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 ointless. That's how I feel after finally finishing a
First Person Shooter (FPS) game. It doesn't matter if the FPS was a good game, a
bad game, or if it was too hard, too easy, or somewhere in-between. At the end,
when the credits roll, and I shut down the game, I feel as if I've achieved
nothing and have learned nothing. In a word: pointless.
The plot: Avalon is the name of a virtual reality game
that, in the near future, provides the only escape for a large number of people
to ignore the "real world." The real world is drab, colorless, and
besides the fact that nothing interesting ever happens, it is a dead world in
most respects. It's not a happy place, and the people have all resigned to this
fact. Avalon provides a release from reality, but unfortunately the game is
addictive, and people have been known to get lost within it.
Ash (Malgorzata
Foremniak) is one of the game's best players. While her real life is solitary
and unfulfilling, Ash is a fearless and invincible warrior within the computer
construct of Avalon, which is a virtual reality version of a FPS game. One day,
Ash encounters Bishop, another player, who offers her a chance to enter a new
level called "Special Class A" where an old friend of Ash, Murphy, had
disappeared into, never to be seen again. Ash is intent on entering the locked
level, but how?
Avalon is admittedly a very surreal experience. The
real world is lensed in pale, drab colors where white objects such as faces or
posters or lights glow unnaturally. The game world of Avalon is similarly drab
and drenched in brown filters, so there's never any real separation between the
"real world" and the "game world." As written and filmed,
the real world is shown as lifeless, and the people who exists within it are
cardboard cutouts that rarely moves, never speaks, and are shells of human
beings. Only the Avalon gamers move freely in the real world, because they have
the Avalon game to fall back on, and are not entirely "defeated" just
yet.
Unfortunately, there are quite a lot of things to dislike
about Avalon. For instance, we never know why the world is like this,
we're just suppose to accept it and move on. Okay, I can do that. But why are
players in Avalon being paid cash money for playing a game that they have to pay
to play in the first place? And if the game is illegal, and the authorities
(whoever they are) are determined to shut it down, why are the game hubs that
the players use to connect into the game out in the open for all to see?
There
are other questions that are never answered, and unfortunately, I kept thinking
about them as the movie progressed. Mind you, this isn't because of any
anal-retentive quality on my part, but simply because the movie moves so
slowly that I have all this free time to consider all of the movie's faults.
There is only movement or action when the movie shifts to the Avalon game world,
but the shift is few and brief, and for most of the film's running time, we're
in the lifeless "real" world.
Which brings me to the Japanese propensity for unnaturally
long lulls of silence. I'm not sure if this is a Japanese thing, but I've
noticed similar filmmaking scenes in other Japanese movies. Takeshi Kitano uses
it frequently in his movies, as do other Japanese directors. I call them Shoe
Leather scenes. In simple terms, a Shoe Leather scene shows a character walking
here, there, everywhere -- all taking a long time and padding out the movie's
running length. TV shows do it to pad out their episode length. People engaged
in Shoe Leather scenes in movies will usually walk very slowly, sit very
quietly, or just stare off at something for long periods of time with nothing
happening. The Japanese horror movie Ring
2 made great use of this method.
I do give the filmmakers credit for crafting very artistic
scenery. The unnamed city which the movie takes place is rendered like a
painting instead of an actual city. Unfortunately, Oshii falls so in love with
this sense of doom and gloom that there are countless views of the city. Many of
the scenes are repeated, or old scenes are shown from different angles. Of
course, all of these silent views of the city gives us, the viewer, a conveyed
sense of stillness, of lifelessness, but let's be real, you don't have to keep
showing it over and over. Even the dumbest moviegoer will get the movie's many
symbolisms after they've been bashed over the head with them over and over and
over...
Avalon, like its unnamed city, is lifeless. It
doesn't move, barely breathes, and if you were half-asleep before the movie
began, you'll be asleep halfway through. Even the action scenes within the
Avalon game world are boring and simplistic. Giant machines pop up and get blown
up. Helicopter gunships appear, fire off thousands of rounds, and gets blown up.
Tanks rumble by, gets blown up. The only thing worth mentioning about the Avalon
game world is the incredible effects used to represent players being
"killed off." Once shot and their character "killed,"
players literally crumble into digital bits, like thin, fragile shard of glass
coming undone.
Watch Avalon if you're bored. Personally, I'd rather
play Half-Life over again. It'll be just as pointless as watching Avalon,
but at least I'll have fun during it.
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