Avatar: The Movie: A Game?

There's some debate on my forums about various movie reviews like
this one that call Avatar "like a video game."
The problem some of my forum members have is when movie reviewers
call something "like a video game" and have no idea what they are
talking about. Take this quote:

You’ll feel like you just mastered the greatest video game ever
conceived in an amazing three-hour setting. You’ll change your life, get
the girl and save the world, yet all you had to do was sit back and
enjoy the fly.

You actually won't feel like you've mastered anything because a movie
is a form of passive entertainment and mastering something, especially
something fundamentally interactive, is an active process. So what the
heck is that even supposed to mean?
The thing is, Avatar really is like a game, it's just only certain
people can really credibly say that. It's kind of like how I can't
really say the N-word. If I say it (or even if I write this paragraph?),
it would be really offensive. If a black person says it though, they
say it with a kind of knowledge and experience that I can't have.
Incidentally, I saw a news report yesterday where a woman described a
Nigerian terrorist's appearance as "African American." Wow. Political
correctness gone so awry that it ends up describing a terrorist who
hates America as "American" just because we have no acceptable way to
say "black" anymore.
Back to our story. At the very least, I will claim that somewhere in
the world, you can call something "like a video game." I mean a thing
that isn't a video game...isn't a video game. We know that. But a thing
can really be "like" a video game. It can share some essential quality
or remind us of a video game. In what way is the movie Avatar "like a
video game" then?
It takes place in a fantasy world. The world uses hyper-saturated,
vibrant colors. More importantly, it's a world with *jumping*. Lots of
it. Running, jumping, climbing, and swinging through trees. It's a world
where the ground lights up under your feet as you take a step. A world
where touching a plant lights it up or makes it change its size. A world
where you can ride an array of fantastic beasts--both ground and flying
versions. In short, it's a world of INTERACTION.
Now, you could be a jerk and claim that everything has interaction.
The world of, say, Law & Order (a cop / lawyer show) has
"interaction." The cops fire bullets, the lawyers open doors, etc. But
seriously, don't be a jerk about it. The world of Avatar has an extreme
level of interaction (between the world itself and the inhabitants of
the world) that's just uncommon. I fully understand that there is no
more interaction between the screen and the audience than any other
movie. I'm not saying *that* type of interaction is going on. What I am
saying is that if you held a mirror up to "interaction" you'd see
something like Avatar in the reflection. What you wouldn't experience is
"feeling you've mastered the greatest video game ever made." That's
kind of ridiculous. Nonetheless, I think it's still fair to call Avatar
"like a video game."
But here's the boring part: so what? I don't mean the comparison as a
compliment. I don't mean it as an insult. I simply mean it as
description. (Incidentally, many movie reviewers seem to assume a game
is automatically some terrible thing and they use the comparison as an
insult.) Anyway, we've now described a facet of the movie. We've
described that it depicts a world that's highly interactive. Pretty
boring (yet true) statement, if you ask me.
It would be more interesting to discuss the story, that it casts
humans as the bad guys, just like in the movie District 9. In both
cases, the ignorant humans have no regard for the "others" and are happy
to destroy what's sacred to the others without a thought, to slaughter
them without a thought, and so on. A member of my forums named WaterD
famously said, "The humanity is sad," and I applaud movies like these
that try to drive that point home so that maybe "the humanity" can be a
bit less sad going forward. Maybe occupying foreign countries is bad.
Maybe huge military budgets aren't the greatest idea, in light of the
healthcare shortcomings our main character faces. In his world, they can
afford outrageous expeditions to conquer foreign lands, but they can't
afford to fix his legs, even though they have the technology. The
humanity is sad.
Anyway, it's "like a game." And that's not the point.











http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2010/1/4/avatar-the-movie-a-game.html