Avatar: The Last Airbender

When I started seeing ads for the Avatar: The Last Airbender movie from M. Night Shyamalan, I was a bit surprised. All I knew of the animated TV series was that it was on Nickelodeon and everyone knows that there are two kinds of shows on that network: drivel aimed at keeping kids quiet while their parents do something else and shows that get canceled fast (c.f. Invader Zim). Throw in the confusion caused by the James Cameron movie, Avatar, which had nothing to do with the show, and I just needed to watch a bit of it to get the facts straight.

So, with every expectation of hating it, I watched the first season on Netfix via their TiVo instant-watch player. I was hooked.

To be sure, it's a kid's show. The characters are mostly children; the stories tend to be simple morality plays; and there's all the cute animals you could want (or orders of magnitude more if you're like me). So why did I like it? For starters, it's a solid story that's well written and that always draws me in. For another, the story isn't your average U.S. fare.

Let me describe the outline (spoiler-free), first. The story takes place in a fantasy world where four nations represent the four alchemical elements of fire, air, water and earth. This is not merely symbolic. There's a sort of shamanistic magic called "bending" in this world, by which people can manipulate these elements (the Fire Nation's benders can manipulate fire, and so on). These nations are currently at war and the only one that can end the war is Aang, the Avatar. An Avatar is born to each generation and has the ability to manipulate all four elements, but the current Avatar is 100 years late and a child who hasn't been trained in anything but the art of air bending.

The tale goes pretty much where you'd expect: he seeks out masters of the other three arts to train him and encounters friends and adventures along the way. Standard children's fantasy. Except...

What I didn't expect was a story about the nature of personal transformation and the acceptance of responsibility for one's own destiny. The story explains, in the basic terms of a show aimed mostly at children, many of the Eastern traditions of energy manipulation and meditation along with reincarnation, karma and some anti-totalitarian politics for good measure. It's a bit like the Promethea comic, but aimed at a younger generation and with far less sex.

I strongly suggest seeing the original before M. Night takes a swing at it. Even if his movie is excellent, I really don't think you'll want to watch the series after the movie, just because it's such an investment of time.

We're just about to start the third season and can't wait to find out what happens to our now favorite characters.

Has Anyone Ever Used a Meta-Naming Scheme?

Today at work, we set out to name some conference rooms that had previously only ever had numbers. Lots of themes were suggested from local landmarks to moons and planets from Star Wars. That got me to thinking about the Geeky Science Fiction Themes Meta-Theme. Here's how it works: when you need a name for your machine, project, conference room or whatnot, and you want to be assured that you'll never run out of names, just start using the names of cliches from science fiction and fantasy. Here's a few names you could use:

• Alien Units of Measure
• Alternate Earth Presidents of the United States
• Powerful Artifact Weapon That Only the Prophesied One May Wield
• Landmarks of Science Fiction That Were Turned Into Terrible Movies

Imagine planning a meeting and telling your co-workers to meet you in Alien Animals That Are Really Just Chimeric Earth Animals at noon! It's guaranteed that they'll remember!

Some tips: make sure the first word is unique as many people will tend to refer to a room by that word (e.g. "Alien," "Alternate," "Powerful," and "Landmarks" from the above list). Also

Meds... I need to find my meds....

Weak Women of Sci Fi / Fantasy

Much has been made over the years of "strong women" in science fiction and fantasy and how they serve to elevate the genres and to promote an empowered view of women. I'm all for this, but when I think of science fiction and fantasy films, the first thing to pop into my head is Star Trek which elevated the time-honored role of demure, but leggy secretary to that of starship yeoman... one small step backwards indeed.

But are the weaker women of F&SF all negative stereotypes? I guess it depends on how you see "weak." One of my favorite science fiction women is Princes Leia whose combination of damsel-in-distress, love interest and wise-cracking heroine shaped my early impression of the paradox embodied in Hollywood's leading ladies. Later, I would discover that this paradox was part of the recipe for success in films like Superman, which featured a Lois Lane modeled almost directly on Leia's insecure-but-in-command mashup. Even moreso than Leia, Lois felt lost without her leading man, but in every other way she was in command of her life. It's as if men were her kryptonite, transforming the business woman of steel into a helpless schoolgirl. Again and again the 80s re-cast this new kind-of-super-woman in a variety of science fiction and fantasy. Karen Allen rounds out what I consider to be the top-3 in this lineup with Marion Ravenwood, the once-and-future lover of one Henry "Indiana" Jones.

Not all of Hollywood's weaker sex lead such double lives however. There's something fascinating to me about the noir flashbacks that maintain a cool dignity, while letting the leading man solve all of their problems. In Blade Runner, the replicant Rachel isn't even human, which might actually work to her advantage in this role.

Then we come to the younger characters who we might believe are being molded into strong women, but oscillate back and forth during the film. Labyrinth's Sarah, played by a young Jennifer Connelly, is bounced around like a pinball for most of the film's duration until she learns to take over and tell her fantasy world what to do. This would be a running theme in The Princess Bride and several other genre films.

An odd twist (and one that I'm sure isn't universally appreciated) is the reverse Labyrinth. This sort of film features a strong an independent young woman who finds that she must yield to her stereotype in order to get her man (and presumably the life she truly wishes to lead...) Oddly enough I've enjoyed the prime example of this type, Pleasantville. There's something irresistible about that film, and I found myself rooting for Reese Witherspoon's character throughout her transformation.

These films collectively demonstrate not just Hollywood's fascination with women who aren't exactly independent, but fandom's as well. Every one of these films were nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, and several of them won. Still, none of these films draped their leading lady over a motorcycle in cutoff jeans. There are, after all, always lines to be crossed...

Repost: Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter

This review was posted to the old essays.ajs.com, and is being re-posted here because it's still fairly relevant.

I won't review Tales as if it were a stand-alone work. That would be unfair, since it's the B-story inside a larger work. Instead, I'll deal with its merits as an adjunct to the Watchmen film.

First off, the details. I got Freighter on Blu-Ray which was probably overkill. The animation quality isn't really that impressive, and DVD might have been the better choice in order to let its slightly retro look blend a bit more rather than having every pencil line (yep, hand drawn by Korean animators) pop out of my screen. It's animated in a very Heavy Metal style, though it's much smoother and obviously computer-colored. I think it's a good look, and certainly a less realistic style was the right choice to pair with Watchmen's over-sharpened reality.

As with the hacksaw scene from Watchmen, there's a problem with this story that's not really its fault: a man stuck on a desert island that starts talking to a head has been done between when Watchmen became popular and today. It doesn't feel derivative here as I'm sure leaving the hacksaw in the movie would have, but it does take a bit of the impact out of his growing insanity.

The major points of the story hold up well. The colors are as hellish as they need to be. The growing tone of madness and despair is palpable and the voice work is perfect.

That's where the praise and criticism really has to stop though because there are only two options here: either you are a fan of the book enough to have wanted to see this the moment it came out, or you should wait. The extras on this disk make it abundantly clear that there's a special edition in the works that will thread Freighter and Under the Hood back into the movie the way they were in the original book. That's really the one to buy. This is for fanboys like myself.

That brings me to Under the Hood. This is a live-action short that follows some of the back-of-the-book text from Watchmen as a series of interviews. Some of this is directly out of the book and some is not. Some of it has been re-written so that it will work as a single piece. I won't say I like or dislike it, but I will say that where Freighter and Watchmen felt a bit rushed, this felt slow. That might work out well once the whole film is stitched together, but for the stand-alone it just doesn't work out very well. It's very nice to see more of the first wave of heroes who get limited screen time in the film (except for Comedian). The interviews are well constructed. There's also a bit of repetitious use of some sequences (I'm now sick of the Minutemen group photo), which could use more aggressive editing before it's added back.

So to wrap up: these are very faithful adaptations of the book. They capture what the book brought to bear, but without the main story they feel disembodied. I would recommend that anyone who isn't absolutely foaming at the mouth to see them wait for the special edition of the movie.

Notes from the behind the scenes extra:

• The showed the attack on Hollis being filmed, so I expect that to be either back in Watchmen for the DVD or in the deleted scenes.
• A nice point about Rorschach's first journal entry being a play on lines from Three Penny Opera (the origin of the Black Freighter story)
• They do seem to have filmed sequences to bridge between the main story and Freighter with the boy reading the comic at the newsstand.
• I don't know why, but showing the year that the interview is from in the lower right hand corner bothered me.