Avatar: The Movie

[brain enclosed in flesh]

The writer or director may not have put out the money, but they had the vision of how they wanted it to be. They knew it was going to cost lots o' bucks. Not to mention, ooh, technology's bad, but without it this movie never would have been made.

The main issue: Is it going to change many people's minds regarding how they treat and perceive others/other cultures? My guess is no. All I hear from most is... "It looks AWESOME!!"

 

[del]

Do CGI artists live off the blood of Hopi children or something?

 

[Jaico]

Egh...I really didn't like Avatar. I will grant it this, though - the visuals were absolutely stunning. I managed to see it in IMAX 3D, and the technical work that they pulled off was amazing (although the stereoscopic image broke apart when I tilted my head, forcing me to keep my head vertically straight for the entire movie...ah, well); it was really hard to believe that the entire forest/the Na'vi were all CGI.

Unfortunately, that was pretty much all I liked about the movie. The main gripe I have about the movie is that not only was it Anvilicious (turned up to 11), but some of the morals were...questionable, if you look at them closely. When you boil down the movie, it's really Pocahontas (but in space! and with blue aliens instead of natives!), and it still carries many of the unfortunate implications of the works that inspired it.

Spoiler

Let's start with this one: The "Mighty Whitey," as TvTropes quite eloquently puts it. While I was watching this film, this trope was practically screaming at me from the screen; Jake Sulley mastered the ways of the Na'vi in six months (as opposed to years), Jake Sulley was a fearsome warrior, Jake Sulley flipped Tsu'Teh - the next chosen leader of the tribe - the bird by...er, bonding with Neytiri (and was beat down because of it; I don't remember Tsu'Teh actually being a jerk at all to Neytiri), and Jake Sulley was able to rally all of the tribes by bonding with Mag'Arok (spelling?) To me, this implied that the Na'vi (a stand-in for Native Americans, let's be serious) couldn't' really repel the invaders without the help of a..."Mighty Whitey," and that he was also a whole lot better at what they were supposed to be teaching him. In any case, I certainly didn't see any Na'vi doing all those things.

Secondly (and this ties into the first), Jake Sulley was a classic example of Hard Work Hardly Words. Normally, it's not too bad, but when it's implied that Jake Sulley could learn to "see" because he was a fighter and not a scientist, it ticks me off quite a bit. Another example of this is that as soon as he's transferred to his Avatar body, he goes about being a total douchebag and not listening to the scientists - who, as it turns out, are completely uptight, stupid, and not worth listening too, right? After all, they haven't been working with these bodies for a longer period of time than you...oh wait, they have.

Thirdly, the very anvilicious morals that were thrown out really bothered me. The above two things were irking me, but the movie was still pretty good - up until the last scene, where all the human soldiers were slaughtered en masse. I found it quite odd that the audience cheered for the Na'vi butchering the marines - who were really only doing their job (just like the Na'vi!) I felt a twinge of pain every time I saw a ship go down, or a marine pinned by an arrow, because they weren't any more responsible for this than the Na'vi; the marines - though depicted as somewhat abrasive in the opening - were doing their jobs, probably to pay their families. You might say, then, why didn't they rebel like Jake? Drawing from what was shown in the movie, it doesn't seem like they knew much about the Na'vi - it seems as if they were pretty much fed propaganda by their leaders...it's not their fault.

Continuing on the previous paragraph, while the humans certainly didn't help the Na'vi, the Na'vi didn't seem to be trying to meet the corporations halfway, either. The humans stated that they had offered them lots of stuff (and I can understand why they might not want it), and clearly tried negotiations first (as shown by the Avatar program) - and what do the Na'vi do? Kill any "dreamwalkers" on sight. Heck, even when they were assaulting Home Tree/the Tree of Souls, the military commander tried to minimize casualties - something that could not be said about the Na'vi. You might deem their actions atrocious, but keep this in mind - the only thing that the military had known about the neural network was what some scientist - who had clashed with the military before - had told them just before the attack. Granted, I don't agree with attacking Home Tree right away, but at least they tried to "save" people (in the conventional way that humans could be saved).

I still find it hard that the audience sympathized with the Na'vi rather than the grunts.; to go on what was said previously, it doesn't seem as if the Na'vi tried to explain their neural network to the humans at all (evidenced by Grace's astonishment when she finds out about it), even though the humans have been around for more than six years (which seems like plenty of time to talk with the "dreamwalkers" and explain it to them).

Throughout the movie, there was always talk about the "natural flow" of life - supposing, then, that humans are an "abomination" to this natural flow (as was implied throughout the movie), does that mean that we should always try and stick to the way things are, without ever trying to integrate new, unexpected variables? What about beneficial progress? While I don't agree with the soulless mining corporation's motives, I'm sure that other humans could offer a lot to Pandora, and vice versa. But instead of showing harmony between the two groups, the movie espouses the values of traditions, hierarchy, and rigid conformity. In fact, by exiling the humans from Pandora at the end of the movie (and thus banning them from obtaining Unobtanium - which is used as an energy source), it's pretty much dooming the human race; according to the article posetd earlier in the thread, Unobtanium is a necessary energy source for Earth, which has become a hell-hole. Note that it's not a commodity (which would make it slightly more palatable); in fact, by exiling the humans from Pandora (which, I assume, was a significant investment), I can only assume that Jake Sully caused massive riots, food shortages and disasters back on Earth. But who cares, because the humans are evil, right?

Finally, there were just little things throughout the movie that bothered me. One of them was the total Ass Pull/Deus Ex Machina at the end (y'know, where all the animals of the forest overwhelm the humans...ergh, give me a break. Then there was the issue of the bullets being pretty much ineffective - you'd think that they would've developed weaponry that would be able to combat the fauna of Pandora after colonizing it for a while, but no (although I do accept 'technological limitations' as a valid reason).

...wow, that was far longer than I intended...

 

[Sapphire Harp]

Well, I just saw the film tonight - and I don't want to get into the nitty gritty of the argument, but I just really enjoyed it. I hear Jenny's argument quite profoundly... are we really so jaded about our movies and, beyond that, our culture? It's going to be as flawed as we are. The way some people are talking, it seems like they feel the movie should not exist. Or, at least, should be degraded into ignominy.

As an overall review - I think the movie has enough to hold itself together. There could be more culture, deeper characters, more subtle plot... Yes, indeed. It's not going to be remembered historically for anything more than its technical achievements, but I really think that's okay. It's cohesive and decent enough if you can relax enough and forgive enough to enjoy it. Especially if you take in the visuals of the film. That is the primary feature of the experience.

On that note, if you're going to see the movie - you really should see it in 3D. The production team truly put a lot of effort into that and I think it's very much worth it.

Also - in a personal sense, I'm glad to see this movie accomplishing what it has been doing. Having another science fiction come to the forefront makes me happy - and this had a fair array of sci-fi nuances I really appreciated, limiting technology being one of the more interesting ones - done pretty well in this case.

But, on the flipside - I found the technology advantage to be good, too... When the plot was moving towards the final conflict, I thought I knew how things were going to go, and then the human commander pulls out the satellite images and I thought... "Oh. They -still- are pretty screwed." :P

I think the way their final victory was achieved (deus ex machina in a weak sense) was completely necessary, even if predictable, because natives almost always lose to the superior firepower of humanity's industrial complex. Even with the Na'vi's superior biology. It's how reality goes, unfortunately.

It's interesting to think about how fulfilled the natives are, spiritually. They have a connection with the 'soul' of their planet that is literally manifest in their physiology. It isn't explored very much, but it seems like they'd be much more aware that 'having' usually requires 'taking'.

Which isn't to say it's deep, either... It has a lot of unexplored content to it, but that's just the nature of movies, in general, really... Honestly - it's probably unfair for me to give this one a pass, but find films like 'The Two Towers' horrifyingly kitschy... But that's just how it is. I think it's good (enough) with some impressively strong features - so, go see it. If you want to enjoy the film, you probably can.

And, P.S. Sigourney Weaver telling her superior off about 10^4 connections apiece and 10^12 trees was a beautiful moment. Just sayin'.
​

 

[cheese]

Jaico, you da man

I tried to verbalise all of that to a friend immediately after seeing the movie, but failed miserably. You covered all of it and more.

Sed also had a very agreeable viewpoint.

Jennywocky and cryptonia as well, representing the other side of the argument.

I find it very difficult to say exactly where I stand, but it was a relief having my initial thoughts made coherent by someone else.

Haven't much to say; I just appreciate this thread and the discussion so much I thought I'd say something.

Spoiler

One thing, among others, that I found odd - and this relates to The Mighty Whitey - is how no one before Jake had thought to take down the bigass bird from the top before. Aside from the 5 (5?) bigshots, maybe.

To me this whole movie is another typical example of the pendulum over-correcting. Self-hatred in the liberal west seems to be all the rage these days, and often it's just as thoughtless as racism in the past. It's a nuancing problem, like others have said. The world does not exist in 2D oblongs.

 

[jhbowden]

Saw the movie Wednesday night. Avatar was silly. Pretty -- in a World of Warcraft CGI sense -- and definitely silly.

The specials are good, the characters are blah, and the plot is hopelessly predictable.

Spoiler

If Avatar was going to be leftwing agitprop, it might as well be good agitprop. For example, in Aliens, there's a douchey corporate character that initially gives us the hint of doucheyness, but we don't find out how douchey he really is until the middle of the movie, when he sells out members of his own species. Yet in Avatar, it is always transparent what's going to happen. HERE IS EVIL GENERAL GUY OUR HERO WILL FIGHT ONE-ON-ONE AT THE END!!!!! HERE IS SMURFFETT, WHO JAKESULLY WILL BANG!!! These cut-outs are just way too obvious.

Of course, I didn't like the blatant political propaganda either. Individuality is baaaad, collectives are gooooood. Technology is baaaaad, nature is gooooood. Civilization is baaaaaddd, savages are goooooood. Profit is baaaaaaad. Tribal traditions are goooooood. The primitivism really got annoying. The Other is Good, We are bad. I can imagine Cameron giggling while making this nonsense, "Take THAT, George Bush! Preemptive strike!"

The specials though are entertaining-- the 3D stuff looks great when broad scenes are depicted, though it looks annoying in regular shots. Great animation, though something is still a little off-- the smurfs are rendered too perfectly, without any shines or reflections, which gives them a George Lucas video game feel.

Worst plot hole: the humans couldn't use sensors to see through the magnetic stuff, but they can teleport a consciousness back and forth. Figure that one out.

So I'd give the movie **/**** stars.

 

[cheese]

jhbowden:

Spoiler

What made the political propaganda even more unpalatable is that it was inconsistent with other parts of the movie. It's like they couldn't even keep their pants on long enough to smile for the camera before returning to the usual rape and degradation. See The Mighty Whitey.

 

[jhbowden]

Mighty Whitey, ha! That's the inverse of the Magical Negro, I suppose. I remember seeing the Mighty Whitey in the Last Samurai, and I'm sure he has made other appearances as well.

 

[fullerene]

Spoiler

I definitely do agree with that mighty whitey observation. Actually, Jaico's post was pretty much full of good points. Concerning what Cheese said, though, about how this kind of thing makes the political propaganda unpalatable, I think that's pretty unfair. Are you really going to require that the writer/director stamp out every last one of their own cultural prejudices before saying anything? Supposing that the theme of the movie was an honest one--that Cameron and whoever else had input into this thing were honest in their attempts to jab the culture and say "look at what we're doing/have done to tribal cultures! Am I the only one who sees how sick this is?" they're criticizing their own culture as much as yours. Frankly, inconsistency and hypocrisy is both expected and necessary, at least temporarily, while you're trying to sort these types of things out.

I don't know what kind of person Cameron is, but if you recognize the morals as good morals to adopt, then little steps are better than no steps at all. Obviously this doesn't apply to bowden, or anyone else who thinks the modern political/economic systems are better than the alternatives laid out in the movie, but if you appreciate some of them and realize the extent to which we're bombarded on all sides by the others, then inconsistency is no reason to be upset.

Also to be fair, bowden: George Bush may be the one who decided to go start up this whole war-thing (I thought that one blatant political comment towards the end... though I forget what it was now... severely detracted from the rest of the movie), but Obama hasn't exactly pulled out or done anything differently. I think you're blinded by your political framework, much of the time, and I wouldn't think for a second that the Democrat administration is stands any less-attacked by this movie than the Republican one did.

Likewise (I can't believe I'm even saying this): that's not a plot hole. That's symbolism. Sometimes an author would rather forgo logical consistency in order to highlight how, despite its remarkable technological power over even the human consciousness--which is probably the most interesting frontier in the entire universe, there are some things that this whole technological paradigm cannot see. I thought it was pretty obvious that all they could see was the magnetic stuff, but that it was caused by something else that they couldn't. When two things occur together consistently, you must not only wonder whether one causes the other or not, but also consider the possibility that a third event causes them both.


I do definitely agree with cheese that this is very likely an example of self-over-correcting, like a pendulum. I had a teacher once whose large area of graduate study was simply tracing the history of intellectual thought, in philosophy and cultural paradigms, and apparently this happens a whole lot. It'll be interesting to see, though, where that pendulum ends up, because (in my very immature and overly-physics-major opinion, at least), if it's true then you should be able to gauge the "right" view by just how far this pendulum goes. While I get the feeling that you're right, and this movie is over-correcting (tbh, I just didn't realize it because I'm fucking sick of the things I'm surrounded by, when it comes to this), it's always possible that the pendulum is in the process of swinging back, will continue to do so, and that we'll someday call things like this "the middle". Can't really tell until it happens, though.


That said: I really, really do wish they had gone into more detail about why the negotiations broke down. It was a pretty long movie, so maybe I just don't remember it (I really have no memory of how that scene played out, where Grace was explaining that to someone. I remember it starting... but just not how it ended), but I don't remember any good explanation of how the Na'vi suddenly turned so hostile. You would expect a race like that to be friendly to outsiders--which it seems like they were, in the beginning, if they were around humans enough to learn English (and the humans around them enough to learn their language)--but I would have considered the movie a whole lot stronger if they had explained how the Na'vi turned violent somehow without being blamable for it.

 

[cheese]

Spoiler

I think my implication was that it came across insincere, and made the movie appear like a shameless money-generating machine pandering to as many stereotypes, prejudices and cliches as possible - which contradicts its supposed message, as Sed pointed out.

Spoiler involving 500 Days of Summer:

Spoiler

This is why I really appreciated some aspects of 500 Days Of Summer, because it was unafraid to point out that as real and enduring as it feels, 'true love' doesn't always last, and you don't need to experience bleak post-modernist cynical love to accept this, nor does that acceptance entail the acquisition of that outlook. It handled several threads without sacrificing honesty, and in doing so managed to walk the line of realism between all of them. A lot of movies fail in this department, taking on too many arguments at once and then having to choose one at the expense of all the others without justification.

Spoiler

In general though, I agree that you need to give people a break. Total self-awareness is rare/non-existent. I didn't read the movie that way though, in part because I tend to think the Mighty Whitey trope is a fairly obvious prejudice, and that serious consideration of the cultural issues in the movie would reveal it pretty quickly if it isn't already self-evident. (Perhaps I'm expecting too much from the people behind Avatar; I'm just guessing that they're more globally educated/less enculturated than the average racially-prejudiced white man*.) So it seemed to me that the movie severely compromised its message in order to deliver a formulaic blockbuster that only serves to reinforce the values it's professing to reject. How much more insidiously entrenched will they be under the veil of apparent sympathy? This is a standard trolling technique (although I'm definitely not saying that's their intention!) - mixing bullshit with truth. Many people won't have the necessary filters to sift out the dross, although I can't say if it's a majority or not.

The fact that the 'truth' (the political propaganda mentioned earlier) is fairly holey itself makes it even worse. Frankly, I'm tired of the White Man Bad, Asian/Black/Indian/Miscellaneous Man Good, and all its associated dichotomies.** It's by no means a new idea, so Cameron isn't breaking fresh ground and therefore is (in my book) not as deserving of the forbearance given to pioneers. It's the same style of thinking (if you can even apply that term to Sully's decision-making process) that caused the problems we're trying to overcome. Dichotomising --> stereotyping --> prejudice --> baseless cruelty against individuals. Same reason it was totally awesome when the Marines were destroyed - because they're just faceless representatives of evil, right?

Admittedly, really getting into the complexities of structures, individuals, propaganda, herd instinct etc would take up too much time, but they weren't even hinted at. But yes, transition. It's not going to be perfect; things take time. Could it have been better though? More gracefully handled? I think so. It is definitely possible that I've over-estimated them though, and that this will be adequate impetus to open minds, even if only a little. My instinctive reaction though is that it's lazy or dishonest, and that it'll do more harm than good.


*country hick with little experience with other cultures, maybe
**I like the way Huxley presented this in Brave New World, actually. Instead of "Big Bad Reason/Technology" degraded by "Moral Feeling/Nature", he showed how both were faulty at their extremes.

I like your view on pendulum swings. It is difficult to judge relative position from one point in time. It'll be interesting to see where we've landed in several decades, although probably even a lifetime is insufficient to properly gauge these trends.

*edit
It is possible that I simply hate the movie and am trying to rationalise that emotion by attributing much greater importance to my irritants than is valid. I've tried to avoid that, but if you think I'm doing it feel free to point it out, please.

 

[Sparrow]

warning, spoiler.

 

[pjoa09]

the best part.

that CEO mocks that stupid Biologist. She's fucking high, never should've been hired.

NUKE IT. Get the unobtanium and fuck off.

They looked so ugly too. And that damn bitch that calls him an insane child. Fucking go to hell, I don't give a shit I love being insane. Why the fuck am I alive anyway? To go and do menial tasks like ride my stupid ass bird to make some bread?

Its intelligent vs. stupid. quickly die out vs. slowly. that piece of shit planet stays.

Yeah its fucking pocahantas with some graphics.

 

[Dansk]

I saw Avatar opening night. I was taken by my friends, I hadn't even heard of the movie until that day. I remember standing outside the theatre smoking a joint before it started, talking about how no one would watch it because it was a sci-fi movie and only internet nerds would go see it. Har.

Anyways, even stoned out of my mind I was amazed at how godawful the dialogue was and how predictable and retarded the plot was. Of course, being stoned, I was blown away by the awesome 3D CGI, which is by FAR the best feature of the movie.

If only James Cameron would hire a real scriptwriter for once, Titanic has some unspeakably terrible dialogue as well.

 

[cheese]

Something obvious that I should've realised more explicitly a long time ago: the movie, like all the other crap, morally inconsistent movies out there, simply relies on the human/animal instinct to root for the home team. The home team of course is any side given sufficient attention and sympathy, ie the team you know. In fact, in movies with good 'character development', audiences are apt to find themselves rooting for the evil guys as well - simply because they've gotten to know them, their motivations and their dog Albert a little better.

Spoiler

This is why the bunches of Marines dying at the end was totally cool and awesome, because we'd presumably had our monkey loyalties shifted to the Prims, when simple use of logic and careful thought would've at least raised some hard questions about what was actually going on.

 

[Thirteen]

I think this review, is alot mor entertaining than the actual movie, well atleast the review has more dept.

YouTube - Avatar Review (Part 1 of 2)

 

[Dansk]

I think this review, is alot mor entertaining than the actual movie, well atleast the review has more dept.

That. Was. Brilliant.