Creating Worlds

Humans are fascinated with fictional worlds. When our own narratives start to bore us we can use fictional places to discard our real life roles and assume new ones.  Sometimes we’d like also not to be on earth, and this is where virtual worlds come in. But what makes for a quality virtual place? Contrary to popular belief, great creations are rarely the result of genius (some might argue that George Lucas is a good proof of this); there are certain guidelines to making these worlds enjoyable to play in (along with tedious fictional-historical trivia that will likely be enjoyed by 1% of your viewer-base; not sayin’ it’s a bad thing). The blockbuster movie Avatar is an example of a property which was fantastic, though it didn’t encourage as much fan interaction as Star Wars or Lord of the Rings.  I thought it would be fun to look at it anyway, since it was successful in creating an immersive fantasy environment.  

                JRR Tolkien, the creator of the Lord of the Rings series of books and possibly the best singular maker of fantasy worlds in literary history, wrote an essay called On Fairy Stories which details the art of creating immersive worlds.  One of his major arguments from the essay is that a successful imaginary world has to be consistent and logical. In Avatar we don’t have to really believe in the giant blue people, but they become more credible for our movie watching experience if they are given a logical place in the world. All of the bits and pieces of the world should make sense in relation to each other. For example, on a planet with giant blue people it follows that there should also be enormous rocks floating in the sky. Blue people = gravity not that important. In a sense, the logic works. The azure inhabitants of Pandora (the planet’s name) share a similar level of strangeness with levitating rocks, the universe’s treehouse, the sentient hive-mind willow, etc. These elements have found a way to mesh within the Avatar universe. While it’s important to have all of your parts cooperating, it’s even more crucial to establish them early on, and to be totally consistent. From Tolkien:

“[A story-maker] makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is ‘true’: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside.”

The rules are the rules. Immersing yourself in Avatar requires some suspension of disbelief, but once the rules are accepted it is the responsibility of the product to maintain them. Once a continent loses its gravity it never gets it back. The sentient tree, which hasn’t been shown to possess vocal chords throughout the movie, shouldn’t suddenly acquire the ability to speak at the end (Just a quick aside: Does this explain why M. Night Shyamalan’s twist-obsessed films suck donkey-ass?). 

“It is precisely the colouring, the atmosphere, the unclassifiable individual details of a story, and above all the general purport that informs with life the undissected bones of the plot, that really count.” 

Perhaps this is what distinguishes the kind of properties that create life-long fan obsessions from those that are scarcely forgotten, but rarely so loved.