Posted on 12/18/2009 7:15:12 AM PST by Neoavatara
ames Cameron decade long production of Avatar finally came to the big screen on Friday. With the cutting edge technology and 3D special effects, Cameron tried to bring the alien world of Pandora from his mind's eye to the movie theater.
(Excerpt) Read more at neoavatara.com ...
Anti-capitalist tripe!
Let it dye.
You know what is funny about your post? Your first sentence says "Attempts to characterize it as a retelling of white imperialism are just cheap political hits." And then you go on to describe the movie which sounds like the perfect cliche of white imperialism. I suspect the only thing missing was the armband swastikas (which is probably why you missed the imperialism angle.) .
Thanks for your post. I found it very humorous.
I was mildly to moderately disappointed. Personally I did not find it as visually original as I had hoped and, as many have pointed out, the story line is cliched and very left wing with anticapitalist, antimilitary, anti war on terror and pro man-caused climate change themes woven into the story line in various degrees.
The special effects were good, of course. (It is ironic that only free enterprise capitalism could have developed the technology that made this movie possible.) Like too many movies now days, this one tries to excel based on special effects alone and in the absence of a strong and original underlying story.
Titanic was one of the most emotionally powerful films that I have seen. Avatar, on the other hand left me unmoved.
That said, I don't regret having seen it.
“As a science fiction movie, it achieves its goal; as a story telling vehicle, it falls just a little bit short.”
Disagree. I enjoyed the storyline and thought Cameron did a real good job with this movie. The visual effects, especially in 3-D, were outstanding of course. This knee-jerk reaction about the movie being anti-capitalist, anti-American, anti-everything conservative is crap. It’s about human nature going unchecked by necessary checks and balances, picking on the innocent for the sake of personal gain. Never once did I think the movie was implying that captialism, the military, or America being bad. And I went to the movie expecting it to be just that, based on what I read on FR prior to seeing the movie. I was pleasantly surprised.
“This was a beautiful movie. Attempts to characterize it as a retelling of white imperialism are just cheap political hits. The movie uses popular myth about the noble savage to good effect. Let’s face it, the people mining that planet for “unobtanium” were mostly just a-holes. Anyone want to seriously maintain that Cortez and the rest of the conquistadores were Christians trying to bring the light of Jesus to the ignorant savages? This was a classic good guys fighting against the bad guys. So what that most of the bad guys were humans? After all, right against wrong should prevail no matter the species.”
Thank you. Everybody else I guess is content bashing something without actually going to watch it because someone else screamed “LIBERALS!”. I watched the movie expecting all this talk to be true and was delighted to discover the complete opposite.
I’ve seen the movie, and it’s not anti-capitalism. It’s just anti-greedy, heartless, murderous exploitation.
There’s a difference.
I’ll also say that it’s absolutely stunning, at least as I saw it in 3D.
Now I wouldn’t accuse the story of being totally unpredictable, by any means, but that’s okay. It’s still a decent enough story, and the visuals more than make up for the lack of very many unpredictable plot twists.
At some point I will be seeing it again.
I actually SAW the movie, in 3D.
I loved it, and will be seeing it again. Probably multiple times, which is a lot more than I can say for the vast majority of movies I see.
It will be a financial disaster...Cameron is a nasty mean SOB...ask any of the actors that have been in his movies...none of them will ever appear in another one...
Sounds like you’ll love this movie. We really do need a new world order. All capitalists are evil, especially white military types. Yes, kill all the capitalists and their young and the world will live in harmony.
A few things:
You haven't read some earlier posts I made that said I wanted to see this movie.
I made it clear that I was not agreeing with the review of the film I was commenting on. Only to say that it touched on a common trope that I agree with about many movies—and science fiction in particularly—where unbelieving atheists and leftists side often root for groups they have nothing in common with for the sake of seeing The Man (In the movie "The Corporation") get their comeupance. In short: my comment wasn't about Avatar but about a trend in Hollywood films.
Anyway, I'm tired of the "evil corporation" as sci-fi film bogeyman—and its hand-maiden, the Ugly American
Did you see 'Moon' this summer? Evil corporation puts clones on moonbase to mine their rare element. Then incinerates them after telling them they are "going home."
'District 9?' Evil corporation wants the DNA of an alien so they can conduct weapons research.
'Aliens?' Evil corporation wants to bring back an Alien for bio-weapons research.
'Alien?' Evil corporation plants an android among a human crew to assess a deepspace horror.
'Silent Running?' Evil corporations take over earth and order the crew of the Valley Forge to jettison its cargo of bio-diversity eco-domes because they "aren't needed" on a world that survives on synthetics.
(Can you at least tell by now that I actually like science-fiction films and am sympathetic to how protagonists and antagonists are portrayed?)
In an earlier time, Ayn Rand decried the role of the "evil scientist" in films like Frankenstein and the Island of Dr. Mareau baecause a scientist is a seeker of knoweldge, not a perverter of it. It was a stupid, hackneyed Hollywood cliche then and made legitimate researchers look bad.
Ultimately, Hollywood has settled on a new cliche: that all in-movie corporations are bad. It's an easy straw dog to set up and, because there are bad ones you can point to, it has a superficial believeabilty—but that's not the reality.
Wouldn't you like to see a science fiction movie where there's a corporation that isn't bad? Cortez and Enron can't be the models for the majority of human behavior and corporations in sci-fi films can they?
So anyway, I saw the movie twice today and loved it. It was visually stunning and the first half of the film, to the point where Jake and Nateri mate, is the best half and the heart of the film.
The last reel was also a riveting and spectacular action film all on its own. 'Revenge of the Jedi' just aged 10 years overnight—Avatar really is that much more sophisticated. Still, the ending rings a bit hollow. I thought the film went out of it's way early on to make the characters of Miles Quaritch ("The Colonel") and Parker Selfridge "the corporation's Project Manager) into typical straw dogs. There isn't an ounce of nuance to them, so they're easy to hate and hiss at; then cheer when they finally get theirs at the hands of the well-defined and sympathetic Na'vi. That, I thought, was cheap. If they had had mustaches, I'm almost certain they would have twirled them.
And I shouldn't get into the jargon that the mercenaries use on Pandora to paint the green-suited troopers in red-white-and-blue: "Oorah", "Roger that", "Copy that", "I'm from Jar-head clan", "Goin', hot", "Death from above", "Let's boogie", "Alright, let's dance." There's more, I know. Does anyone else but Americans really say things like that in those words? And would they still say those things in 2154???
If they're mercenaries, which the movie goes to pains to state, let's hear some foreign military idioms to round out the force as "from Earth" and not "from America." The French Foreign Legion has some, I'll bet.
So, no, my comment wasn't knee-jerk. I just didn't think it necessary to pull out my homework. But here it is now.
I had almost forgotten to be ashamed of being a white capitalist. For those of you who don’t know, the Indians, feather not dot, did not know about killing until the white guys showed up.
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