HardSF.net

posted by admin on Aug 21

The movie Avatar is one of the biggest grossing movies to date and with good reason. Academy Award winner James Cameron’s genius was displayed once again with this epic tale of love in a new world of Pandora. Just when you thought that Titanic was never to be topped James Cameron took a fictional idea and made it into a new way of film making. Are we really surprised that the person to break the top grossing movie Titanic was the same person? It seems that in this case lighting stuck in the same place twice and we are glad it did! Taking us movie goers to a new world and a new way of life is never easy especially when there are so many movies that have come before Avatar. Even though many have tried to make similar stories of a world of utopia none have captured an audience so much that it changed how we look at movies as a whole. Beaming with colors and graphics that our eyes have never seen before, this visually stimulating film was not only equipped with a excellent story line but also a great message of hope, love and good hearted nature.

Avatar is a story of an ex marine who is paraplegic and is offered a chance to go to a far away land called Pandora where humans do not exist. This was a job that his deceased brother was originally supposed to fulfill but he now was given to finish. When he gets to this new planet he learns very quickly that he is now battling humankind as a Na’vi with the race that he has now become a part of. He was transformed into a ten foot tall, blue skinned tribe native who was sent to help save the sacred world that the military on earth is trying to destroy. In this world humans were transformed into half alien and half human bodies called Avatars. Since Jake Sully’s, played by Sam Worthington, brother had an Avatar already made for him before his death Jake Sully was able to take over his Avatar by having the same DNA code. Sigourney Weaver plays Grace Augustine who is the head of the scientific team that goes to Pandora to help ward off the evil in this world of hostile forces. After Jake gets separated from his team battling these evil creatures he is saved by the princess of Na’vi, Neytiri who is played by the beautiful Zoe Saldana.

After Neytiri brings Jake to her tribe they fall in love and Jake becomes fond of the world of Pandora and begins to feel like he belongs on this planet. With a lot of twist and turns and ups and downs there is an ending of intense love and belonging. The high action and emotional 2 hour and 40 minute movie takes you on a wild ride of fantasy and suspense that you can only experience while watching this 3D graphics film. Movies like Avatar come once in a lifetime and I think we can all agree that we are glad that we were able to experience the pure genius and underlining message of loving souls in our lifetime. In a world where most people judge by sight and fear, the unfamiliar area this film shows is that love can exist in any world if your heart will be open to allow it.

posted by EusebioEsquival on Apr 17

When I was younger I had a mental list of a lot of hard sci fi, but I’ve forgotten. I mean

one always does see a hint of good sci fi in a lot of movies, series and books, but to find

one that is consistently “true to science is difficult”. The SciFi books by Greg Egan seem

to be pretty good, I also have always liked the idea, of realistic video games i.e.,

fantasy that could be true with finite character life times realistic health (with cheats of course ) etc.

Another issue with the concept of Hard sciFi is that: do we mean cerebral sci fi or not. After all save the

magic part, Conan could be considered “Hard” in the sense that its not unrealistic that a person walks

around in bear skins with a sword (It has happened!) , but this subject matter is not technical or cerebral.

An issue, especially in cinema, of very technical Hard sci Fi is that it becomes boring. I .e., the amount of

time that it would take to explain any of the difficult science concepts with any type of fidelity would bore

most of the audience and take away fron the “Movie experience”. You make your judgement, but Solaris the remake

and the 2001 series comes to mind.

The above effects are much less noticeable in the book format which lends itself better to “Harder” SciFi.

Reagardless, I’d like to begin to classify some of the movie/book hasd SciFi elements as follows:

Weapons

Espionage/ Security Equipment

Communications

Medical Technology

Vehicle, Space Travel engineering and concept technology (e.g., solar sails)

Living Necessities, Comfort Technology.

Social Engineering and Structure

Genetic Engineering

As we all know basically every fiction is about the human element, human concepts and human lessons.

Whether we weave in an Armani suit spewing threats and profanities or a spacesuit and some science

concepts into the story is what makes the difference between a mob story and a Science Fiction story.

Now there is one interesting theme i’d like to discuss, and that is that an elaborate but well developed

scince\moral\wisdom concept, can be placed in the story globally or locally, for example in a short

part of the story one can explain how a machine or technology works, or for say a social concept, one

can introduce different pieces of a structure whose funcion becomes evident only after seeing the whole

story. Clearly the former is better for those with short attention span while the latter is in a different category

for a more “inmmersed audience”.

Anyways, if you have such a list, please contribute! Thanks!