Dear Darth...

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]
To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]
First email!

Dear Darth,
Glad you finally got yourself an email address. I’ve had one a while now, and I’ve found it really handy. You should too, especially with the trouble you have on the phone. No offence, but all that wheezing can be hard to work through, so this should really help.
So, how are things? I’m glad you’re keeping busy; I put you on the battle station project because I think you needed a focus after the whole thing with that girl. I know she was your ‘One True Love’, but you really should try to move on. It’s been a while now; perhaps it’s time to start dating again? Don’t let being half-machine put you off; lots of people live full and happy lives without most of their extremities.

Now, I hate to bring this up, but my personal cybernetic surgery took quite the beating after we worked on you. I know you were pretty upset when I told you about Padame(?), but it’s really no excuse to throw a Force-tantrum on my robo-doctor gear. That stuff's pretty expensive, so if you don't mind I'd really appreciate a cheque. Thanks.

Sincerely yours,
P


From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]
To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]
Re:First Email!

Darth, I'm sorry we couldn't get you a quieter mask, but you might remember you were rolling around in molten lava there when we found you. I realise breathing through a radiator grill sucks (ha ha), but everyone at the last quarterly meeting was a bit put off when you kept clearing your sinuses like that every time it was your turn to speak (don't deny it, I know it was on purpose). Those interstellar phone hookups are expensive, and I don’t like spending a million credits per minute to listen to a noise like a bantha sucking runny custard through its trunk. I know it’s not perfect, but I think my guys did a pretty good job bringing you back from the brink of death, so you're welcome.

Yours,
P

PS one more thing. The battle station is looking good (I love what you've done with the tractor beam control stations: a thousand foot drop and no guardrails! Brilliant!), but I'm not sure we need a gun so big we can blow up planets. I know I'm a pitiless despotic monster but...yeah, blowing up planets. Not cool. Can we just back it off a notch? Maybe make it so it'll fry a continent but leave it intact? Be nice if we could drop in a mall and a condo for the stormtroopers once the dust settles.

PPS Is that an exhaust port I saw on the blueprint? You're going to stick a lid on that thing, right? Don't want anyone falling in ha ha

PPPS Send me a copy of the plans once you’ve made the changes. I’ve attached details of my preferred couriers. Great little Bothan company, very reliable.

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]

To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]

Re: Battle Station Launch

Dear Darth,

Well done! Pass on my congratulations to the crew. You should put on a celebration for everyone. Don’t let things get out of hand though; the last thing we need is a battle station full of drunk stormtroopers out looking for some action ha ha.

Also, we still need a name for the thing. I value your input, but I don't think "Death Ball" is really all that terrifying. "Evil Star" is quite good, but my PR office is telling me it'll cost me a few billion votes at the next sham election. Maybe we could combine them? What about "Evil Ball?"

Just one other thing while I think of it. This probably won't come up again, but should any hothead Jedis try to bring a violent end to my reign in future, feel free to step in straight away. I really appreciate you cutting off Windu's arms that day, don't get me wrong, but if you'd stepped up a little sooner I might not have ended up with a face like Yoda's scrotum (and yes, I do know what that looks like. You'd think someone who jumps around that much when he fights would wear something under those baggy hippie pants, but nooo). I was at the Imperial masquerade Ball last week (pun intended), and I got chatting with a very attractive little twi'lek ambassador. Really, you should have seen her: green skin, cleavage like Beggar's Canyon, just gorgeous. I know some people are put off by those head-tentacle things flailing about when they get their groove on, but I rather like that. Anyway, things were going great, we were really getting on, I was even thinking I might invite her back afterwards to check out the Imperial Tower ha ha. But when we unmasked at midnight, she took one look at me and suddenly there’s a diplomatic emergency she needs to attend to!
Anyway, yeah. Not blaming you for it, but a little quicker on the draw next time?

P

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]

To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]

URGENT: Couriers

I almost forgot. Seems my ‘preferred courier company’ are a little more sympathetic to the rebels than I’d like. Many Bothans are about to have a very bad day if you know what I mean.

You haven’t sent those plans yet, have you…?

P

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]

To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]

Re: Urgent:Couriers

Right. Best we keep this between ourselves for now. See if you can’t find them yourself.

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]

To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]

Re: Re: Urgent: Couriers

Well…alright, yes. You can take a Star Destroyer.

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]

To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]

Missing plans

Any luck?

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]

To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]

Re: A couple of leads

Tattooine again? What is it with that place? Sure, follow them, do whatever it takes. If they get a look at those plans they might find a weakness we missed. Lucky I spotted that exhaust port when I did.

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]

To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]

Alderaan

Really? What are you doing there? Never mind; while you’re there, pick me up some of those nice fruit jellies they make. My secretary loves those and for the life of me I can’t think what else to get for her birthday.

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]

To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]

Re: Alderaan

I cannot believe this. Check your emails, I told you to get rid of that thing! What am I going to get my secretary now? And no, I don’t care how “cool” it looked, I’m not going to be much of an emperor if you blow up my subjects a billion at a time! And don’t go telling me it was Tarkin’s idea; the guy’s, what, five foot three? You’ve Force-choked your way through half my officer corps, you couldn’t give him a little Sithly persuasion too?

Please tell me this had nothing to do with a girl.

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]

To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]

Re: Leia Organa

Goddamit Darth. I don’t care if she looks a bit like your last girlfriend, oh that’s right your ONLY girlfriend. You’re old enough to be her father! Seriously, it’s just creepy. And what made you think she'd be impressed if you blew up her home planet? No wonder you're still flying solo. Now throw her in that cell block next to the garbage compactor, slap a termination order on her and find those plans!

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]

To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]

Re: Millennium Falcon

Well, I guess those tractor beams just paid for themselves. Good work. And Obi Wan was there! He must be, what, a hundred and fifty by now? Can’t imagine he had much fight left in him. Now, if we can just find Yoda, that should wrap the whole Jedi thing up nicely. Unless you’ve got any kids you don’t know about ha ha.

And yes, whatever planet the rebels turn out to be on, you can use the giant laser on it. But then you get rid of that thing! Or people might start thinking you’re compensating for something…

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]

To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]

Re:Yavin?

Hi Darth. No, never heard of it. Just blow it up.

 P

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]

To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]

Re: Re: Yavin

I do NOT believe this. How did they get past the turbo lasers? How did they get past the fighters? WHY DIDN’T YOU USE THE TRACTOR BEAMS ON THEM? And how did they do it? That thing was perfect, I checked it myself! Other than that exhaust port, the thing was impregnable! And you fixed that weeks ago!

From: Palpatine, Emperor: [good2bking@tyranny.gov]

To: Vader, Darth [Sithd00d@tyranny.gov]

Re: Exhaust port

Goddamit Darth. Goddamit.

Avatar Sucks

"Have you seen Avatar yet?"


Not "have you seen Avatar." Not "Are you going to see Avatar." But "have you seen it Yet." My movie buddy talked as if seeing it had all the inevitability of another Rocky sequel. He's a chap who thinks Adam Sandler's 'Click' is a thought-provoking insight into the human condition though, so I guess I shouldn't put too much weight on that.


Avatar had a huge weight of expectation on it. Most expensive movie in history, most CGI, most blue characters since the Smurf movie; these things raise anticipation to levels not seen since Paris Hilton burst onto the movie scene. But Avatar delivered. The queues stretched past the pimply usher texting on his iPhone, engulfed the people buying fairly-priced popcorn and healthy beverages at the candy bar, swamped the knot of three people waiting to see Jack Black's Year One and generally made everyone else feel like less of a person if they hadn't seen it yet. AVATAR! You gotta see this thing man, the dude is, like, eight foot tall! And he's blue! And it cost, like, five hundred million bucks so it must be awesooome!



It sucked.


You probably gleaned my stance from the title, but I need to say it again: Avatar sucks. You can paint the characters any colour, you can put them in a luminescent forest, you can show dragons duelling helicopters in an alien sky, but unless you can make people care about the outcome of the battle, then your movie is just a demonstration of your CGI skill.

How did it suck? Let me count the ways...


-Unobtanium. Yeah, don't even bother coming up with a clever/credible MacGuffin, just call that spade a spade so you can spend more time on the effects



Stupid coincidences. An entire planet to mine, and the only viable deposit of unobtanium is right underneath the aliens' Magic Faraway Tree. Spare me.


-Hey! It's just Dances With Wolves In Space! We all know it. Cameron admitted it himself. And there's nothing wrong with that. Sure, there are only seven basic plots in all storytelling (which is Avatar?), but so long as you tell your story in an interesting way, it's still a worthwhile exercise. Unfortunately in this case, well...


-The climactic fist-fight. EVERY big budget action movie seems to end this way: villain and hero duking it out in a microcosm of the film's main conflict. This was one of the most contrived fights yet: the evil general climbing into a combat walker, surviving a hundreds-of-metres plummet from a burning ship and crashing to the ground a few metres from both the avatar hero and his unconscious human body. See 'Stupid coincidences'.


-Forgettable dialogue. Some movie quotes are so deep in our culture that a lot of people don't even know where they came from anymore. Case in point: the only line I can remember from Avatar is the evil general bellowing "You are not in Kansas anymore!" And Wizard of Oz is two hundred and six years old in the time Avatar is set. The lead character's dialogue rarely stretches beyond "Hey!," Whua?", "Whoa!" and "How you doin'?". Oh, and the mawkish "I see you." As if you could fail to see someone in a forest where the fricken' ground lights up when you step on it (bet that makes hunting at night tricky). The heroes are so busy being tall, blue and self-righteous that they had no time for anything more than twentieth-century urban patois and mawkish conservationist platitudes ("This world is alive!")



Painfully contrived action scenes. There are plenty of these, but the deal-breaker is the final confrontation between man and alien. When they decide to blow up the alien spirit-tree or whatever that thing was, why does the SPACEGOING shuttle craft approach the site in atmosphere at a nice, slow dragon-vulnerable speed? Why not nuke it from orbit, lob missiles, use artillery; in short, do anything other than take on the aliens at their own game? Regardless of how cool the resultant battle might have looked, there was no reason whatsoever for the humans to fight it.


Unoriginal characters. They're not necessarily bad things. They let us codify secondary characters and focus on the main play. But when EVERY character is a straight rip from other movies, you have issues. The Na'vi tribal leader was played by Wes Studi, Hollywood's go-to guy for dignified native american roles (oh look, he was in 'Dances'). The strapping warrior Na'vi seemed to fall between two posts: his accent and manner fluctuated between Kunta Kinte and Wind-in-his-hair. The young Na'vi who first meets the hero just had to be the daughter of the chief and the priestess: she's feisty, attractive (handy that the aliens were good and breasty, to really nail that 15-24 male geek demographic) and makes it clear that he'll have to work hard to win her over. The corporation's representative was basically Carter Burke from Aliens, with all the interesting self-serving connivery cut out. All of them plod tiredly through the same old noble-natives-versus-corporate-greed routine we've seen so many times before, simply filling the empty space between CGI battles. The only character I cared about even briefly was the helicopter pilot who chose to fight with the good guys. She was the only one not on railroad tracks, who made her own decisions according to her conscience. Tragically, she was Vasquez from Aliens, right down to the sweaty man-singlet.



Transparent plot hooks. The moment the chief's daughter tells the hero that the giant scary dragon-thing is nigh-impossible to ride, and that the last person to do it "brought the clans together in a time of great sorrow," there is NO question as to whether the hero will ride it. His entrance on the beast loses all dramatic impact because you know it's going to happen (thank you, go away, hurry up and get to the climactic fist-fight with the evil general please). And using a paraplegic as the main character? From the moment he first runs in the avatar body ("This is great!") you know there's no chance that the closing scene would see him back in his human body because hey, this is America, and cripples can't be heroes, right? And just in case there might have been any doubt, they dispel it by trying and failing to move Sigourney Weaver's "soul" into her alien body. Hurray, there's hope for the hero yet!



That awful, awful romantic subplot. It's not a blockbuster without the lead male falling for the feisty yet vulnerable (and inevitably hot) female support character. And sure, love conquers all, but why, WHY does she fall for the guy she knows is an alien in a vat-grown body? ("You see? It is a demon in a false body!") The instant she bounds onto the screen, all flowing hair and jiggling furry boobs, there's no question that the hero will end up, um, completing his primary mission with her. At least in Titanic, Cameron was good enough to kill off DiCaprio afterwards.

Comparisons with Star Wars. Okay, if you even momentarily thought this was as ground-breaking as George Lucas' 1977 space epic, you hand in your nerd card, right now. Sure, Star Wars looks cliche now, but that's because so many films have followed where it led. Galactica, Buck Rogers, Battle Beyond the Stars, Star Crash (for the most blatant example, try The Hoff With Lightsabre!): all of them cashed in on Star Wars' success. Yes, a big part of that was the special effects (which blew the budget out to a whopping ELEVEN MILLION BUCKS), and yes, the plot was almost a straight rip of Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress (watch the opening scene: you'll see where Lucas got his Star Destroyer entrance from). But the characters were real people, even when they weren't; you cared what happened to them. And thirty years later, despite three godawful prequel films, Star Wars is still held dear by millions. Even Ewoks couldn't change that. And what has Avatar brought to our culture?

Avatar porn.

That's pretty much it. There won't be a sequel, there won't be a sendup, there won't be re-enactment societies or cartoons or anything else, because if you take away the big cinema screen, there's nothing left of Avatar but a vague memory of a ten-foot-tall blue chick.
Look, if you liked it, that's great. But let's not pretend it was anything more than a CGI demonstration. Sure, wow us with colours and effects and awesome battles, but make us think, make us care, and please, PLEASE make us wonder how this thing is going to turn out.
It's our own fault of course. Every time I criticise Avatar, people tell me I should just turn my brain off and enjoy it. Huh? I LIKE listening to my brain. It tells me cool stuff like "Don't go out yet, you need pants," and "Kerosene may LOOK like Kool-Aid, buuut..." That's the issue here: If we keep paying to see films that don't engage us intellectually and emotionally, we'll just get more of the same. But if we save our hard-earned for the Hurt Lockers, the Inceptions, the countless other stories that are more memorable than the taste of the popcorn we ate watching them, then we'll get better films, we'll get films that fire our imaginations and inspire us long after the credits roll. I walked out of Star Wars wanting to be an X-Wing pilot. I walked out of Avatar wanting to punch James Cameron in the nose. An emotional reaction, sure, but probably not the one he intended. He had a chance to wrap the incredible technology and stunning effects around a believable, engaging story. Cameron could have followed up on his remarkable effort with Terminator and Aliens (no, not Titanic: even a giant boat can't make yet another Uptown Girl romance tale interesting). Instead, he went with the blandest, most cookie-cutter plot he could devise, to ensure nobody was distracted from the pretty colours. In this he was entirely successful.
If you don't believe me, try this: how many characters can you name from the movie? Do you remember the hero's name? The villainous general? Any of the Na'vi? Tragically, the only thing that stays with us from this movie is the hype, and a pair of ugly 3D glasses.

Of course, it's not the first time special effects were put before plot. Remember Independence Day?


Nah, neither do I.

UPDATE: Avatar sequel!
As if there wouldn't be a follow-up to a (financial) triumph like Avatar. A failure on my part to think otherwise, or to spend five minutes Googling . Apparently they're taking it underwater; maybe next an Ice Planet? Or possibly just the latest instalment in Cameron's numerous watery sojourns.