Monahan’s entry does a great job demonstrating just how important variety is when you’re assembling an ensemble of characters. If they all look the same and act the same, what’s the point of having so many of them? Why should we care what happens to one character over another character?
This especially holds true of stylized genres set in a world with which we have no familiarity, i.e. sci-fi and fantasy. A cast of colorful, unique characters each with decisively different personalities, looks, and backgrounds will help us feel more immersed in a fully realized world.
Whereas, if we’re thrown into a fantasy setting with a bunch of generic looking knights, all of whom are stoic nobles who believe in chivalry, we become spectators; we’re just watching archetypes going through the motions of doing archetype-y things. We’re no longer immersed in the world; we’re fully outside of it, and we’re fully aware that we’re watching something that can only exist in fiction.
Not that it's a bad movie, but did you really care when any of them bit the dust?
Ok, ok. This is getting pretty pedantic. In fact, me saying the word pedantic is pretty pedantic in itself. So let’s go to some examples. Basically, I’m describing the difference between reading “The Fellowship of the Rings” and watching “Avatar”, a film I loathe (I’ll elaborate more on that in a later blog post). Let’s look at the Fellowship of the Ring.
It's a pretty distinct group of characters, each one different enough to potentially come into conflict or bond with any of the others. Even their poses separates them into distinct individuals. We have a vast array of possible interactions, clashes, and friendships. Because these characters are each so different, the fantastical events that ensue will elicit a wide range of reactions, which will help us absorb the otherworldly nature of it all. Let's look at who we have. We've got the gruff, down-to-earth dwarf, the inexperienced hobbits, the wise old wizard, the mysterious and aloof ranger, the nobleman, and the mystical elf. Even if you'd never seen the movie, you'd be able to pick out each of those characters just from the picture, and my description of them. Each character has a distinct look that separates him from his companions.
We have Aragorn, the mystery man, who has lived in the wild. He’s a skilled ranger, used to surviving in the wild. Everything about his design conveys that; the stubble, the long, unkempt hair, the dark, camouflage clothes…and yet there’s a quiet confidence to him that comes across in Viggo Mortensen’s performance that suggests that he wouldn’t be ought of place leading an army. With a minimal amount of dialogue, we've established that he's going to be the one to take charge when things get rough.
Compare that with:
Jake Sully, whose name I had to look up on imdb because I had no idea what it was. I compare him to Aragorn, because he fulfills a pretty similar function; he's the outsider overcoming adversity to eventually lead a giant army against a terrible threat. I'm talking about Sully's look as a Na'vi, which is the form he inhabits whenever he's doing anything important to the plot. We have no visual clues to tell us what makes Jake Na’vi any different from the other thousand Na’vi in the film. Hold that image up to the image of any other alien in the movie, and you'd have no idea what sets him apart and makes him worth our attention.
My biggest issue with the praise heaped on Avatar is that the Na’vi design is not really all that practical from a storytelling standpoint. Yes, it looks pretty realistic, but realism comes at the expense of visual clarity. All of the Na’vi look exactly the same, except for the hair, on occasion. Look at a sea of na’vi, and it’s not much different from looking at an army of smurfs. The variety between them is so subtle that it's virtually unnoticeable. If we’re expected to take this race seriously and empathize with them as though they were human beings, we should get a variety of na'vi with different poses and looks, and attitudes.
And not just a sea of copy-pasted computerized images. Seriously, look at that second picture. Look at the guy in the foreground on the leftmost side of the screen, and then the guy in the foreground on the rightmost side. They're the SAME GUY.
Every Na’vi acts the same, looks the same, dresses the same, and talks the same. It makes for a pretty boring group of characters. Why should I watch them?
Contrast with:
Boromir, who despite being human, like Aragorn clearly comes from a significantly different upbringing and history. His armor is cleaned up, his beard is trimmed, his colors suggest nobility. Even if you knew nothing about the Lord of the Rings and Middle Earth, you could tell just from a glance that these two had lived significantly different lives. This act of inferring sparks our imagination and engages us in the world we’re watching.
Contrast with:
Tsu'tey.
If you just said, “who?” than congratulations. You remember as much of Avatar as I do. You might argue that Tsu'tey has a sillier haircut than Jake Sully, but seriously. Look at some of those other pictures from before. That haircut is everywhere. It seems totally arbitrary who has a silly haircut and who doesn’t. If we were to look at him from a distance, we probably would have no idea what makes him special or different from the rest of the million Na’vi.
Alright, you might argue that this comparison is unfair, because we only see one tribe of Na’vi, and we see dozens of races in nobilities in Fellowship of the Rings. Fair enough. So let’s look at just one relatively alien race, and four characters who all come from the exact same town, the exact same social class, and who are exactly the same age.
Yes, Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin.
You might get Merry and Pippin's names confused, but I’m guessing that if you look at any decent LOTR artwork, you’ll at least be able to tell who Frodo and Sam are, and then work out the other two later.
These are four hobbits who all grew up in the same environment, yet everything about them suggests differing personalities that will react differently to extreme circumstances.
Frodo is always the most innocent, vulnerable looking one. Sam is always the most doggedly determined. Pippin and Merry are always a little bewildered, suggesting their youth, but they never look as vulnerable as Frodo. Merry particularly looks ready to take charge, especially in this shot. Once they actually start talking, their distinct personalities shine through even more, clarifying their different personalities, and reinforcing what their images suggest. There’s no way you’ll get them confused (well, maybe you’ll get Merry and Pippin’s names mixed up, but that’s just a whole Tom Stoppard situation right there).
Compare with:
Seriously, is there any difference between looking at this image and looking at an army of toy soldiers? They’re all so uniform and bland, it becomes virtually impossible to pick any one out and identify with him.
Now, what bothers me so much is that this wasn’t entirely inevitable. Yes, making each Na’vi look different to the degree that humans do would have been an incredibly expensive and time-consuming task for an already incredibly expensive and time-consuming film.
However, let’s turn to the film that anyone who wants an Avatar alternative should see: “District 9”. On the surface, it seems like all of the prawns look exactly the same, but the differences are there and subtle enough that we can at least pick the most important ones out of a lineup. Neil Blomkampf made sure that Christopher Johnson, the most important prawn, and his son had the widest range of facial expressions of all the prawns. This means that we can immediately tell them apart from the rest on a subconscious level, even if our brains are doing it subconsciously. Johnson also carries himself in the most upright, dignified manner of all the prawns we see, while his son scuttles around in a hunched position. If we were to stick them in a lineup, that would be enough to tell us who they were. Christopher Johnson will be the one who’s upright, and his son will be the one who’s hunched.
But more important than that, the rest of the prawns are very different from one another, making CJ the most “normal” looking one, and that helps him stand out. One thing I’ve gathered from Monahan, and what “Avatar” doesn’t grasp, is that the more uniform a group of characters is, the more a slight change will make the individual stand out. Just a hat given to one of the prawns tells us a little bit about him, and makes him stand out just a little tiny bit from the rest of the group. A yellow prawn will show up. One will have a t-shirt on. These simple additions give just enough personality to the prawns to make us feel like we’re looking at a fully-realized population, and not just a bunch of anthropomorphized crabs.
I’m going to talk a little more about both character design (specifically in Star Wars) and Avatar in future posts, so subscribe if you want to hear more.
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