I stared at my computer screen. Damn it, I’m drawing a blank. I’m supposed to write an essay on a film I had seen as homework for Mrs. Tay, our film class lecturer. So far, I’ve spent more time bypassing the parental locks my father had placed just so I could jack off to porn.
Don’t give me that look. You were eighteen once, too. Oh, right. You were from the era before the Internet and free porn. So how did you old-timers go about it? Wait, wait, I think I need to focus on this essay first but we’ll talk later, yeah?
I sighed and looked at the alphabet book peeking out from its bag where it lay on the floor near my left foot. My mother had asked me to get one for my younger brother on the way back from class. Hmmm. I took the book out as an idea struck me. I closed my eyes, flipped the book to a random page and opened my eyes. I rolled my eyes at the page displayed.
“A for Apple” it said, and there is a picture of a red apple next to the sentence. Alright, A it is then.
What recent movie starts with “A?” I wondered aloud. D’uh, I rolled my eyes, remembering the conversation I had with my classmate Marwan. He had just seen Avatar and couldn’t stop gushing about it.
Okay. I don’t get Avatar. I mean, I get the fact that it’s wonderfully made using the latest technological advances in filmography. And it was directed by James Cameron—the very person who was responsible for one of my favourite movies, Aliens. And me nursing a crush on a young Sigourney Weaver for the longest time after I saw it.
But more on that later. If and when I feel foolhardy enough to owning up to the fantasy involving Ms. Weaver in fishnets, a pulse rifle and a zippered mask.
After twenty minutes of staring at the screen, I’m still at a loss. Alright, I’ll just wing it then. I placed my hands on the keyboard and started typing:
On one level, Avatar as a story was engaging enough. On another, it’s obviously a tent-pole film made to gouge the willing masses out of their money using their wokeness and collective white guilt. The protagonist Jake Sully was an underdog/untested/embittered man out to prove himself on his last chance, fish-out-of-water/innocent abroad (I’m using the term innocent loosely, as in clueless) situation. There is also the matter of the suspicious natives—obviously doubling as the minority du jour. And when you have two different races—or species, as it were—you have to shovel in inter-cultural (inter-planetary?) romance. Talk about literally star-crossed. Followed of course, by a redemption and self-acceptance arc. And don’t forget the pre-requisite computer-generated graphics.
Sounds familiar? It should be.
It’s the same formula used by several well-known movies. I'll illustrate two as examples:
1. Dances with Wolves: An American soldier befriends a tribe of Native Americans. He impressed them by locating a migrating herd of buffaloes and being accepted by their tribe after saving one Native American brave from being gored to death by a rampaging bull. The American soldier befriends the rest of the natives, and makes with one his BFF. Soldier falls in love with the natives’ culture—among other things. Circumstances ripped away the soldier from his adopted home and he was mistreated by his ‘original’ people and branded a traitor. And somewhere in there there’s a wolf, a horse and a journal as plot points.
2. The Last Samurai: An American soldier goes to Japan. The American soldier was captured by a samurai faction. The soldier found peace—among other things in Japanese culture. He makes BFF with Japanese people. He was betrayed by his people (read: white). He helped Japanese in their fight against Americans. If there is no other blatantly obvious dig at corporate imperialism, I’ll eat my shirt. Throw in some katana, seppuku and a Hallmark-like slogan in the end to close the movie.
There. Same difference, innit?
You can actually make a game out of it. Take all three movies and their plot points. Throw them in a bucket, along with a couple of other plot points from several random film selections. Give a good shake and see what comes up. For this thought exercise I’m using Private Benjamin and Brokeback Mountain as my random selections.
Maybe it’ll be something like the following results:
1. Dances with Samurais: A twenty-fifth century Manhattan debutante enlists in the army. For her first mission, she was sent on a reconnaissance expedition to a remote planetoid inhabited by burly, Sino-looking humanoids with a penchant for ritualistic suicides. Her spaceship crash-landed and she adopted a horse (or an equine-like facsimile or some such) as her mode of transport and fashioned an outfit out of chain links and other metals from her spaceship to compensate for her damaged army fatigues. Private Barbara Ella Van Hauten is now known as … Barbarella!
Did I mention she’s wearing a steel bikini? Just checking. And in my humble opinion Barbarella is due for a remake.
2. The Last Avatar: Embittered, invalid soldier volunteered as a human guinea pig on a mission to space. He brought along his pet wolf and a camcorder. He also fell in love with the natives—despite their scandalous tendencies towards plug-and-play sexual intercours using built-in USB ports and lots of cables grown from their hair. Don't ask me what goes where! Disaster occurred when he realized he forgot to renew his Norton Antivirus subscription and was single-handedly responsible for decimating the native populace when they decided to access his infected porn collection.
Sexually transmitted infections have never looked more digitized. Those afflicted lose the smooth contours of their perfectly modelled computer-graphic generated limbs—they now sport ugly polygonal, pixelated protuberances.
The cure? Amputation with a katana.
3. Pandora’s Diary: With voiceovers to evoke the atmosphere of intimacy and immediacy, this quasi-artistic independent film chronicles the trials of one illegal blue-skinned female alien who longed to be one with the world. After countless meaningless one-night-stands and failed affairs she has to come to terms with her own sexual proclivities involving Rapunzel-like proportions of hair extensions and exotic wildlife, the death of her pet pterodactyl and the destruction of her home planet.
Countless montages include her gazing forlornly out her shabby genteel Greenwich Village apartment and arguments between her current lover and her jealous ex—while blissfully oblivious to the growing attraction between the two.
Other subplots include her half-hearted attempts in searching of the American soldier with whom she had a torrid fling and her morbid, borderline phallic-symbol-worshipping-fascination with his family heirloom: a katana he had left behind before his disappearance.
Jokes aside, don’t get me wrong. I actually enjoyed the movie. But I’m not going to rhapsodize over floating mountains or contemplate opening a vein because our humdrum drudge of a reality couldn’t compare to that we see available on Pandora. And I definitely won’t try to grow my hair long and braid it onto to my cat!
Fine, so Dances With Wolves didn’t have a toruk makto and The Last Samurai didn’t liberate Japan from grubby, grasping, imperialistic industrialists. Unfortunately, both don’t have floating mountains and ten-feet tall humanoids who want to get it on with you by braiding their hair to yours.
I’m sorry about the last sentence, but that’s as delicate as I can get. This document might fall in the hands of children, you understand.
And I’m pretty certain Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe didn’t engage in weird-ass kinky sex involving hair-tentacle-cum-plug-and-play bonding—unless there’s a gay spoof of The Last Samurai out there I missed that heavily features docking. Eww …
I hit “Save” and reread what I had typed, cackling at choice parts of the essay. Oh, Mrs. Tay is going to have conniptions when she reads this next week. I clicked “Print” and whistled to myself as the pages emerged onto the printer tray.
I wonder if Marwan might be up for making an indie film?