No Zytrons In Range

Just something I thought of when reading about Apple’s App Store rejections.

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So I just watched the trailer for James Cameron’s Avatar.

View it at IMDB– Oh wait, there’s an annoying long ad you have to view before the trailer. Try viewing it at Apple– Oh wait it requires QuickTime. Well, let’s try viewing it at YouTube– Hey look, it just starts playing without any bullshit. Attention Internet company big-wigs: this is why people like Google!

So anyway, according to the trailer, a bunch of space marines with headless robots land on this planet. They volunteer one of their guys to transfer his brain into the body of one of the natives, who are blue elf creatures named the “Na’vi” which is obviously a Native American analogue. They have little tails. He’s released to live among the blue elf dudes, possibly to spy on them, and over a period of time he comes to appreciate their culture more than his own. He also meets some blue elf chick with a bow. When the space marines start to attack the blue elfs, he joins the elf side and leads them in battle with the marines.

So it’s Dances with Wolves.

Separated at birth?

Oh, but also the blue elfs train giant cats and ride dragons, apparently. That would be cool, if they didn’t look like blue elfs.

One of my buddies brought up that having the aliens in your movie be, basically, Native American elfs is pretty goddamned uncreative. Especially since this movie has a budget of over $300 million. Obviously none of that money went into hiring somebody who can come up with a creative and original alien race– hell the guys working for Lucas came up with like a dozen more creative and original alien races in the cantina scene alone! Seriously.

My original theory was that, due to the dragon riding and giant cat taming, the aliens in this movie were just way to obviously bad ass compared to the space marines, and so the space marines lost any sense of threat. So Cameron redesigned them to be elfs, and added cute little tails, to offset the bad ass-ness. (Note: this is also probably why he would add headless robots to the marines, so they kick more ass.) Good theory, but probably not true.

My second theory is that someone involved with this movie thought to themselves, “we need the audience to make an emotional connection with the Na’vi… I don’t think people will make a connection to something that doesn’t look or act human.” To that, a brief rebuttal:

Think about it.

Oh, and when we have guys in a movie riding dragons? Please make the dragons bigger than that. It just doesn’t satisfy the “wait a minute, this looks totally wrong” test if you have a human-sized guy riding a dragon with a wingspan of maybe 15 feet. Let’s see some dragons on film that are actually big enough to carry people around, not these wimpy ones.

Inspired by this article in The Guardian, I present:

Bridge demolition on Virginia’s Department of Transportation’s YouTube page:

Bridge demolition on Washington’s Department of Transportation’s YouTube page:

You win this time, Virginia!

I’ve been inspired by LiveJournal’s Virtual Gift Store, but I think I can do them one better. I’ll make you a deal, for a limited time only, you can be the proud owner of this icon:

Yes, you’re seeing it correctly. That’s over four thousand pixels available at a single low price. Not only is each pixel painstakingly selected from one of over 16 million individual colors, but this lovely showpiece even includes transparent pixels. Transparency not available for most icons at twice the price!

But wait, there’s more! In addition to the normal sized icon, you’ll also receive, not one, not two, but five (5) small wallet-size icons! Use on your iPod, Zune, Cellphone, or any electronic device– perfect for showing off your icon while on-the-go!

    

What, you ask, is the price for this tremendous collection of beautiful hand-crafted butterfly icons? You might want to sit down for this:

That’s less than two dollars, less than your morning coffee! But I still don’t think that’s a good enough bargain, so let’s sweeten the deal. Order in the next 10 minutes and you’ll also receive the versatile large icon:

This large icon is perfect for those formal occasions, when not just any icon will do. Your friends will be amazed at the detail and clarity!

Call now, operators are standing by.

P.S. Yes, Firefox 3 apparently does support the blink tag. Go figure.

The site in question.

Much more importantly, the episode of ALF in question.

(Make sure you un-mute it to get the whole experience.)

For the un-Flashed, this is a video game currently featured on the John McCain homepage called Pork Invaders.

It’s a pretty faithful clone of Space Invaders, with the following exceptions:

• The iconic invader spaceships are replaced by little pigs. Which is actually more like pre-pork than pork. Or maybe it’s pork chops shaped to look like little pigs, that would add a much-appreciated nuance to the game world. Oh, by the way, there are three levels of pigs, just like the three levels of invaders in the original, and they’re worth different point amounts like in the original, but in this game they all look identical.
• The red UFO has changed into a barrel. Of pork. A “pork barrel,” as it were.
• Shooting pigs and pig-derived meats will earn (or save, presumably) tax dollars. The pork barrels are still worth ??? points. Unlike the original, your points are measured in millions now. (It says so right on the game screen.)
• The bullet fired by your tank is turned into the word “veto.” You can still only fire one bullet/veto, at a time, though.
• Your tank isn’t actually a tank, but instead is a generic-looking McCain logo. When it explodes, it looks identical to the explosion in the original Space Invaders game which is really jarring and weird.
• At the end of each round, you’re presented with a cool factoid about how much John McCain hates pork.

I don’t even know what to think about this. It’s so retro, it could possibly be cool. But is it retro because McCain’s website is run by some hipster 20-year-old with an ironic t-shirt, or is it retro because McCain called somebody into his office and said something like, “those kids like playing the Space Invaders, don’t they? Why don’t we make a Space Invaders game for them?” Sadly, I think the latter is more likely.

The concept of the game aside, though, the execution is pretty lazy. Why are do all three invaders look identical? Is the McCain logo really the best thing they could find to represent a tank? And how come they didn’t bother to change the explosion when it got hit into something more appropriate? If you made this game, or know the person who made this game, put me in contact with them, because I have a lot of issues.

Oh well, I’m looking forward to seeing what the McCain campaign turns Frogger into.

An animatronic dog in a spacesuit playing Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Otherside”:

(Courtesy of ProgramBlue.com, via Fark)