The teaser trailer for James Cameron's latest film Avatar debuted today and I was really impressed and look forward to seeing the film this December. Granted, I have been looking forward to this film ever since I read the treatment of the film that had been floating around the net for a few years now. I love the look of the alien planet, which is pretty much what I would expect an unexplored and untouched alien world to look like. I was a little surprised about the look of the Na'vi aliens although I do confess that I obviously have no real-life Na'vi to judge against in order to evaluate the CGI on that level. However, when looking at the responses to the teaser trailer, I was surprised at the number of comments that bashed the special effects by saying "it looks like a video game."
Whenever I see that line or something similar written about a special effects film, I get a little bit confused. On one hand, I know that statements like this are made by people like Roger Ebert as a backhanded insult to video games. On the other hand, shouldn't it be a badge of honor for a film's special effects to be compared to video games considering how much of the fantastical images we now see and take for granted in movies were pioneered first in video games?
While Square Soft was busy trying to tell mature stories and express a wide variety of complex emotions in their video games (and yes, even in the bomb that is Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within), Pixar was having fun making buddy comedy after buddy comedy. Audiences are celebrating the originality of District 9. Yet the alien weaponry and the entire climax of the film owes a great deal to first-person-shooters, Halo included, contributing to and developing the imagery and lore of alien weapons. If you know anything about the MASSIVE software used by Weta to create the battle scenes in The Lord of the Rings, it is obvious that the software is essentially a giant automatic video game that plays itself.
Of course, the height of video game influence on movies is without a doubt John Woo's two-part film Red Cliff, a retelling of one section of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms story. It is hard for anyone to watch this film and not see how directly Woo and his team were influenced by the look and style of the Dynasty Warriors games. In this case, not only do we have a film that is influenced by a video game, but we have a historical story from several thousand years ago whose telling has now been permanently altered through the influence of a video game.
In conclusion, all of these fantastical images in Avatar, The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, and other films that Hollywood pats itself on the back on were pretty much old news if you played video games. Video games have been providing people with the magical images and unbelievable sights far before any filmmaker successfully put it on the big screen. As such, I am both shocked, surprised, and confused when I hear "bad" special effects compared to a video game. Perhaps we ought to do the opposite from now on. Perhaps when us gamers see a game with horrible graphics, we ought to make fun of it by saying that it "looks like a movie." I don't expect Hollywood to stop looking down on video games any time soon. However, for now, I am going to change my mindset so that whenever I hear a film described as "looking like a video game," I'll smile and take it as a compliment. Filmmakers pride themselves on bringing magic to the masses and while they may have done it for over a decade, I say that video games have taken the crown in the recent years.
Red Cliff was a great film, you're definitely right about the Dynasty Warriors link, as soon as I realised I was looking at Cao Cao I couldn't get DW off my mind!
I'd say District 9 owes Halo more than any other space Marine shooter. They were actually planning on filming the Halo movie when that went under. So instead of packing up and going home they transformed there ideas into District 9.
I thought it was M. Night Shamalon(?) who was directing Avatar. Also, as a film dork, I must defend Pixar. "Buddy comedy after buddy comedy," you say? Final Fantasy being a mature movie? Pixar's movies have a surprising amount of emotional depth and they deal with various stages of life in a way that is suitable for children yet enjoyable for adults. Toy story is about growing up and having things change around you, while Up is about loss and grief. They may be disguised as buddy comedies, but they are in reality much more than that. I do admit I am biased towards film, but I know of many more movies than videogames that are able to tell interesting, mature stories. There are maybe a handful of games to do this, while there are hundreds of truly great films that manage to make a lasting emotional impact on people. I'm not saying that film is a better medium because there are more movies than games, movies are just more effective ways of telling stories. I'm not one of those "games are art" guys, as you can probably tell, but I do feel that games can be art, the same way that movies aren't always art. I'm rambling, aren't I? Ok, I'm done for now. You just had to insult Pixar, didn't you?
@Fyodor Douchetoevsky
"Avatar" is the James Cameron sci-fi film coming out this December that he has been talking about doing for over a decade now. In order to avoid confusion, the film version of "Avatar: The Last Airbender" directed by M. Night Shyamalan is titled simply "The Last Airbender."
With respect to Pixar, I will simply say that until Pixar brought in Brad Bird and allowed him to make "The Incredibles," I thought Pixar's films were merely "good." You will not hear me bad-mouthing movies such as "Ratatouille," "Wall-E" and "Up." Yes, "Ratatouille" and "Up" can be simplified as buddy comedies but I feel that these two transcended the genre far more than the "Toy Story" films did.
I understand that it is a personal taste issue but I just could not get over the fact that Pixar kept making cliche buddy film one after the other. I understand what you mean about the theme of growing up and having things change that is in "Toy Story" and is one of the best parts of the film. Unfortunately, I had seen that same movie done before: it was called "The Brave Little Toaster" and guess what? John Lasseter had a hand in that movie.
I have been an animation fan for a long time and I have to confess that it annoyed me that until "The Incredibles," Pixar just really wasn't taking the risks that people claimed they did. "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" is a terrible film but I at least respect that the filmmakers were trying to tell a mature story, something that CGI animation simply was not doing at the time. I know that I'll get shot for this, but considering that the biggest problems I had with "The Spirits Within" were the stuffing in of too many characters and plot points, silly plot and pacing, and poor character development, I'd argue that Square hasn't learned anything even in "Advent Children." I suppose in that regard, I am odd because I prefer to see a film that tries to strive for a lot and massively fails rather than a film that goes for very little and succeeds.
Ah, thanks for clearing up the Avatar mix up. I know Pixar's early films aren't that great, but they are more than just generic buddy comedies. Sigh, I could talk about the merits of Pixar movies all day, but I don't want to steal the comments section here.
@Tascar
I normally agree 100% with everything you say, but Toy Story 2 is the highest reviewed movie of all time on the aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes. I believe every single review gave it a 10/10: I'd be inclined to agree it's the best Pixar film.
Have you seen the documentary The Pixar Story, by the way? It's on Netflix's streaming service: I'd highly recommend it.
I'm hesitant to talk about Lasseter because his life's story is so sad. He idolized Disney, then when he finally got his chance, they fired his ass, nearly ruined his relationship with his wife, and now, they're crawling back, begging for his advice.
He fired a lot of the original animators for Bolt, and he's calling all the shots with The Princess and The Frog. The amount of power he has now is insane, but honestly, it was such a bumpy ride.
I think I need to clarify my view on Pixar with respect to this blog because in rereading my blog and also my own response to Fyodor Douchetoevsky, I think that I am making the wrong point.
Let me put it this way. What exactly makes "Toy Story 2" the movie that it is? The CGI? The voice acting? The music? The script? I would argue that if I had to pin down the most important factors that made "Toy Story 2" good, it would be the script and the voice acting as second. "Toy Story 2" is a good film but I do not think it is good because of what it did with CGI.
In contrast, "Wall-E" is almost completely dependent on CGI to create the characters in the film since there is no real dialogue to help with that process. In my mind, there is no doubt that "Wall-E" pushes the boundaries of CGI for creating strong, powerful characters completely through animation and motion. I cannot say the same for "Toy Story 2." This is not to say that "Toy Story 2" is a lesser movie. Who said that every film must pioneer?
It is for this reason though, that the CGI work in "Final Fantasy VIII" strikes me as pushing more boundaries because it does not have the luxury of dialogue or voice acting to create its characters. In addition, it is done with a fraction of the budget of a Pixar film for a video game system that has hardware limitations. So yeah, does "Toy Story 2" tell a better story than "Final Fantasy VIII?" Probably. Does "Toy Story 2" push the limits of CGI more than "Final Fantasy VIII?" I don't agree with that.
At least to me, it's always been pretty obvious why the television and movie industries look down on videogames that way. It's competition, plain and simple. The more time and money people devote to gaming, the less they'll be partaking of other forms of media. That's why any time a TV network reports on a new 'violent media = braindead children' study, the blame is never, ever on televised material.
Anyway, that's pretty tangential. Good blog, Tascar.
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about me
Once upon a time, back in the 8-bit and 16-bit era, I was a "hard-core" gamer. Since that time, a variety of factors ranging from money to college to real life significantly cut into my video game time. Nonetheless, I have always retained my love and interest in video games, although to a lesser extent.
At present, my video game time is generally monopolized by World of Warcraft. I play a troll mage named Moor (WoW Armory profile here) on the Nathrezim server where I am a raiding member of the guild Sleep.
Current-generation consoles I own include an XBox 360, a Ps3, a Wii, a Nintendo DS, a PsP, and a PC.
I am a huge fan of video game music. In fact, I confess that many of the games I own, such as the Halo games and Rygar: The Legendary Adventure are in my collection solely because I love their incredible musical scores. I have only been able to attend one VGM event, Video Game Live's New York concert on April 26, 2008 which was an amazing experience.
During middle school and high school, I was inspired to attempt music composition after hearing the reprise of Shadow's theme that appears in the ending of Final Fantasy VI by Nobuo Uematsu and "Angel's Fear" from Secret of Mana by Hiroki Kikuta, an attempt that quickly ended due to my lack of talent with little more to show than a crappy five-song musical. The highlight of my musical career as well as my journey through video game geekdom came during an impromptu musician meet-up at the Otakon anime convention in 2003 in which I had the honor of performing the violin solo in Yasunori Mitsuda's incredible "Scars of Time" from Chrono Cross.
I have been a lurker on Destructoid for some time. I am an especially huge fan of Destructoid's three excellent podcasts, which are not only the best video game podcasts I have heard but amongst my favorite podcasts of all time. I give much credit to these podcasts for bringing about a resurgence in my interest in video games and inspiring me to think more about video games. I also give them special credit for entertaining me during a series of hospitalizations in which the only thing I had for entertainment were these podcasts saved on my Zune.
I was particularly inspired by Podtoid and randombullseye and ended up composing the music to randombullseye's game Bonerquest, my first and last foray into video game composing as I quickly came to realize, as I did back in high school, that I lacked the training and talent for the art. Nonetheless, I am grateful to randombullseye for the opportunity to have contributed to a part of an actual finished product as opposed to the unfinished sketches that populate my desk and computer hard drive.
I love writing and I often find myself discussing and writing about video games on a variety of subjects and contexts. As a high school student, I had great difficulty writing long papers or long articles and so I began to force myself to write as much as possible. By the time I was in college, writing huge amounts of text for both school and school-unrelated purposes became not only easy but rather relaxing and unenjoyable. I therefore apologize in advance because I know that a great deal of my writing will probably be far far longer than what is probably necessary or appropriate. In the past, my writings on video games found themselves in a variety of places ranging from the WoW forums, a text file on my desktop, to my friends' Xanga and MySpace pages and for some time, I have thought about consolidating my video game writing at one place, which is why I am happy that I discovered Destructoid. The Destructoid staff and community have greatly influenced my thoughts on video games and opened my eyes to things that I never saw. I hope that many writing can give a fraction of that inspiration (or at the very least some entertainment) back to the Destructoid community.
Destructoid is an independently-run publication forged by our love of video games and the gaming community's need of accountable enthusiast press living the dream since March 16, 2006
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The people making those kinds of idiotic statements have never played Final Fantasy VIII, you can be assured of that.
Red Cliff was a great film, you're definitely right about the Dynasty Warriors link, as soon as I realised I was looking at Cao Cao I couldn't get DW off my mind!
I'd say District 9 owes Halo more than any other space Marine shooter. They were actually planning on filming the Halo movie when that went under. So instead of packing up and going home they transformed there ideas into District 9.
I thought it was M. Night Shamalon(?) who was directing Avatar. Also, as a film dork, I must defend Pixar. "Buddy comedy after buddy comedy," you say? Final Fantasy being a mature movie? Pixar's movies have a surprising amount of emotional depth and they deal with various stages of life in a way that is suitable for children yet enjoyable for adults. Toy story is about growing up and having things change around you, while Up is about loss and grief. They may be disguised as buddy comedies, but they are in reality much more than that. I do admit I am biased towards film, but I know of many more movies than videogames that are able to tell interesting, mature stories. There are maybe a handful of games to do this, while there are hundreds of truly great films that manage to make a lasting emotional impact on people. I'm not saying that film is a better medium because there are more movies than games, movies are just more effective ways of telling stories. I'm not one of those "games are art" guys, as you can probably tell, but I do feel that games can be art, the same way that movies aren't always art. I'm rambling, aren't I? Ok, I'm done for now. You just had to insult Pixar, didn't you?
@Fyodor Douchetoevsky
"Avatar" is the James Cameron sci-fi film coming out this December that he has been talking about doing for over a decade now. In order to avoid confusion, the film version of "Avatar: The Last Airbender" directed by M. Night Shyamalan is titled simply "The Last Airbender."
With respect to Pixar, I will simply say that until Pixar brought in Brad Bird and allowed him to make "The Incredibles," I thought Pixar's films were merely "good." You will not hear me bad-mouthing movies such as "Ratatouille," "Wall-E" and "Up." Yes, "Ratatouille" and "Up" can be simplified as buddy comedies but I feel that these two transcended the genre far more than the "Toy Story" films did.
I understand that it is a personal taste issue but I just could not get over the fact that Pixar kept making cliche buddy film one after the other. I understand what you mean about the theme of growing up and having things change that is in "Toy Story" and is one of the best parts of the film. Unfortunately, I had seen that same movie done before: it was called "The Brave Little Toaster" and guess what? John Lasseter had a hand in that movie.
I have been an animation fan for a long time and I have to confess that it annoyed me that until "The Incredibles," Pixar just really wasn't taking the risks that people claimed they did. "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" is a terrible film but I at least respect that the filmmakers were trying to tell a mature story, something that CGI animation simply was not doing at the time. I know that I'll get shot for this, but considering that the biggest problems I had with "The Spirits Within" were the stuffing in of too many characters and plot points, silly plot and pacing, and poor character development, I'd argue that Square hasn't learned anything even in "Advent Children." I suppose in that regard, I am odd because I prefer to see a film that tries to strive for a lot and massively fails rather than a film that goes for very little and succeeds.
Ah, thanks for clearing up the Avatar mix up. I know Pixar's early films aren't that great, but they are more than just generic buddy comedies. Sigh, I could talk about the merits of Pixar movies all day, but I don't want to steal the comments section here.
@Tascar
I normally agree 100% with everything you say, but Toy Story 2 is the highest reviewed movie of all time on the aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes. I believe every single review gave it a 10/10: I'd be inclined to agree it's the best Pixar film.
Have you seen the documentary The Pixar Story, by the way? It's on Netflix's streaming service: I'd highly recommend it.
I'm hesitant to talk about Lasseter because his life's story is so sad. He idolized Disney, then when he finally got his chance, they fired his ass, nearly ruined his relationship with his wife, and now, they're crawling back, begging for his advice.
He fired a lot of the original animators for Bolt, and he's calling all the shots with The Princess and The Frog. The amount of power he has now is insane, but honestly, it was such a bumpy ride.
I think I need to clarify my view on Pixar with respect to this blog because in rereading my blog and also my own response to Fyodor Douchetoevsky, I think that I am making the wrong point.
Let me put it this way. What exactly makes "Toy Story 2" the movie that it is? The CGI? The voice acting? The music? The script? I would argue that if I had to pin down the most important factors that made "Toy Story 2" good, it would be the script and the voice acting as second. "Toy Story 2" is a good film but I do not think it is good because of what it did with CGI.
In contrast, "Wall-E" is almost completely dependent on CGI to create the characters in the film since there is no real dialogue to help with that process. In my mind, there is no doubt that "Wall-E" pushes the boundaries of CGI for creating strong, powerful characters completely through animation and motion. I cannot say the same for "Toy Story 2." This is not to say that "Toy Story 2" is a lesser movie. Who said that every film must pioneer?
It is for this reason though, that the CGI work in "Final Fantasy VIII" strikes me as pushing more boundaries because it does not have the luxury of dialogue or voice acting to create its characters. In addition, it is done with a fraction of the budget of a Pixar film for a video game system that has hardware limitations. So yeah, does "Toy Story 2" tell a better story than "Final Fantasy VIII?" Probably. Does "Toy Story 2" push the limits of CGI more than "Final Fantasy VIII?" I don't agree with that.
At least to me, it's always been pretty obvious why the television and movie industries look down on videogames that way. It's competition, plain and simple. The more time and money people devote to gaming, the less they'll be partaking of other forms of media. That's why any time a TV network reports on a new 'violent media = braindead children' study, the blame is never, ever on televised material.
Anyway, that's pretty tangential. Good blog, Tascar.