Quote from: Seanchai;352154Wait. You made a big fuss about how it was anti-human, etc., and you hadn't even seen it? Nevermind, par for the course...

Seanchai

I had read a great deal about this movie; reviews and articles that pretty well turned out to be completely accurate. Enough so that I could know that this was not a movie I wanted to watch.

Or do you think that you need to see every fucking movie in the world before you decide whether its likely to suck ass or not? Have you gone out and bought the DVD of Home Alone XVII yet?

RPGpundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;352195No, but a movie that presents a ridiculous stereotype of our own civilization as hopelessly corrupt and evil, while presenting an equally ridiculous stereotype of the Noble Savage as wonderful and idyllic, is pretty much anti-civilization; and if the reason the latter are presented as being idyllic is because they live without all but the most primitive levels of human technology, then its probably anti-human.

RPGPundit

Did you miss the humans in the movie that didn't happen to be hopelessly corrupt and evil? Even the corporate douche had misgivings about what was going on.

Quote from: jibbajibba;352161Well I would think from a narative perspective it is common to explore other cultures through the eyes of a observer that the viewer is able to identify with. This is perhpas lazy but I it is common and its a given that the audience needs to be able to identify with the hero. So that is why, A Man called Horse, Dances with Wolves, The Emerald Forest, Tarzan and John Carter of Mars all have white male protagonists its a standard trope. So Avatar needs to set up some hero in this model. However, because Cameron wants to make the aliens part of his new world, and here I think he got cautious and I expect it was due to the studio or technical considerations but I expect that the first Na'vi had an extra set of limbs like every other creature on the planet (but I digress). So the avatar concept is used and lets face it its a great concept. If you have that it logically follows that there needs to be funding for said project gives you 2 choices. First a government investigating the Na'vi. Second a corporation who can reap great rewards from the Na'vi.
Now a blockbuster movie is aimed at a core demographic and the typical core demographic for such movies is 14-25 year old men. This group likes action and movies all need conflict of some sort.
So you could have a goverment agent who is investigation the Na'vi and has a range of internal conflicts about the expolitation of a people might be good. Or you have a conflict over resources between a group of natives and the future equivalent of Blackwater. The second option has guns, explosions, some cool mecha shit.
Then you add the Hollywood liberal politics and the fact that 90% of Western Civilisation between the ages of 9 and 30 are tree hugging socialist sympathisers.

I am really not sure how the Film could have turned out any different. Yeah they should have asked Tom Stoppard to cast an eye over the script (I mean you are paying $300M for the film you may as well chuck Sir Tom 100K to sort the dialogue out) but taking the basic premise of movie making I really don't know where else it would have gone.

Please enlighten me as to what film they should have made based on :
Realise entire Alien world
Explore a new Alien Species
Need for Human protagonist
Need for lots of explosions
Need to satisfy political sensibilities of target audience

Well, shit, I don't know, just off hand.. they could have made a movie about first/early contact with an alien race where there is misunderstanding and failure to communicate, and the protagonists struggle to gain that understanding to end the conflict; rather than "Western White Guys = BAD; Blue Hippie Natives = GOOD!"

RPGPundit

Quote from: Werekoala;352167Again, they could have the "shit blows up real good" (remember there were two battle scenes) and then have some reconciliation between the species, thereby covering all the bases without having to change much of anything up until the ending. But happy endings don't sell in Hollywood.

Unless this WAS a happy ending, of course.

Judging by the way people in the theatre here cheered when the human marines were being slaughtered and when the Colonel died, I think that a lot of people were sufficiently directed to feel this was the "happy" ending, yes.

I can't even chalk it up to some kind of anti-americanism in Uruguayan filmgoers, either, since I've heard reports from american filmgoers detailing the exact same phenomenon there.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;352199Or do you think that you need to see every fucking movie in the world before you decide whether its likely to suck ass or not?

No. But your claim isn't that it sucks ass, is it? You have some very specific claims and they're all based on something you read online somewhere...

Seanchai

Quote from: jeff37923;352180Anti-civilization? No, since the Na'vi also had a civilization and the movie paints that as the "correct" version.

No, they had a CULTURE.  Culture and Civilization are not the same thing.  Of course, unlike any real primitive culture in our world, their culture happened to be a utopia thanks to the REAL Earth-goddess and the Magic USB Ports, things your typical yanomami indian doesn't get to have.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Machinegun Blue;352200Did you miss the humans in the movie that didn't happen to be hopelessly corrupt and evil? Even the corporate douche had misgivings about what was going on.

The corporate douche seemed pretty much like a corporate douche to me, but that's not the point. Yes, all of the scientists and that pilot chick were all immediately willing to turn against their own side; what that tells me is that they were all so eager to abandon the human cause because any "moral" person in that universe would abandon human civilization without so much as a second thought, as being beyond saving (because apparently "we killed our mother").

So there are good individual humans in the movie, but the human race as a whole is apparently portrayed as utterly worthy of condemnation, and the proof of that is that any human who's even a little bit good abandons that civilization's cause the first chance it gets.

RPGPundit

I don't see what the fuss is all about. It's just another White Man Guilt Trip, in the vein of Werewolf: the Apocalypse 1e. Only in space, with all-too-humanlike aliens. And somewhat more hackneyed and stupid, plot-wise.

Though the 3D is indeed shiny, even if the xenobiology is not terribly creative.

Quote from: Seanchai;352204No. But your claim isn't that it sucks ass, is it? You have some very specific claims and they're all based on something you read online somewhere...

Seanchai

I don't get what's the fucking problem here dude (unless this is just more standard Pundit-hate); a bunch of people wrote very accurate reviews, where they portrayed the movie's plot, dialogue, and philosophy in a very accurate way and assisted me to form an opinion as to whether this movie would be worth watching or not, and I made that judgment based those very accurate reviews. THEY DID THEIR FUCKING JOB.

I guess you're not the sort who ever bothers reading reviews then?

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;352205No, they had a CULTURE.  Culture and Civilization are not the same thing.

Then please clarify the difference so that we may discuss it.

(As far as I can see, what a fictional intelligent alien species has in a movie is sufficiently nebulous that it can be termed either or both a civilization and culture for this discussion.)

Quote from: RPGPundit;352206So there are good individual humans in the movie, but the human race as a whole is apparently portrayed as utterly worthy of condemnation, and the proof of that is that any human who's even a little bit good abandons that civilization's cause the first chance it gets.

RPGPundit

That's only because you choose to see it that way. The only condemnation that I saw were the means the humans were going through. The "good" humans didn't abandon their civilization. They abandoned their corporation. A corporation. Maybe I missed the part about how if Earth wasn't able to get unobtanium it would somehow end all human life or something?

Quote from: RPGPundit;352197Except that what you are then suggesting is that what is BETTER, both as an option and as a general survival tactic than the "survival of the fittest" mentality of Savagery, is specifically to create CIVILIZATION.

No, you got me wrong. It may be because of my shaky English skill. What I'm saying is relying on evolutionary concepts in the context of a debate that relates to culture or civilization means entering unstable terrain. That you chose to use those concepts to put them in the mouth of someone else is astute but looks like a straw man argument.

QuoteThank you for arguing in favour of my point. Avatar is anti-human because it suggests that everything we've accomplished is somehow UN-natural ("they killed their motherrrrr!!") and that the closer we can get to living like animals, the purer, better and happier we'd all be. And that's just not true. You seem to realize that.

From what I read, it's probably less about Rousseau's ideal savage and more about "we don't need Monsanto and their shitty seeds, we can do better on our own and use cheaper technologies with low impact on the environment." But I haven't seen the movie yet.

QuoteAlso, work on your reading comprehension, fucktard. I was the one arguing AGAINST "survival of the fittest". The people arguing in support of Avatar are, whether they realize it or not, the ones who are arguing for it; if only by virtue of having Not Thought Things Through.

Straw man again.

I like you too!

Quote from: RPGPundit;352209... and assisted me to form an opinion as to whether this movie would be worth watching or not...

But that's not what you did, right? You didn't post, "I've decided not to watch Avatar." You posted, "Avatar is evil. You should think it's evil, too, because I do." And you didn't mention that the information on which you based your decision for us to start thinking that Avatar is evil was all third hand.

You keep trying to portray your actions as something they're not. This is not our first rodeo. Pundit doesn't exist without something to rail against, to decry as damaging and harmful, and so when you ran out of your standard fodder, you saw an opportunity with Avatar.

Seanchai

Quote from: RPGPundit;352195No, but a movie that presents a ridiculous stereotype of our own civilization as hopelessly corrupt and evil

No, it presents a stereotype of this particular corporation as almost completely corrupt and evil.  They take pains to remind people that the 'military' folks in the movie were ex-military, for example.  Likely because of the very behavioural traits they exhibit in the movie, ie: ruthless, more savage than the 'savages', and wholly remorseless in their brutality.

If you think the mercenaries and the few corporate folks shown in the movie represent the whole of civilization, you are really projecting things onto the script that simply aren't there.  Michelle Rodriguez' pilot character pulls out of the first firefight, and Sam Worthington's ex-Marine returns from the ruthless, focus on the mission 'machine' back to his inherent humanity and empathy.  If the film presented the stereotype you claim, there would be no development of Worthington's character, the other scientists would be just as bloodthirsty, and the jungle would have been leveled five years before Worthington's character arrived in theatre, obviating the need for a movie at all.  As it is, they spent some portion of the six years that team was in transit trying to negotiate with the natives, which completely negates your characterization of 'hopelessly corrupt and evil'.  They also gave him three months to work out a deal with the natives; hardly the mark of all consuming evil.  Spike may not like it, but this is a clear case of confirmation bias on the part of yourself and several others.  A movie where the humans don't win every time is hardly an anti-humanist propaganda piece.

Unless you want to argue that corporations, and especially American corporations, are really misunderstood philanthropists, and are unfairly portrayed in this film.

Again, what's wrong with an ending where we come to mutual understanding and love and galactic Brotherhood and all that? It doesn't have to be either/or. That would have been a positive ending, an outcome that says "no matter our differences, we can work together to overcome them and our misunderstandings of each other, and work together towards a brighter tomorrow". After all, the natives were worried about life-forms being killed, not the rocks. And the corporation couldn't give a fig-leaf about the animals, all they wanted was the rocks. Also, it is a SIX YEAR trip back to Earth, at best. What's the rush?

(God, I'm starting to sound like Koltar - can't we all just get along? Maybe dance?)

So, point - Cameron could have written a more positive story about a coming together and understanding between two species. Instead, he turned it ino a polemic against greedy American (and I can't stress that enough) corporations.

Yes, a grand total of 5 (of hundreds? Thousands?) personnel got a conscience (and really, the scientists were already on the side of the Natives. Native... Na'vi minus the ET).

I really do have a problem believing that even in our day and age, we'd have people that would gladly mow down clearly intelligent creatures because the Boss told them to. And don't go all "Blackwater/Gitmo/McBushHitler" on me. There's a difference in fighting people who are actively trying to kill you and shooting sentient beings who pose no threat.

It flat out would not happen that way. Period. We wouldn't get into space in the first place if that was the case.