Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Avatar's Game!

I usually don’t get a chance to see movies on my own. I spend most of my time working, writing, playing games, or writing about playing games. But when I went home last week I had a chance to sit down and see Avatar in 3D with some old friends.

There are people more qualified to critique Avatar than myself, although I will say it’s a “dumb movie that’s worth seeing if you just want to turn your brain off for three hours and enjoy some action sequences.” Plenty of people have said the same by damning its impenetrable, poor story and praising its asthetic and artistic accomplishments, important so long as we look at films with our eyes. But there aren’t too many people who have discussed the fact that the story is essentially constructed as a video game’s is.

Think of the beginning of the film, up to Sully’s first immersion in his new body. It’s basically one big cutscene. It establishes the characters, their roles and the world surrounding them. We get that there’s a Big Bad Corporation, that people have gone out into space to get resources and that there are dangers all around them that they’ve had trouble dealing with. Then Jake goes into a tube and the game starts.

First there’s a tutorial where it’s revealed that Jake’s Avatar can walk. Jake then learns how to use his walking skills to walk through a garden and jump. Then he learns how to use weapons, manage his inventory, and avoid hostile threats while coming to terms with his control system before the story proper begins and Jake is cut off from his friends and forced to begin the game proper.

Jake then incrementally gains skills so that he can one day deal with the end game of Avatar. He learns to ride horse-things, learns about flying-things, learns how to use bows (weapons with unlimited ammo) and use stealth. It’s not a perfect parallel during the body of the film by any means (although if the film had considered the relationship between self-insertion into another character and self the way that actors and gamers deal with it it might have been a good deal more interesting) but the seeds are there. The film is mostly about his training and his transformation.

Eventually it becomes a story about the transformation of the world around him, rather than any transformation he actually undergoes. Don’t be fooled by the throwaway line about coming to relate more with the Na’vi than his own people and beginning to skew realities. Jake Sully’s reality is always plain. He’s in it, where ever he is. He’s grounded in human life by the knowledge that he can’t use his legs and in Na’vi life by his physical capacity. He wants one to be truer than the other, he doesn’t feel that they’re blurring together and he never shows any signs that he’s letting them.

He does, however, show that he’s sympathizing with them and their ties to the planet. He comes to associate with the setting more than his new character, the culture surrounding the character rather than the identity of the character. In a way this is what video games do in lieu of telling us a story – they draw us into places. It’s their power, to make us feel like that Forerunner ring is huge and boring or that the African Savannah is vast and beautiful and heartless. But Cameron doesn’t really do anything with this. It’s less a statement and more a part of the film he’s making – with so little to hold on to in terms of character and character development we’re left only with the remarkable visuals Cameron deftly doles out. As in games the archetypal nature of the characters and their stymied, telegraphed development forces us to appreciate the space we’re given instead of the story we’re being told. If this was intentional it would be kind of amazing – Cameron would have made us unconsciously relate to a place by giving us a cast of characters who most people with half a brain couldn’t give half a shit about.

But, as in most games, it’s generated by omission rather than intent. Cameron’s treatment of his characters is tooth grindingly self-serious and totally unaware of just how laughable it is. My friend laughed out loud when Michelle Rodriguez abandoned the battle against the Na’vi alone, and it was tough not to join in. Every character is set from their introduction to fill a role, and I don’t think I was shocked by the progression of a single character in the film. Faced with such a weak story you have to grab on to something to love for the three hour experience that is Avatar, just as you have to find something in your twelve hour game to enjoy, and for me it was the visuals.

There’s a whole world’s worth of details in Avatar’s lovingly rendered CG performances, and watching Sam Worthington’s bad acting rendered on to a Na’vi was just as impressive as seeing Sigourney Weaver’s subtly projected on to one. But this focus on visuals wasn’t the real turning point for me thinking that Avatar could’ve been an okay video game instead of a bad movie. That was the climax of the film or, as I like to call it, the multi-stage boss fight.

To those who haven’t seen Avatar and have already spoiled it for themselves by reading this overlong critique of the film and its relationship with games, Avatar climaxes with a multi-stage boss fight. It starts out in the vehicle stage, where you have to destroy vehicles by riding a pterodactyl or some shit. Then you destroy a big vehicle with guns and your pterodactyl goes away for some reason. That’s when the boss fight gets a little dicey.

See, after the vehicle section a robot runs out of the flaming vehicle to attack your gamer/parapulegic. Then your partner has to fight the robot with a giant cat and damage it enough that you can attack it with a part of a robot-gun and break its weak spot open. After its weak spot has been opened you have to fire arrows into its weak spot until you kill it. Before the timer runs out on your body’s air supply. I think. I was sort of drunk when I saw it.

But for the most part what I described was accurate. Avatar’s climax had special units you could call in to help you, mini-bosses and trash mobs you have to clear before the big fight and then a series of arenas where the big fight takes place. The big fight even makes you use all of your training and summon the giant cat you had to run away from during the tutorial. It would be adorable if it was intentional, but again I don’t think Cameron knows what he’s doing. I think he kind of went crazy after Titanic and we’re seeing the fruits of that insanity, an attempt to make Star Wars designed by committee. The film has a message, a setting, a big battle and everything. Everything except characters. And in this it’s just like the great bulk of video games.

So while I’d advise that people take their action movie oriented moms to see Avatar I also suggest that anyone who reads this and hasn’t seen it yet look at it not just as a passable action movie but also as a statement on just how terrible the storytelling in games can be when interactivity is removed. It could be a great learning experience for aspiring developers and shows us a laundry list of things not to do.