Posted on 02/20/2010 1:19:42 PM PST by mainestategop
YOU don’t have to if you don’t want to. Live in your coccoon and read future shock all afternoon. Your loss!
Here’s another post from today about the film.Seems to feel as i do .
To: GeronL
I can’t take it anymore. Alright first let me start off with this:
SPOILER ALERT!
If you are one of the 5 people left who havn’t seen this movie stop here.
After seeing this movie in IMAX 3D and having already heard all the political reasons why I would hate it I went in expecting to be badly disappointed. I was not. The story certainly leaned a bit left but it was by no means as bad as it is being portrayed.
Cameron gives a few “outs” to keep the movie from going ultra political.
False point 1: The movie is not about evil white military. The movie goes to great lengths to describe these people as MERCENARIES hired by corporate interests.
False point 2: The “rape the land for its resources” issue. The characters are stereotyped but the CEO who is in charge of the mission is trying to get a job done and is portrayed as actually NOT understanding the issues at hand. Eventually, by the end, he starts to get it. The movie portrays this as the laws of unintended consequences. Sometimes things are set in motion that cannot be stopped. Whatever the original motive was, it was not inherently “evil” it simply WAS. There’s definately a desire for profit but the corporate bigwig is not really portrayed as any kind of hard core bad guy.
False point 2: The “save nature” issue. This is a BIG PLOT SPOILER. Sorry but it’s important. The movie offers a massive olive branch to politics in this area. Instead of going all “Gaia” (Think Final Fantasy the movie) they offer a solid scientific reason why this particular area of the planet needs to be left alone. The spiritual aspect of the movie is fully explained by the end and makes complete sense. Also, based on the story told, there’s no particular reason that some OTHER part of the planet couldn’t have been mined it’s just that no one right up until the end understood that what these creatures worshipped was more than just faith. It was actually a “........” (not giving it all away).
So there you have it. In my opinion the movie’s story is not good enough to be easily rewatchable a thousand times like Star Wars but it certainly was not an unbearable endless global warming love fest like your average “made for Syfy channel” movie.
Go see it in 3D while you can. It’s a once in a lifetime experience and missing it would be a mistake.
Don't hold your breath while waiting. By the way doesn't the movie make clear that a result of the expulsion from the planet will be the extermination of life on earth, and that that would be a good thing?
Actually I am looking forward to seeing the new restored version of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” with the lost scenes put in.
I would love to see “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” and “The Last Laugh” in a theater setting but may have to settle for getting them on DVD.
I will see Avatar soon enough in my life, it will be on TV or something. I am sure I am missing one hell of a special effects stage show by not seeing Britney Spears or Kayne West live but somehow I will live with it.
**Go see it in 3D while you can. It’s a once in a lifetime experience and missing it would be a mistake.**
It isn’t once in a lifetime, the movie made a bunch of money so other movies is going to copy and improve the technology.
The technology and effects not the story is why everybody is saying “Dude you have to go see it” and I am like “Dude get a life”
I think this is a poor way of countering the Potter derangement. IF Potter were truly anti-Christian then it would be perfectly appropriate for Christians to be concerned about the influence of such a popular series on children. The fact is, those people are wrong on matters of fact, not priorities. Your argument is akin to saying conservatives should not worry about Democratic health care reform because millions of babies are being aborted.
The big problem with Cameron's film is that it is a departure from science fiction orthodoxy. Instead of aliens invading Earth and persecuting humans, its the other way around. Some of us who grew up with War of the Worlds, Independence day, Aliens, Star Trek, Buck Rogers, Marvin the Martian and similar titles probably weren't ready for this.
Puh-leaze. Having sympathetic aliens set against selfish Earthlings is closer to being a cliche than a "a departure from science fiction orthodoxy." The concept of humans being the ignorant, destructive bad guys is about as "new" as The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Star Trek's 'Devil in the Dark' (1967) and 'The Voyage Home' (1986), E.T. (1982), Starman (1984), Cocoon (1985), etc., on up through recent movies including District 9 and Battle for Terra, not to mention the *very wide* exploration of this idea in written SF.
FYI, I have not yet seen Avatar, but plan to when it gets to our local 'cheap' theater.
I didnt hear that. We are intersteallar at the time so I imagine if things on Earth don't work out theres a terraformed mars or Venus a few other worlds in other star systems ETC.
Dude, I feel your pain . NOT!
And actually the supposed property rights theme is 100% bogus too. The true theme is ANTI property rights for the simple reason that the Na'vi, like all virtuous circle-of-life native types, didn't believe in private property. To them, nature and the forests were owned by everyone and therefore by no one. It wasn't until the greedy corporate types arrived that property rights were introduced. The Na'vi would violently disagree with the notion that someone could "own" a part of nature and use it for their own purpose.
James Cameron used the Na'vi to represent humanity in Rousseau's "state of nature" which is PRE property rights. And he held this up as an ideal, which is what you'd expect a leftwinger to do. The Na'vi were perfect collectivists, perfect socialists. They weren't into property rights.
Absolutely right. Which is why I won't bother to go to the theater to watch what is a collection of warmed-over cliches of 60s-70s "post-colonial" (i.e., leftist) sci-fi (a la LeGuin's _The Word for World is Forest_).
It would be like watching yet another film with Vietnam war soldiers/vets portrayed as crazed babykillers -- both morally repugnant AND tedious.
A very lucid point, thank you. I should have made it more clear from the context that I wasn’t referring to the Navi interest in property rights, as what I actually meant was the concept of property rights as a real value standing alone.
What I meant was that when the left subverts a value, they take it and twist it. Killing a baby becomes a privacy right. Stealing your property becomes eminent domain (Kelo v. New London). Taking your freedom and killing grandma becomes Health Care Reform.
But thank you for spelling out another way the philosophy of the Left was guiding this movie.
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