Avatar was actually pretty good.
[insert standard response about it being Dances With Wolves in space with completely unsympathetic natives]
If you were cheering for the Marines to burn that fucking forest, lets' hear it.
I once watched an "Everything wrong with Avatar in two minutes" (or some short duration) clip. The number of times the narrator said "Visionary film maker rips off <premise>" was amazing.
In all seriousness, though, it really was. Cameron ripped stuff directly from pretty much every notable 'culture clash/"empty civilization" meets "noble savages" amid discovery and misunderstanding' plot ever penned and then he missed the bloody point by diluting the morality of the situation and making the supposed protagonists and un-noble savages so unlikeable that the foaming-at-the-mouth corporate fascists were the more tolerable and more tolerant of the factions.
How were they less likable than the corporate fascists?
I mean, I understand how James Cameron himself is less likable - being pretentious and a hack and what have you - but not how his protagonists are.
Why do people care about the Na'vi? Because they were just trying to live their lives blah blah blah. So:
1. They were also less openminded than the predatory human paramilitaries who at least
attempted to communicate and negotiate in terms understandable to the other party.
2. That dramatic final battle bullshit? Think about it. Eywa could have intervened
at any time. She/it could have stopped the whole farce from ever happening. But instead she/it waited until the last moment, in part because Cameron is a hack and can't create sympathetic characters or narrative tension to save his ass, but also in-universe because... why? And this is the entity the Na'vi worship. Regardless of whether Eywa gave a shit about the Na'vi, they're blind and dogmatic enough to worship something that doesn't particularly care for their well-being, and the only way they accept any sort of meaningful interactions with humans is if they fall into line even unto the point of changing everything about themselves to conform.
3. Human-boy. That fucker. He betrayed friends and co-workers so that he could get laid. By someone who doesn't care about him unless he mindlessly allows himself to be molded into a copy of her beliefs. See the reverse as well.
4. Remember that conversation as the bulldozers are approaching? When human-boy tells the Na'vi that Q-whatever-his-name-is has given up on trying to convince the Na'vi to negotiate and is moving to take the plot coupon the corporation wants? And he mentions that he originally started using the Avatar and meeting with the Na'vi to learn more about them, rather than because he was inexplicably captivated by their culture/religion and instantly wanted to convert? And they all decide that he's scum and hate him, despite the 'revelation' being completely obvious and fairly predictable?
The Na'vi aren't just assholes, they're
oblivious, self-centered assholes. It's not their fault from a Doylist perspective 'cause Cameron is a terrible writer, but in-universe it totally is.
5. Cameron was so busy ripping off plots from older, better films that he forgot to steal elements of AmerIndian culture. So the Na'vi aren't just oblivious self-centered assholes, they also do basically nothing with their lives beyond eating, shitting, and worshipping that asshole goddess of theirs. It took a novelization to remember that oh, wait, they're supposed to be likeable individuals instead of poorly-painted cardboard cutouts labelled 'SYMPATHETIC AND INTERESTING'.
6. Those head-tentacle things? That they use to tame the animals? That are basically fibre-optic cables linked directly to their brains? Yay, animal-taming by mindrape. At least they don't have sex with them too. OH WAIT THEY DO BUT THAT SCENE WAS DELETED.
7. Let's be honest here. If the Na'vi weren't sexy just-different-enough-to-avoid-the-Uncanny-Valley aliens, would anyone in- or out-of-story given two shits about them? If they were little lumps of flesh and bone oozing pus, would anyone even remotely considered their attitudes as enlightened and acceptable, even relative to the humans?
I could go on, but at the end of the day it's a shitty movie full of shitty people doing shitty things made by a shitty man, and I don't really give a shit.
Author
Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 14840507 times)