On CHUD, Devin Faraci continues his seemingly endless attack on James Cameron’s Avatar. In recent days, he’s honed his argument to an assault on the design of the aliens in the film, called the Na’vi.
Today he starts with a comment from HitFix:
I’m convinced that there is only one aesthetic choice that fanboys like, and that’s grim and dark and dirty and gritty. Anything else confuses and upsets them. You want a fanboy hit? Just rip off “Blade Runner” for the 8,000th time. They’ll go nuts for it. Whatever you do, don’t use any primary colors and don’t set anything in the daylight and don’t try to tell optimistic stories or include anything that remotely smells of whimsy. Everything has to be dark and depressing… right? Because that’s what I want… a film culture where we only allow one particular flavor of SF to survive. Dystopia or bust, eh, boys?
And this is how Faraci responds:
I don’t disagree with Drew; I’ve been banging the ‘enough with the grim ‘n gritty’ drum for a while now. But I think he’s wrong here. People don’t like the Na’vi design because it’s bad. There’s something inherently juvenile in giant blue cat people, and I don’t get the impression that Cameron is making a juvenile picture. All ages, maybe. Juvenile, no. But to me blue cat people are one step removed from My Little Pony; they don’t need to have blades coming out of all their joints or be wearing spiked armor, but do they have to look so silly? That flat, wide face and the goofy, cartoon Native American hair and the yellow doll’s eyes all add up to a character design that immediately turns me off. They look a little too much like the furry porn drawings I’ve seen out on the internet.
So I guess we now know how Faraci spends his spare time: Looking at furry porn.
But, seriously, Faraci didn’t really confront any of HitFix’s points. And most of his ideas fall into the range of their argument. All the words he uses have the classic fanboy anti-dark tinge, e.g. “cartoony,” “goofy,” and “my little pony.”
And he continues the fanboy stance with this idiotic statement:
I’m not some sort of creature designer, and I don’t think that the Na’vi have to look like 20 foot tall crocodile men to be cool. I just think that 8 foot tall blue cat people also aren’t cool.
So creature designs must meet Faraci’s version of “cool” or they aren’t worth looking at. It seems Faraci is really grasping at straws here.
And, at this point, we must remind our readers that much of these attacks are the result of some (probably one-sided) feud Faraci has with Fox which he has decided to take out on Avatar. By anyone’s definition that doesn’t seem too “cool.”
The Internet is a place where over-the-top negativity gets more attention than it deserves. And that’s likely another reason for Faraci’s silliness. But we really think Faraci is dragging his otherwise excellent site through the mud with these nonstop attacks.
For more on Faraci’s attacks look here, here and here.
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