Avatar

[samvara]

Avatar was unbelievably pretty; the 3D effects were gorgeous and well integrated although I now have a pounding headache.

The movie itself was composed of the most humiliating, colonial, imperialist, sexist, capitalist, racist, militarist montage I have ever seen. I haven't felt the urge to walk out of a movie in years but I hung in there hoping miserably for a magical fix that didn't come. I am embarrassed on behalf of the human race.

Comments

[copracat]

One day the world will recognise that Gale Anne Hurd was responsible for anything good about Aliens and the Terminator series and Cameron will be tossed onto the George Lucas scrapheap where he belongs.

[samvara]

word :)

[sara]

Yeah, C's got tomorrow off work, and he said, "Hey, we could go see Avatar!" and I said, "Or we could save seventeen dollars and stay home and hit ourselves in the faces with hammers for free!"

[samvara]

I totally vote for the hammer - although the effects were *very* pretty.

[ironed_orchid]

Wow. I mean, I didn't expect to see any good reviews, but wow.

[samvara]

I was a bit surprised myself. I went in almost completely unspoiled - hadn't seen the trailer and spent most of the movie thinking 'why are they telling this story?'

[ironed_orchid]

I actually heard of it through watchiing Bones, and then marsianer and I had a whole convo about it where I was thinking of Avatar: the last Airbender and he was thinking of of the James Cameron movie, but apparently both are racist so we were both right.

[samvara]

*g* Airbender appears to have been utterly whitewashed and Avatar has cast black people as blue people playing 'noble savages who need the uneducated marine to save them'

[ironed_orchid]

Yup. Both fail at race politics.

[angriest]

It's actually scoring 84% on Metacritic. Which isn't to say the film isn't everything Samvara says it is (I don't think it is, but I'm just one guy and am often hilariously wrong about things), but as far as critical appraisals go that's fairly sensational feedback for the movie. Right now you'd struggle to find a negative review among the professional critics.

[ironed_orchid]

I was actually thinking "among my peer group" rather than "among fans of big budget films"

[angriest]

Ah, I get it now.

(Although the 84% score from Metacritic is from professional critics, who don't necessarily all love big budget cinema in general.)

[sarren.livejournal.com]

That's so disappointing. *sigh* When I saw the promo it looked like it could be so damn awesome, I knew they'd fuck it up. *big sigh*

[black-samvara.livejournal.com]

It was very pretty!

but yeah, I hadn't actually seen the trailer and was almost completely unspoiled and they just kept... doing things... and I just kept... waiting for it to be not so... and it kept not happening :(

[angriest.livejournal.com]

If I disagree entirely with your opinion, I'm worried it's going to make me look like a colonial imperialist who loves capitalism, the military and hates people who do not share my skin colour.

But I do - I disagree entirely, and I'm getting genuinely unsettled that I've now seen and loved a film twice in one week that's almost certainly my favourite film of the year, and apparently it's stuffed to the gills with all this terrible stuff that I honestly can't percieve. In fact I feel the opposite in many regards - such as the military being there to make millions of dollars, and the film very clearly demonstrates to its audience that it's a bad thing. Surely that makes it the opposite of militarist and capitalist?

[black-samvara.livejournal.com]

You are totally allowed to love it. It was visually beautiful, had well paced action sequences and I liked the use of language - particularly how the swearing felt very natural.

You are also totally allowed to disagree, I'll respond to your comment about it being militarist and capitalist if you don't mind although I'm also happy to not get into a debate about it if you'd prefer. Forgive me if I'm a little incoherent, there are far more articulate people out there who could probably say this better.

Avatar is set in a future where the dominant cultural values are still militarist and capitalist, human kind hasn't evolved past it and nothing in this movie says it's going to stop happening in the future. This isn't showcasing how bad these values are, it's assuming the human race has these values in the future and won't learn from them or grow beyond them, it says the status quo is the same and will stay the same - which is effectively endorsing them.

Further, allowing Jake, the adopted-but-now-most-talented-warrior to guide the military-I've-got-a-bigger-dickflying dinosaur-than-you battle didn't demonstrate that militaristic battles/values are bad, it demonstrated you'd better have a representative of the American military on your side because their way is still The Way.

If you're going to tell a story about human failings, say something interesting, don't just say it's embedded in our culture and always will be. We already know fear that. If I thought this movie was supposed to be a depressing tragedy about the inherent evil of human nature I could maybe make a case for that but I doubt it.

Watching this movie was an interesting experience, I felt a growing wave of pain/shame/embarrassment/regret as the movie progressed. I felt like I was watching someone talking proudly about something deeply offensive with absolutely no self-perception, I was nearly in tears when Jake jumped to a bigger pterodactyl.

[justadecoy]

re: the bigger pterodactyl.
I was shocked at this part (along with many other parts) as they made a huge deal out of the bond for life thing when he got the first one. I actually had to check with Jay that I didn't miss something when it never showed up again. It really felt like the poor thing was thrown in the dirt for a bigger gun.

[samvara]

I felt the whole thing was a bit 'off' - you develop this life-bond by jumping it and beating it up and then you abandon it for a shinier trophy-pterodactyl.

The whole 'white boy walks in and shows the innocent tribal people how it's done' vibe wasn't working for me either :(

[angriest.livejournal.com]

I actually am desperately craving the discussion, I'm just so bruised and bloodied this year from stumbling around in online discussions about race/gender/disability/takeyourpick and finding myself positioned by others into apparently claiming something I'm not. But I really want to talk about it because the wildly different reactions are fascinating me (and often confusing me).

I found the film to be a fairly blunt and heavy-handed criticism of US military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. It presented a combinated of military and corporate interests driving into an unfamiliar world not of their own, and simply assuming superiority and greater wisdom. ("They're just trees, they can move somewhere else!", and so on.) The destruction of the Hometree had so much similarity to the fall of the World Trade Centre in 2001 as well - I can't imagine Cameron wasn't pushing all of these buttons on purpose.

I think it's interesting that the film continues Cameron's career-long distrust and dislike of corporate interests, which is of course hilariously ironic given that Rupert Murdoch gave him more than $250m to make Avatar. I mean in the Terminator films you have a corporation creating an AI to make money and bringing about the end of the world. In Aliens you have a faceless corporation caring more about profits for their bioweapons division than the lives of their employees. In The Abyss you have corporate interests signing a scientific installation over to the military with disastrous results. In Titanic corporate interests lead to a ship sinking and few thousand poor people dying horribly at sea. Avatar fits in very smoothly with those films I think, in that it presents a military-backed corporate project that values a $20m per kilo rock above the lives and welfare of an entire nation of people. It has a colonel who happilly drinks a cup of coffee while committing genocide. It has a scientific/diplomatic mission getting screwed over because its priorities no longer fit a profit margin.

I think the film goes out of its way to demonstrate that those military and capitalist values are wrong. This is why I found your response so unfamiliar, because where you saw a pro-military, pro-capitalist film, I honestly saw (and continue to see) the opposite of that. It doesn't endorse these values, I think it says (rather nihilistically) "these values will never change, and that is horrible". You're supposed to feel pain, shame and regret, because Cameron's isn't telling a nice story. You mention the possibility that the film may be a depressing tragedy about the evils of human nature - I totally think that is, in part, what Cameron is saying.

I also think of all the humans only Jake is able to actually engage with the Na'vi and respect them as equals. To the Colonel and Parker they're an obstacle and to Sigourney Weaver and her team they're a science experiment. To Jake they are people.

[black-samvara.livejournal.com]

heya, not ignoring you, just struggling to find a way to express this in a way that might make sense to you... pondering

[angriest.livejournal.com]

Tha's cool.

[amarillion.livejournal.com]

I thoroughly enjoyed Avatar last night. I miffed mildly at some character deaths, but otherwise barely noticed being far too happily wrapped up it the pretty and hawt.
It has Sigourney Weaver innit. That made my year. The scenery was so breathtakingly gorgeous that after the first few minutes I stopped remember it was cgi.
As for the story? Well from what I understand the story came second to the Scenery and Worldbuilding.
Also I seem to lack enough empathy to give a shit about the apparent issues in it. Because I seriously wanted that bigger pterodactyl And the big kitty, definitely the big kitty.
Flashy cgi, good guys won, bad guys lost, that all I can ask from a big budget movie. You want introspection and wise words on the state of humanity, then your better of sticking to indie films.

[black-samvara.livejournal.com]

*grins* that's pretty much my final take.

It's very, very pretty!