Just saw Avatar again since probably seeing it in the theater.
Didn't think about it much then. Thought it was fine, special effects were impressive, something about it didn't sit right, but it was OK and a fun theater experience.
Seeing it again, what did I think of it?
It's generally regarded by critics and audiences as being a movie about environmentalism, and a return to spiritual life in harmony with nature
>the day is saved by a Marine of the "sky-people" using advanced technology to inhabit a genetically engineered part-human part-Na'vi body: in other words the Na'vi would have been helpless against RDA without the advanced Avatar technology allowing a Marine, a cutting-techological-edge warrior they necessarily respect due to his warriors discipline, to infiltrate them. The message of the film is more along the lines of being pro-industrialism/pro-technocrat, suggesting nature is helpless without technology to defend it
>the movie itself was made with advanced CGI and motion capture technology in its time: it's arguably one of the most technologically intensive media productions mankind has created: the movie is a product of technology about as far removed from nature, which it supposedly celebrates, as you can get
>While the Na'vi are framed as being a "spiritual people" Eywa, the female spirit goddess of Pandora is explicitly explained to be the product of a brain-like network of neuron-like tree roots. Na'vi can physically connect to other life forms with their brain-tentacle things, and physically connect to the planetary tree network, and upload and download information to and from it. In other words, there's no room for mystery or spirituality, it's a scientific materialist worldview in a tribal coat of paint.
What do I think of it? Do I like it or hate it?
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I can't remember the names of any character from this movie
based
yeah homie shit's kino
You have memory problems?
Yea. OP here. Having literally just watched it, I only remember Jake Sully and Netyri.
Sigourney Weaver was there as Ellen Ripley, I think.
There was also the indian guy with a round face who played the character Rufus, the chemist in Inception who creates the roofies for the dream heist (bravo nolan).
There was also Evil Marine, and Sarah Connor/Vasquez from Aliens as the helicopter pilot.
I can't remember the names lol
FRICK YOU FRICK YOU FRICK YOU FRICK YOU
>he doesn't remember Col. Miles Quarich, Hero of the Imperium
I couldn't tell you the names of any character in any movie except for heavily marketed movies like Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar.
AI posts. I'm starting to notice them easier more and more
all life on pandora is the result of a civilization hitting technological singularity status and then reforming/restructuring itself to the most ideal form it can conceive of
thousands/millions of years later, humans find it.
That would be a neat story, but to me an ideal form of society post-singularity would be equipped to defend itself, without help.
If the filmmakers did intend Pandora to be a post-singularity planet, it's not written well.
>an ideal form of society post-singularity would be equipped to defend itself
they did most of the heavy lifting, and when shit really started looking potentially dangerous, every lifeform on pandora started fighting.
What I mean is a tighter script (or a more intelligent pre-singularity species) wouldn't have left a species of completely Naive humanoids behind.
The suggestion, as it stands, is that a civilization which achieved singularity with at least bio-engineering and possibly nanotech decided to leave itself vulnerable to attack by comparatively primitive species from space.
Just off the top of my head, the script could have been made more interesting if the Na'vi had myths passed down through the generations about their own flying ships and ancient technological civilization they had had in the past, and from there you could have a theme of the Na'vi trying to remember the ways of the ancients so that they can subdue the new threat from the humans.
the problemS with a technological singularity situation is mobility, resources, fabrication, maintenance, sustenance, relativity, etc. a species/civilization hits that point (maybe because of some absurd/rare element on their planet) and then it has to decide if its even worth it to sacrifice pieces of itself to try to find more resources to make more of itself, but the loss can never be recouped because communications between the host and colonies can never be fast enough to achieve something equivalent to just staying on the homeworld. then, after coming to the "stay" conclusion, maybe spending a few centuries/millennia watching for extraterrestrial threats, before lulling into the complacent confidence of knowing there isn't much that could really threaten it.
That’s all interesting but isn’t reflected in the film.
A better script would also not have included the word “un-obtanium”
They should've just nuked the tree.
Then again, I didn't think the RDA was military. Which is kinda weird because the British East India and Dutch East India companies had armies and ships to rival the British fleet.
It's undoubtedly a high-quality film that's well made. It tells its story well. The main problem is probably that it doesn't really do anything that stands out as being unexpected or surprising. The plot is just hopelessly generic.
Say hypothetically, you could pick any movie. For example, the original Star Wars. You get a huge budget and the benefit of having seen the original before. You carefully craft the absolute best version of the original Star Wars that you can, fixing all errors and just generally making it gorgeous. Unfortunately, no matter how well you do, everyone has still already seen that movie already.
there aren't very many stories about people going native when the "native" populations are believing in, serving, fighting for something that is objectively real. most of the stories we have are of people being disillusioned with x, finding other illusions/pussy in y, and sticking with y.
the idea it took billions of dollars for a one person to merely access something greater than what we have on earth is... well, put that way kinda obviously a reference to the apollo missions. like imagine if the main character of avatar just had to come home after all of that. then live out a few more decades on earth. not only never getting anywhere close to what happened before, but actively watching everyone/everything move further away from it every day of his life. its kinda amazing niel armstrong hasn't killed himself yet.
Last Samurai, Dances With Wolves, Disney's Pocahantas, The Postman.
all falls concretely into the included category of
>finding other illusions/pussy
No, their maguffins are very real within their narratives.
yes, pussy is very real.
So is blue pussy.
gods/spirits aren't, though. neither is projecting into a 12ft tall blue cat person.
I wish people would spend much more time doing exactly that, frankly. There's nothing wrong with doing a flawless performance of a classic work, and even if you're trying not to you'll leave your unique stamp on it.
Novelty is great, when it delivers something good. But once you have 1000 works in a genre, you probably have 100 that are really solid and maybe 10 that are truly great. Every time you make a new offering after that, even if you like up all your ducks just right you've still got a 90% chance of making something instantly forgettable (or worse - low hanging fruit has been picked) and only a 0.1% chance of hitting a new high water-mark. Your odds are probably much higher at delivering a slight improvement on something that is already agreed to be good. Though you'll probably still fail to strictly improve on the original, at least you'll bring something to the table - maybe your Obi-Wan or Greedo scene is better or something.
it's just like any 3d movie, like 'shark 3d' or whatever - everything else is compromised to make room for cool 3d stuff
You couldn't be more wrong if you tried
This board truly is filled with cinematically illiterate children
? I watched it. It was bad. Are you going to tell me I needed to watch other movies to understand how it was good? Because if so you confirm it failed
The planet is kino. The movie is just ok
I honestly think it would have been better if the unobtanium was somehow required for humanity to keep living. There's some throaway line from Sully about how humans destroyed Earth, and I personally think it would have been a better backstory had unobtanium been required for space flight. Humanity is desparate to mine it in a bid to find habitable replacements for Earth, and they've spent virtually their entire supply on the trek to Pandora.
It would have given more depth to the human characters, explain the desparate need for the space rock, and would have made Sully and co.'s betrayal more impactful and shocking. It would provide the audience with a more interesting moral question and would allow people to endlessly debate the movie for years to come- which would have helped Cameron a lot since it's taken nearly 15 years to make a sequel.
No matter what, it would have been a lot more interesting than the
>dude lmao humans are greedy! corporations bad!
that we got. The idea that they'll genocide an entire planet and in the pursuit of pleasing shareholders, while not unimaginable to me per se, seems like it would very easily blow up in their faces somehow.
What do you guys think?
I disagree. It makes the invaders tragic, and muddies their motivations. Humans that were in need would have been capable of simply telling the Na'vi their problems and gaining sympathy.
Letting the humans simply be greedy, explains how some of them are just straight-up buttholes. Also, it has the backing of history. It's how humans really are. They only stopped invading islands when they ran out of islands.
This. Not every villain needs a sobstory. Greed ia a thing.
Give me pure greed and disdain over 'I was abused by my teddy bear as a child!' pussy villains any day of the week.
Not everything has to be greyscale.
It's a repeat of Aliens. Very hacky writing from Cameron.
It's also generally a boring old sci-fi trope that greedy corporations endanger people at the expense of profits. Giving humans a motivation outside of
>muh shareholders
would make for a better story because honestly I don't believe shareholders would be okay with it to begin with.
The whole Avatar program is rendered moot with the invasion. They say Avatars are so expensive that they're willing to bring in a crippled ex-Marine with zero training because they can't afford to lose that much money. But why even make the investment when everybody's an evil butthole and will kill them all anyway? It makes little sense. What are they even supposed to do with the Avatars after they've killed all the Na'vi? It's so fricking stupid.
They should have either given more depth to humans or just have them show up and go scorched earth on everyone. I get that the movie is supposed to parallel Pocahontas and shit, but the English weren't spensing billions to disguise themselves as Natives just to go in and senselessly murder everyone anyway. People that sympathized with them didn't do so because they literally became part of their tribes.
because, in human history, there's zero instances of empires spending considerable time and money to find peaceful agreements and then going for a scorched earth policy once they fail, right?
spending billions on the avatar program, only for it to fail, would automatically motivate a full scale invasion to recoup the losses.
A human with enough motivation can grow food from the dirt. You're never going to come up with a believable reason for needing the unobtainium for any legitimate survival reason.
because there is never going to be a legitimate survival motivation for space exploration or first contact. if there is, the purpose of both is automatically defeated.
There are 10+ Billion humans. If Pandora's poisonous atmosphere wasn't protecting it, humans would swarm in like a plague of locusts. We'll give a sob story about being hungry, while there are literally billions of us.
we currently destroy nearly twice the amount of food we consume, to maintain profit margins of the corporate farms producing it. don't think many people alive could spin this as a sob story for the poor fortune 500 companies.
If they could, there wouldn't be any time left in the movie for much else.
Yep, that’s an improvement to the script
I'm afraid he just came out with the wrong story to sell his immaculate worldbuilding and cinematography. It's as simple as that. It should have been focused on the space marines, maybe a generic hero's journey story of a young marine, but something more relate-able. Not the cartoon we got. Nobody cares about those blue smurf cats.