, many very human hands.

The walls of Cusco are especially impressive to me. I can't even fold a sheet of paper quite in half, but these folks carved rocks with such exactness that I can't fit my paper into the seams. Really impressive. Maybe a bit OCD. Human.

We like to think of ourselves as the top of a ladder. We are the very pinnacle, the culmination of all that came before. Perhaps we're simply the highest branch of a tree. Believing that our ancestors must've been aided by the Greys to have accomplished what we can scarcely imagine diminishes not only their accomplishments, but also how those feats have shaped us. Highest branch or highest rung, it doesn't mean a damn thing without everything that rests below.

As much as I'd like to meet an alien, I'd rather believe in us and our abilities. No creatures have made a bigger impact on this planet than human beings being human. All of our modern accomplishments come from human ingenuity and perseverance. Why can't the same be true for ancient accomplishments?

When in Doubt, Ask a Question

Science has always held a special place in my heart. I like the process. I like the logic. I like the remaining mysteries. Most of all though, I love the inherent skepticism. Having strongly-felt beliefs is all well and good, but it can be dangerous if that blinds one from the truth.

Through a series of lucky Wikipedia searches and inspired podcast searches, I've been exposed to the so-called "Skeptic Movement." The idea seems, at first glance, something like a straw man argument writ large (we don't hear all that much about the "Mindless Believer Movement"), but at a deeper level it appeals to me in ways that I've always felt religion should have.

With the benefit of hindsight, I'm wondering if my increasing distance from the tenets of any specific religion is due to some instinctive skepticism. Why, out of all the places in the universe, would God trouble himself so with the minutiae of everyone's life that we must live in fear of even the slightest transgressions? How can we pursue a path toward Heaven or Hell without knowing the criteria for good or bad? What's the tipping point for damnation? Not everyone can be right; I really like alcohol, pork, and beef--that already pisses off about half the world's population. Adherence to some dogma or another can provide a fairly consistent rubric for morality (though not in all cases), but that's just about as far as its assertions can be stretched.

I'm bothered by our use of the word "cult" when we come across some small, radical group of people with newsworthy beliefs. I've found three interesting definitions for a cult:

1. a group or sect bound together by devotion to or veneration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc.
2. a group having a sacred ideology and a set of rites centering around their sacred symbols
3. a religion or religious sect generally considered to be extremist or false, with its followers often living in an unconventional manner under the guidance of an authoritarian, charismatic leader

Now tell me, what religion, sect, whatever doesn't fall into at least one of these categories. We say cult and mean it as a pejorative, but where's the line? Is it number of members? Is it just familiarity; we're more comfortable with others holding beliefs closest to our own? Is there a substantive difference between a cult and a religion? I truly don't know, but that I need even ask the question casts doubts all its own.

I think it was Karl Marx who referred to religion as an opiate for the masses. That's probably a little cynical, but not as far off the mark as I want it to be. There's very little that should be taken at face value. Asking questions is never harmful; it only feels that way if someone doesn't like the answers. In troubled times, it's all the more important to evaluate one's beliefs. Why is this important to me? Why is this right? Why is this wrong? We should welcome provocative questions, difficult answers.

Holding any belief comes with the implied burden of defending it as best as possible. Holding strong beliefs should come with the responsibility to try and prove it wrong. It is through that process (one remarkably similar to the SOP for any science experiment) that we hone our beliefs and, almost by elimination, prove them right.

I'm not comfortable with the presumably immutable laws of religion. Wars have been waged with the supposed backing of religious laws. Millions of people have been burned, drowned, tortured, oppressed, gassed, and outright murdered for being on the wrong end of that imaginary religious line. It used to be that I could go to Hell for eating meat on Friday or working through Sunday. What's changed? Everything. We are an ever-changing species, and religions adapt with us. I wonder, just how deep does that fluidity go?

I'm Not a Hater; Just a Realist

I'm gonna say it. It's long past time someone did. The Nintendo Wii's effective lifespan is over. Last week, there were a rash of small, quickly ignored articles about how Nintendo is going to remain on the cutting edge (the other authors' emphasis, not mine); there's just one I really want to talk about though. It wonders if the Wii can earn back the "hardcore" (I'll call them just "core," but that's a different rant) gaming crowd. The short answer is "No." Among the people who actually play games, the Wii is a joke. Sacrificing high definition graphics for usability was a bold move, and it's a great business move, but it only really works if there's software to back it up.

All of the games made in-house by Nintendo are amazing. Pretty much everything else is awful. There are so many terrible games out there that the Interwebs created a new term: Shovelware. I know of only two games that could come close to drawing in core gamers, but they came way too late and are still too quirky to change the trend. As a real gaming console, Wii was almost dead on arrival.

What drove Wii's sales was price, family-friendly appearance, and the promise of good games...eventually. The good games came out, and I played them, but I was reminded (again) that I don't really like Mario, Zelda, or Metroid. Poor planning on my part. The Wiimote, cute as it is, is simply not accurate enough for any real precision work on which many of my favorite games thrive. The graphics were adequate, but not as immersive as other systems. There's a lot wrong with the Wii, but that never seemed to matter.

Good ole Reggie et al. did a marvelous job pitching this to all groups, but they found their greatest toehold among casual gamers. My Xbox controller has, depending on how creative you wish to be, 14 buttons that I must keep track of at all times and use appropriately. Wii's initial goal was to emulate that kind of high-end gameplay, but effectively use two buttons. Lofty goals, but developers never really got on board. Nintendo knew what it wanted and knew how to get it, but third-parties still haven't quite gotten the gist of it.

If the only criteria we look at are units sold and money made, Wii is the irrefutable victor of this generation (so far). Yet, all of my friends have had more fun with their Xbox 360 than they ever would on Wii. Hell, one friend sold a Wii, bought a 360, and regrets ever buying Nintendo's baby.

Wii is innovative and fun (in spurts). It's opened the world of gaming to virtually everyone. It is a resounding success in all the ways that matter to Nintendo, but they'll have to come out with something new soon. Production is finally meeting demand. Reduced scarcity will reduce interest, and things get less rosy.

Nintendo still has a lot of Nerd Credits in its inventory, but it's got to find a better balance of innovation and familiarity for its next generation, or the core gamers might just resign themselves to a Mario-less world and keep playing something else in high definition on a console that includes a damn DVD player.

Change is all well and good, but Sony's proven time and again that it won't mean much if it alienates the core fanbase. Casual gamers make up a huge portion of the population and spend lots of money, but it's the core gamers who inspire the innovative spirit of those in the industry; don't sacrifice them for an easy buck.




P.S. To illustrate the concept of Shovelware, Action Girlz Racing exists.