No.31831
You're a fucking retard
No.31832
>>31830wtf is up with all these breadtube tier pop culture threads? we need a general for that shit.
Anyway avatar is surprisingly subversive for 2009, criticizing the war on terror, imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism. However the main story is (spoiler) about
a white guy who becomes trans-native.
If you're talking about the modern sequel, no one has seen that and it took too long to come out. Avatar was sort of in tune with the zeitgeist of the 2000s in a way it isn't now in our post radical age.
No.31833
>>31832>replying to shit threadsyou're the reason they arent dying within an hour
No.31834
>>31830>Avatar>anti-AmericanThe protagonist is an American. Yes, most of the baddies are also Americans, but that's because American is the only nationality represented in the films beyond that Australian whaler guy because Avatar is an American movie made by an American largely for other Americans. The human mission on Pandora is supposed to be international.
No.31835
The marines were the good guys though
No.31836
>>31830It will end with a large faction of humanity (or all of them) uniting with the Na'vi. James Cameron has already said that some scenes in future films take place on Earth. So if he has balls he will show what the state of workers is on "Empire Earth" and the movements against Pandora colonialism. In the grand scheme, the saga will have a primitivist message, instead of imagining synthesis between humans and Na'vi where they combine their unity and respect for nature with industry.
No.31837
>>31832Bro only redditors thought Avatar 2 was gonna flop. And as always they were wrong.
No.31838
まだ今年では資本が本当に反資本主義の多い買い物を売ると信じるのはバカらしい人しかないですよ。
No.31840
>>31832> the modern sequel, no one has seen thatIt's literally one of the biggest movies of all time. what are you talking about
No.31842
>反資本主義商品すごい！>>31838知能が低いバカサヨが多いので仕方ないよ
No.31843
Noble savage trope, now with more oppressed natives to ridicule.
Looked good, story is shit.
I gotta be honest I would kill space whales if their brain goo gave humans eternal life.
No.31844
there's a narrative about how "AVATAR has no cultural impact because there are no memes about it"
I wondered what people think about this? It seems weird to state that a cultural object can only be validated by whether its memeable. Is it possible that Avatar's true cultural impact might be inject some class and ecological consciousness (In blunt terms) into the millions of people who have seen it?
Like, people will scoff at this idea, but then what makes some dense book of theory more viable a means of spreading radical ideas? (saying this as someone who also enjoys reading dense theory)
No.31845
>>31838>まだ今年では資本が本当に反資本主義の多い買い物を売ると信じるのはバカらしい人しかないですよ。>Translation: It would be foolish to believe that capital will sell really anti-capitalist purchases this year yet.Ok, so now what? How do we spread ideas through society without being part of capitalism in some form? eagerly awaiting your suggestions on this.
No.31846
>>31836>In the grand scheme, the saga will have a primitivist message, instead of imagining synthesis between humans and Na'vi where they combine their unity and respect for nature with industry.No the message is that humans (or imperials) need to sacrifice in order to gain their humanity back. How can you say that synthesis isn't the message when Jake literally becomes leader and in the second film Grace's child has special christ-like powers?
No.31847
>>31843cont: Its an anti-marxist movie at its core.
>Muh nature>Muh balance>Muh magical native blood magic>The natives don't want the technology they want to be tree peopleIf a marxist had made this movie Jake Sully would have helped the natives to industrialise and develop weapon manufacturing capabilities to ward off future invasions instead of fleeing to the sea (for no real reason) while letting the humans dominate pandora unopposed.
The movie is an individualistic coloniser view of colonisation. In the end there will be no liberation, the main protagonist (white saviour) only cares if his own little family and tribe if safe even if it means submitting to the US army colonization analogy. There is little to no self liberation in this series, in the first movie they get bailed out by the global hivemind superintelligence and then in the second movie they totally forget they kicked their ass and just say "oh well guess i will go to the reservations".
Good visuals, terrible messaging. The only realistic part of Avatar 2 is the very start where they are actually conducting protracted peoples war against the colonisers only for them to just say "oh no they have 10 people in blue suits and took one of our adopted kids, better flee for dear life and give up this entire war in which thousands already died."
No.31848
>>31844>Is it possible that Avatar's true cultural impact might be inject some class and ecological consciousness (In blunt terms) into the millions of people who have seen it?There's thousands of cultural products like this that have come out in the last 20 years, young people have drifted left but the old have drifted right, I see no real evidence that these kind of 'soft anticapitalist' works have helped.
No.31849
>>31848On the other hand, it's reasonable to think they might have helped radicalise the young, but I see no reason to jizz over any particular work.
No.31850
>>31845>spread ideas through society without being part of capitalism in some form>strawman>retardedthis must be bait, what he's saying is that soyfacing on commodities being anticapitalist is fucking retarded and not that you couldn't spread ideas while being part of capitalism.
No.31851
ITT
>Leninoids hating on indigenous people as always>>31847Industrialize with what? This is aggressively retarded.
No.31852
>>31847>If a marxist had made this movie Jake Sully would have helped the natives to industrialiseindustrialise with what capital? What are they gonna do, start sending out young Na'vi to work on mines on Earth so they can send remittances back via cryoship cryptos?
What the actual nonsense are you talking about.Did you just arrive here in a time machine from some 1960s LatAm economics conference?
No.31853
It's alright, but I'm hoping later movies pull a Dune and the Na'vi become imperialist warmongers once they reach the space age, becoming no better than the humans who once tried to eradicate them
No.31854
>>31830Le funny colored aliens are a substitute for aboriginal or foreign races meme
No.31855
>>31851>>31852The entire fucking industrial base complete with an army of scientists they captured you actual fuckos.
They have an army of bulldozers, refinaries, assembly plants, etc. They could build and maintain their entire arsenal. Do you really think they ship spare parts, ammo and potatoes wholesale 4 and a half fucking lightyears? That entire base + the other operations they had have capabilities to manufacture weapons, vehicles, and arms.
No.31856
>>31855>to defeat the people whose entire way of life is destructive to our ecology, we should take up a way of life that is destructive to our ecologyWater tight logic. Can't wait till the fourth movie when the tanks start rolling in to the Na'vi village of Boo'da Pest
No.31857
>>31856Kill yourself primitivist.
The entire point is that "MUH WAY OF LIFE MUH TREES" is bullshit dreamed up by european retards who created the myth of noble savages who dont want to live in houses, who dont want medicine, who dont want industry.
In reality, native people want industrial development too. And the only way to defend against an industrial aggressive power is to industrialize yourself.
No.31858
>>31855I'd watch if the saga was evolving to the point where the savages "westernize", build a space fleet and bring hippie eco socialism to dystopian cyberpunk earth trough a wise use of industrial violence in an intergalactic warfare. But James Cameron just like fishes and shit.
No.31859
>>31857>In reality, native people want industrial development too.Well it seems like they were perfectly happy without it before the white man showed up.
No.31860
someone should post the thread about how like it's an esoteric pro incel tale where the main characters are essentially isekaied and the virtual animu intrerest becomes reality eventually cuz technologyyy powers and also there's probably metaphors of teen rebellion?
No.31861
>>31859He’s trying to justify a productivist viewpoint that’s necessarily centered around the notion of industry being necessary for waging industrial scale wars
Funny shit
No.31862
>>31860I'm interested also, it's not it but this text may interest you
https://markfisherreblog.tumblr.com/post/32522465887/terminator-vs-avatar-notes-on-accelerationism>James Cameron’s Avatar is significant because it highlights the disavowal that is constitutive of late capitalist subjectivity, even as it shows how this disavowal is undercut. We can only play at being inner primitives by virtue of the very cinematic proto-VR technology whose very existence presupposes the destruction of the organic idyll of Pandora. No.31864
>>31840>>31837I haven't seen it, personally
No.31865
>>31863Who am I supposed to be siding with in this
No.31866
>>31830Its the opposite. The blulaks represent american imperialism.
No.31867
>>31859>Well it seems like they were perfectly happy without it before the white man showed upWOW. IMAGINARY MADE UP BY WHITE PEOPLE NOBLE SAVAGES ARE HAPPY TO BE SAVAGES? WHO WOULD HAVE THUNK.
If you were actually a communist you would know this movie perpetuates the noble savage myth about actual natives, with the new na'vi race being a direct fucking ripoff of Maori culture.
>>31861Yes. Creating guns and industry is necessary to defend against industrial capitalism and capitalist colonialism.
You can shove your morals up your ass, the only way to save the na'vi is for the na'vi to stop resisting the march of historical materialism, and embrace the weapons and tools to fight a genocidal foe who will not hesitate to exterminate them and take their moon for themselves.
You fuckers should really read about the noble savage myths.
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/631/no-future-in-the-past/
>Is this not an example of worshipping the 'noble savage' and wanting to return to the past? Obviously not. Marxists are well aware of the material limitations of primitive communism. Conditions permitted only the partial development of the individual personality. In fact in terms of potential they were stunted, and that necessarily meant relations between human beings and nature achieved some kind of sustainable balance only through a process, often highly destructive, of trial and error.
>Australia's wise aboriginal ecologists, the Amerindian nature-lovers and all the other native peoples who lived in perfect harmony with their environment are in many ways, if not simply, the creations of the green imagination. Upon examination they turn out to rather more problematic.
>Nothing in history remotely compares with capitalism's plunder of nature. Yet pre-capitalist societies, including communistic tribal peoples, were quite capable of inflicting horrendous damage upon their environment. There was overhunting, deforestation, slash and burn, the ruination of the soil "¦ and mass extinctions. Tribal people often managed to develop sophisticated religious myths, customs and social structures which helped establish a sustainable balance between themselves and the rest of nature. Yet this was often, because of their own previous actions, a much reduced and impoverished nature. It is therefore totally one-sided to present tribal peoples as model custodians. No.31868
>>31830It's idealistic nonsense, it's the lib version of "reject modernity, return to tradition" the movie. It's telling that some parts of the western left adores this movie in blind reaction to chinlets hating it or because they're so desperate for some "progressive" entertainment in this neoliberal media hellscape that they turn a blind eye.
If Avatar was really serious about its supposed themes it should have shown the real consequences of capitalism and imperialism: brutal, naked exploitation and genocide of the Na'vi by human corporations. Instead it coddles its audience with false hope and romanticism.
No.31869
>>31867Huh, would you look at that, an actual schizophreniac.
No.31870
1st one was shit. boring. long. bad acting. not going to see the second one. a blockbuster movie can't be anti-capitalist or anti-american. the internet left collectively pretending these movies aren't just like capeshit is embarrassing.
No.31875
>>31832>However the main story is (spoiler) about a white guy who becomes trans-nativeGiven that a big part of the sequel is about
reviving dead characters as new avatars, it looks like Matt Christman was right about the overall point and direction of the movies being "this is you, pandora is Earth, you are na'vi, we have this in real life but we're detroying it."
>>31836The beginning of the first movie has a few minutes on Earth in the extended edition too. The angle they're going for will probably be along the lines of showing the Na'vi that a lot of humans are also victims of the economic system, which is the real problem.
>In the grand scheme, the saga will have a primitivist message, instead of imagining synthesis between humans and Na'vi where they combine their unity and respect for nature with industry.I find that hard to believe since the synthesis is already happening even in the first movie with Jake and moreso in the second movie with the recom avatars and Kiri. As idyllic as Pandora is portrayed, the technology gap is still pragmatically a pretty big disadvantage that lets the na'vi get fucked over more than once. There's even a deleted scene where this is brought up in the first movie by the turncoat gunship pilot who is ultimately proven correct since the na'vi are losing the battle until the wildlife joins them.
"Abolishing the frontier" and synthesizing the two sides seems like the obvious direction based on what the movies have set up. Cameron has said that the 4th movie is going to go in a direction nobody will predict, though, so something as simple as RETVRN TO NATURE should definitely be out as a possibility.
>>31844>It seems weird to state that a cultural object can only be validated by whether its memeable.Yeah that's a very reddit thing to think. Avatar obviously had a large footprint given how many saw it. There's not a lot of memes from plenty of very influential pieces of art. This could be a whole topic unto itself, but the meme-ability of a movie or show has become an actual marketing consideration to the point that studios have (pretty blatantly) started intentionally putting things into their products that are intended to be made into memes (and will go so far as to make the memes and then astroturf them themselves). The response about Avatar not being meme-able reminds me a lot of people looking at a socialist cityscape and calling it "soulless" because there are no advertisements to be seen.
>Is it possible that Avatar's true cultural impact might be inject some class and ecological consciousness (In blunt terms) into the millions of people who have seen it?Probably to some degree.
On re-watching the first movie recently I noticed much more content that was critical of capitalism and imperialism than I did back in 09 when I was less politically aware. I mean the general angle of "invade for resource" is obvious to a baby but there's subtler stuff in characterization and background details, like how "we're going to teach the aliens English!" is treated as a humanitarian project lol.
>>31846>No the message is that humans (or imperials) need to sacrifice in order to gain their humanity back.Yeah basically.
Jake got chewed up and spit out by the imperial machine (The colonel says he got paralyzed in a campaign in
Venezuela *nudge nudge*) and he has to give up everything he is, the material basis of his existence, in order to become one of the navi. The fact that they have an actual human kid tagging along in the sequel might complicate this a bit but that depends on where exactly that story goes.
>>31847>A marxist would make a movie where one guy (who doesn't even have the technical knowledge required lmfao) would do an industrial revolutionMost clownish take in the thread by far.
>>31855>The entire fucking industrial base complete with an army of scientists they captured you actual fuckos.Hell's Gate in the first movie isn't an industrial base. It's just a military outpost equipped with a science lab. The second movie introduces a human settlement with industrial production, but from what I hear it doesn't get a lot of screentime yet. But between the first two movies there literally isn't any industrialization on Pandora and the humans there depend on getting resupplied periodically from Earth.
>They have an army of bulldozers, refinaries, assembly plants, etc.They have mining equipment and military hardware, and not even that much. The finale of the first movie has them repurposing explosives meant to be used for mining into a bomb they can drop from their cargo plane. They might do refining on-world (makes sense because it reduces weight for shipping back to Earth) but it's pretty much stated outright that they're not producing anything with the unobtainium. The corporate suit explains they're there to get the commodity to sell back on Earth. They're not concerned with directly using it for something.
>>31867The problem of industrialization being adopted by any group of people outside of capitalism's influence is that industrialization is currently tied to capitalist production. For all the nice things that industry could bring you, they also come with the downsides and regular people often won't get them. This is made pretty clear right at the beginning of the first movie with an almost throwaway line from Jake about his paralysis:
>"Sure, they can fix a spinal, but not on vet benefits. Not in this economy."Is it really worth it to the average person to have a cool projection TV where you can watch wildlife, but at the cost that this wildlife has gone extinct? The movie is pretty blunt about the connection between capitalist industry and what it reduces people and their world to.
No.31878
>>31875Well, I hope you are right and that a good ending with humans and na'vi uniting in ecoindustrial communism is what Cameron has in mind. But I don't think so.
No.31883
Thought it was honestly pretty good. Entertaining, world built at a pace which is slower than your average blockbuster. Obviously it was jacked up with call backs to the last movie, but that's to be expected. The world looked nice and was immersive in the cinema.
My only problem is the entire plot was basically driven by: son, you have disappoint. Which happened at least 4 times. Seemed also like they actually wanted to make a 5 hour movie where they mount the final assault and cleanse Pandora of the sky people. But obviously, we are gonna get a whole new movie for that.
Also, the whole bit where he ran away- it wasn't really explained how the imperialists knew that he had run away, just the corporal guy going "sullis gone to ground" I assume there is a deleted scene somewhere where they question one of the forest Navi or something.
It was also zoomered up a little bit, with the Navi kids calling each other cuz and bro, but whatever, I can deal with a little bit of that.
Certainly compare it to your average capeshit flick and it is miles ahead. Pretty funny of Cameron to make another movie about a sinking ship tho, kek.
Also they must be planning another movie because the immaculate conception jesus spawn of sigourney weaver clearly has a bigger part to play. That and the eternal life juice drilled from the pineal gland of a pacifist whale.
I actually think the movies in general do a good job of making marines look like scum, there is no way you can cut it where they look good.
I'd like to have seen more of the initial guerrilla war, rather than that one train derailment, and really I think it would have been a better movie for them to stay and fight, maybe his family goes to the sea people are recruits them or something. But yeh, overall wasn't dissapointed by it.
No.31886
>Avatar 2I thought it was pretty good. Long as fuck but it captivated me enough the entire runtime. Saw it 60fps in 3D. Was pretty dope, I think worth the absurd prices movie theaters are charging these days.
Watched vidrel and thought it's pretty cool Cameron does advocacy for indigenous groups, don't know how much he's tooting his own horn but still kinda cool.
>>31883>Certainly compare it to your average capeshit flick and it is miles ahead.This. All these Marvel movies are such a mess. I don't watch any of that DC trash even.
>Also they must be planning another movie They filmed this one and the third simultaneously. I think they already started shooting no 4 too. It's gonna be 5 movies.
No.31887
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/12/avatar-or-art-a-contest-for-your-mind/Y’all might get a kick out of this. Nat review critic is accusing Avatar and James Cameron of promoting treason and
miscegenation No.31889
>>31830 Overrated TBH. Not bad, and the basic themes are fairly simple but that works for the film's storytelling. That said, it's plot is not as nuanced as Cameron's other iconic sci-fi like Terminator/Terminator 2, The Abyss and Aliens were and has some meh moments or poorly thought out concepts. The visuals are great but the lack of practical effects is unfortunate.
>>31832 >breadtube tier pop culture threadsA) This is a /hobby/ board, discussing franchises, films, books, etc. has been the content from the start.
B) The sequel came out recently, so it's a relevant topic for popular discussion.
>>31833 Ah yes, instead we ought to be posting in the furry thread, because horny shitposting is true praxis apparently.
>>31841 Other anon here, TBH that greentext isn't much of a stretch from the post. An American being the protagonist has no impact on it being anti-american or not.
No.31890
>>31887>Nat review critic is accusing Avatar and James Cameron of promoting treason and miscegenation Stop misrepresenting the article, unlike /pol/, people here - at least SOME - actually read the links. The article mentions miscegenation ONE time and mentions nothing about treason or traitors. The part about miscegenation only mentions it as part of the films' fetishizing the concept as part of the films' greater heavy-handed liberal spectacle.
This heavy-handed Fern Gully x Pocahontas approach functions in the first film, because it balanced the story. It's made excessive in the sequel.
Also use archive.is, fool.
https://archive.ph/Ysfil No.31899
>>31890Was phone posting at work so I didn't have time to Archive, Mea Culpa.
That aside, you get some pretty strong implications in the article:
>The offense of Cameron’s futuristic vision (turning American technological might aginst domestic interests) is already here.>If you love Hollywood hype, The Way of Water might seem dazzling. Cameron is dedicated to F/X, advancing Avatar’s loathing of the U.S. military to new perversion: the genuine fascination/fetishization of white–blue miscegenation.>The paltry point of this is to sentimentalize the blue transformation/degradation of the West. Yet it’s shown without a pang for the Old World.The "Technological might against domestic interests" bit really stands out, as though he's implying that since Cameron is using technology predominantly designed by Americans (and Cameron himself, funny enough) that it's some "Crime" to use it against whatever anomalous "domestic interests" the Nat Review writer thinks we have.
That aside, I really don't think he fetishized the "miscegenation" as it were; given the kids seemed to act like, well, normal kids for the most part. They throw around a lot of "Bro" and "Cuz" which reminds me of how my friends/family talk to each other. It's not that he's portraying them as perfect angels or some shit. It's just the natural result of two people loving one another. Amplified by the fact that two of the kids are adopted, with one of them being a human child.
No.31900
>>31883>Also they must be planning another movie because the immaculate conception jesus spawn of sigourney weaver clearly has a bigger part to play.They already have 3 more planned my dude.
Avatar 3 has finished "filming" and they already shot parts of 4 because there's a time skip in that one and they didn't want the younger actors to age too much.
Cameron said they would stop at the third if they weren't performing well but obviously that's not the case so there are going to be five. Studios may actually not beg for spinoffs given how much of a risk they see the franchise as being.
No.31903
>>31901I'm worried these are awakening something in me.
No.31909
>>31903There's no closing the pandora box now
No.31911
>>31902I feel like in the first one his intention was to make Navi cute, while Way of the Water leans more into hot. One thing I noticed in fanart is that standard way of making them sexually attractive is to draw them more meaty, and Cameron does the same thing with water navi, as opposed to lanky build of the original movie.
>>31901That last image genuinely makes my heart ache.
No.31913
>>31911>I feel like in the first one his intention was to make Navi cute, while Way of the Water leans more into hot. One thing I noticed in fanart is that standard way of making them sexually attractive is to draw them more meaty, and Cameron does the same thing with water navi, as opposed to lanky build of the original movie.That probably has more to do with changing beauty standards. The popularity of THICC and muscular is way more recent than 09. Cameron and his designers were probably still being influenced by heroin chic back in the 00s.
It does make sense for the A1 na'vi to be lanky though considering their size, the slightly lower gravity, and how much they rely on acrobatics. The water ones can support more bulk because they spend a lot of time in the water and are partly bigger because of bigger rib cages for bigger lungs which is a nice detail.
No.31915
>>31867One of the first scenes is the navi blowing up a mag train to loot it for guns and rockets. But we really didn't get to see much of the navi resistance to human colonization because the whole second act was a Disney family original. Which I think was necessary to get people to sympathize with the navi and relate to them. The movie almost feels like Americans colonizing Americans.
No.31916
>>31915>One of the first scenes is the navi blowing up a mag train to loot it for guns and rockets.This is gonna be a weird take, but that scene vaguely reminded me of the airplane scene in Lord of War, where Nicolas Cage gives away his entire stockpile of guns and weapons to a local African tribe. Something about them blowing up a train while ululating and looting weapons, like, it honest-to-God calls to mind the stereotype of the Al'Qaeda of all things, except the thing is Cameron is trying to get you to sympathize with the "Terrorists". Sully hiding out in the mountains and being referred to as the leader of "The Insurgency" not long after was real war-on-terror vibes.
>The movie almost feels like Americans colonizing Americans.I think this is a smart choice by Cameron. If we keep going with the theory that he's consciously making an Anti-Colonial text, one that's directed towards the people in the Imperial Hegemon as if to say "Look, you've got to choose a side, either humanity or this monstrous machine we've built" Then you need to fundamentally get audiences to empathize with the indigenous peoples, not merely sympathize with them (a la "Dances With Wolves" or other post-colonial stories where it's about feeling sad over the inevitable march of progress) and the basis of that empathy, is getting people to see these 8 foot tall cat people as reflections of themselves.
Like if the kids were all speaking like Native American stereotypes and talking in these woo-woo terms about "The way of The Land" then you're just going to see them as patronizing little shits. However, with the way they speak and act, even if it's in this Techno-Gaian utopia, you feel like you know at least a dozen kids like them. You don't see them as this alien subject talking down to you but as literal kids. Such that when a bunch of fucking jarheads tie them up and threaten to splatter their brains all over the floor, you recognize them as brutalizing
literal children.Calling it right now, I think Jake Sully is gonna die or take a back seat in one of the next Avatar films. His kids are going to play a bigger role, and the next few films are going to be about them ultimately "redeeming" the human race by, maybe not literally transforming them, but metaphorically turning them into the Na'vi. The Spider character is probably going to play a big role because he's fundamentally a human who was raised around them and shows that when you take people out of this current hyper-exploitative environment, then they're capable of being something better. It isn't some racialized narrative of "Humans Bad", literally the thing that's bad is Humanity's rapacious conquest of The Planet for the sake of profit.
No.31917
>>31916Did you miss the part of the first movie where they drop buzzwords that were used IRL about the war on terror like "shock and awe" or "diplomacy has failed"?
>If we keep going with the theory that he's consciously making an Anti-Colonial textHe said he is so either he's trying to or he's pretending to.
You're 100% right about making it as obvious and dumbed down as possible. There are still people who think the corporation is based and redpilled despite that. If the original movie came out today people would be making sigma grindset memes with Colonel Quaritch.
No.31919
>>31917>making sigma grindset memes with Colonel QuaritchThat is always a danger of making all of your characters 2D cutouts, audience cant really connect to them emotionally, so you gravitate towards whoever you have most fun watching, which in Avatar was Papa Dragon. Even more so in the second one, where Cameron gave him actual dept, and now he is just the most interesting character.
Also, quick search on tumblr revealed to me he gets the lions share of Avatar 2 thirstposting.
No.31920
>>31917>Did you miss the part of the first movie where they drop buzzwords that were used IRL about the war on terror like "shock and awe" or "diplomacy has failed"?Admittedly it's been years since I've seen the first one.
>He said he is so either he's trying to or he's pretending to.Really? I haven't really looked up much interviews with him, so that's pretty nifty.
>You're 100% right about making it as obvious and dumbed down as possible.It honestly works in his favor, allowing his ideals to be seen and appreciated by as many people as possible. And Rightists seething over the fact that he insists "The Imperial Machine has to die" rather than feel any pang or do the traditional liberal copout of saying "Well maybe we can compromise and reach an understanding?" shows it's working.
Like I think if Avatar came out in the early or mid 90s, you'd see a "Both Sides" where the Na'vi are stopped from going to war at the last second because "Wars are against le heckin' sanctity for life uWu" and the humans all realize they were being awfully mean and say they're sorry.
Props to Cameron, he's literally saying the Imperialists have to die AND the Aborigines can
win. It's not some doomed battle against the inevitable, like The Last Samurai, they can fight and they can win, but that's only possible if they understand that there's zero other options. You've got to kill the brutes as Chapo said.
>>31918Honestly he's probably gonna be redeemed. If not in the next movie, then by the fourth. How Cameron handles it is going to be interesting to watch, to say the least.
No.31922
>>31920>>31921It would be better, more subversive, more correct, and more memorable to have a villainous character who is fully humanized but still doesn't get redeemed because despite their humanity they still choose the wrong side.
No.31923
>>31919I think Cameron is setting it up so Quaritch goes native. One thing I liked about avatar is all the villains are disturbingly relatable. When Quaritch went to that base to talk to the commander who was having them sit around drinking coffee and plan out commiting genocide. Like it was just another Tuesday at the office it made my stomach turn. I sit around drinking coffee and help facilitate the death of the planet at my stupid job. Same with that scientist that said he drinks to deal with the evil he is inflicting but he keeps doing it. And his main act of rebellion was being quip and sarcastic. The humans are also alienated from the system most just don't realize it.
>>31916It took awhile for the second act to sink in for me. I was disappointed because I wanted to see sully engaging in active insurgency against the colonizers. But then it aburtly stops and he takes his family so they can go live out a coming of age tale.
> Like if the kids were all speaking like Native American stereotypes and talking in these woo-woo terms about "The way of The Land" then you're just going to see them as patronizing little shits. However, with the way they speak and act, even if it's in this Techno-Gaian utopia, you feel like you know at least a dozen kids like them.Exactly, you could have taken the second act script and with a little re-drafting it could been in an American high-school. The overarching story lines are basic and familiar but they act as support beams for the overall themes of the movie. It showed us what's at stake for the navi. And what the navi want and how they live felt very human.
No.31925
>>31899>The "Technological might against domestic interests" bit really stands out, as though he's implying that since Cameron is using technology predominantly designed by Americans (and Cameron himself, funny enough) that it's some "Crime" to use it against whatever anomalous "domestic interests" the Nat Review writer thinks we have. They're not incorrect though, it is Cameron's intent. As is his anti-military stance, something that he has recently talked about. The problem is that its broad stroke Black/White moralism. That's fine in a simpler story like the first film, but the lack of nuance is just heavy-handed liberalism comparable to the "aRe YoU tEaM CaPtAiN aMeRiCa or TeAm IrOn MaN?!" nonsense liberals love.
>They throw around a lot of "Bro" and "Cuz"Something that makes not a lot of sense. That's a modern, HUMAN way of talking in HUMAN society, primarily originating from African-American groups, Jake Sully isn't using that language, nor did other Navi in the previous film or much in this one. Sure it reminds you of your family/friends… but they're not supposed to - besides them being ALIENS of an ALIEN society - their influence is the Noble Savage trope in relation to Native American tribes.
No.31929
>>31921Did the scientist die? I watched the movie twice, and he seems to duck as soon as the cord starts to rip through the ship.
That aside the scientist himself seems to represent the kind of apathetic liberal. Like he’s a cog for the imperial machine, he realizes he’s a cog, and he doesn’t like it, but he can be lulled into this sense of neutrality. Sure they’re a necessary part of how this whole system of hunting whales for their goop works, but because they aren’t physically pulling the trigger they think there’s some distance between them and the psychos that do.
The Quatriches of the world don’t get that luxury. They’re the trigger pullers. And the second they start to get any doubts about pulling the trigger, say by watching their son get scifi waterboarded, well that’s when the system begins to collapse under its own weight, because the final line necessary for keeping this whole thing going is gone.
Like Jake and Quatrich are functionally the same person, with the difference being one of them was broken by Empire quicker—they were both storm troopers for the empire, and Jake got a bullet to his spine and was tossed away in the garbage, Quatrich just learned he died, his body was never recovered, and he doesn’t even have the benefit of being in charge of this horrific 4th Reich Death Machine because he’s working directly under a general.
I think at the end of the day, what Cameron is functionally saying is that for humanity to be redeemed, Quatrich has to be as well. That final rung of defense that the colonial system has, in the form of psychotic storm troopers trained to kill to defend it, it has to break just enough that a few of these agents of empire just turn around and point their guns at the people barking orders.
Just my guess though.
No.31933
>>31830So, at some point, I'm assuming either 1) a large chunk of earths population is going to arrive at Pandora or 2) the capitalist class from tearth and huge amounts of soldiers are going to arrive en masse.
The lure of eternal life via the eternal life juice combined with the fact they mention earth is dying, surely indicates this. Perhaps even the current sky people settlements are destroyed, and they leave again, only to come back. Or perhaps even as the current movie is going on, the capitalist class have packed it in, and are all frozen on their way.
This time, they have nowhere else to go, its no longer mining, but the total colonisation and domination of the planet.
No.31935
>>31923>I think Cameron is setting it up so Quaritch goes nativeI thought this too.
No.31936
>>31933So I’m taking a total shot in the dark here, but I think what they’re gearing up for with the Na’vi Jesus and her possible romance with the human kid stuff is that maybe there’s going to be some way for humans to be connected to that neural network and maybe have their eyes be opened, sort of. So that humanity can in a sense become Na’vi, at least in the sense of developing a consciousness conducive to their ways.
No.31937
>>31936maybe the eternal life juice can help
No.31938
>>31937Eternal life juice is never going to be mentioned again.
No.31939
>>31932Jesus Fuck.
I think redditors are pathologically incapable of seeing anything made with any measure of sincerity. They hate it.
Part of it is, I think, James Cameron is asking the audience to just be immersed in his world. He’s not trying to just create entertainment, he wants there to be some sort of substance or longing there. He wants the film to speak to you on some level and make you see as he sees.
Joss Whedon and his quips have been a disaster for the human race. In one instant he removed anything meaningful from film. And plebbitors like it because irony is a shield and sincerity requires acknowledging a certain kind of vulnerability.
No.31942
>>31939>He wants the film to speak to you on some level and make you see as he sees.It's interesting because in a way it's similar to very early film, before people figured out the idiom of storytelling in film. You were just invited to see things as the artist did. Much like photography.
But in this case I get the sense that Cameron really is trying to address certain alienations people suffer from. Obviously a movie can't fix that, but it can draw your attention to it.
That's the essence of the story in the first Avatar - Jake rediscovering his humanity through contact with something alien (direct metaphor for the intended effect on the audience). It's also funny how one of the main motifs of the movie is "wake up," since it's seemingly in contradiction to the dreamlike state the movie tries to put you in. Jake's character arc is centered around the contradiction between his real life with its missing pieces and the dream with its fulfillment, and he keeps reminding himself that sooner or later he has to wake up. But in the end he "wakes up"
into the "dream" and becomes a na'vi, resolving the contradictory parts into each other and "curing" his "insanity" as foreshadowed in the beginning by realizing that his "real life" was the dream he had to "wake up" from. And the movie is constantly reminding the audience of this with dialogue and visuals. It's badgering you to think about the difference between your life and the "dream" you're having.
Plenty of movies play with this kind of thing, Inception being a notable example, but Avatar ties this idea to the alienation felt by the character and the audience by making the dream about the experience of fulfillment
and then contrasting that to a real world devoid of fulfillment. "Pandora blues" isn't a coincidental byproduct of a visually compelling world, but the intended effect of the movie and in particular its
story. And this is probably why so many are quick to write off the story as boring and unoriginal. In spite of all the visuals, the key to the whole thing
is the story and the way it's constructed and executed. Almost nobody wants to admit how the movie made them feel, because unlike most movies, TV, and video games it didn't make them feel
entertained. It struck a nerve. And that's why the movies are compelling and people keep going back to see them. The effects and alien creature design and blue catgirl titties are the distraction that makes the magic trick work.
Just like Jake you are drawn in by the superficial spectacle, but the more time the movie spends just showing you what it's like to be fully alive the more it simulates what's missing from Jake and from you. The "slice of life" parts of just experiencing the world aren't just there as spectacle. It
is the story. Pandora is dynamic all on its own, and life there is a process you have to go through, not a static plot point to be established and then disrupted. With the na'vi there basically is no plot - people are just living their lives and are happy (including Jake). It's only when the movie is focused on the humans that plot arrives because of the conflict they cause, which eventually forces the na'vi to join the plot. The conflict in the story is synonymous with the conflict inherent to this Earthling society, which they bring with them wherever they go. The "villain" threatening Pandora is not Quaritch or RDA but this conflict and the plot of the movie itself.
In contrast to the usual escapist fantasy, which is to be a powerful agent within the plot, the fantasy in Avatar is to live free and unbothered by such things as plots and conflicts, such as those inherent to our world as it is, but instead to exist in a harmonious system. We begin in the "underworld" of the hero's journey as our status quo and the conclusion is to escape back to the "surface" where there is no story. And since the conflict here is us vs the plot, the conventional story structure, on a meta level this suggests a struggle in the real world of the audience against the spell of the movies. In that sense Avatar is trying to negate the mainstream narratives of film. Cameron is saying you can actually have fulfillment, that it doesn't have to be a wish, but in order to make that wish into your reality you have to "wake up" from the spell and struggle against the existing reality.
No.31943
>>31925>that's a modern, HUMAN way of talking in HUMAN society, the movie kayfabe is that we're watching a translation cause na'vi, you know, don't speak English anyway. There's not acttually saying "bro" just whatever the na'vi equivalent would be.
No.31944
>>31867>If you were an actual communist something something noble savageIf I was an actual communist I would be an actual racist?
How does this film “perpetuate” the Noble Savage myth exactly? Because a white man leaves his civilized folk (i.e. a fucking dying rock filled with vile assholes in an atomized society where all interactions are mediated by fucking money and he’s a goddamned cripple living off welfare) for “savages” (i.e. just an indigenous culture who lead meaningful communally oriented lives on a lush world teeming with life where survival isn’t mediated by money and society doesn’t run on commodity fetishism)
Honestly I think most people spouting off about the “Noble Savage Trope” these days are mostly racist libs trying to convince themselves they’re woke that can’t comprehend why clean white folk would side with the lowly dirty indigenous. Like, the humans have literally nothing the Navi want and are only there to defile their world for profit. From the Navi perspective I think it’s probably worse when they realized the humans aren’t even evil demons or something, they’re literally just bizarre aliens from a warped culture that values symbolic tokens over life itself
No.31945
>>31943Actually plenty of Navi can speak english, the first movie establishes that humans have been visiting Pandora for years if not decades and had a sociological program to teach Navi children how to speak English. In fact Jake Sully’s eventual wife is stated to be the star pupil of Sigourney Weaver’s character and likely the best English speaker.
No.31946
>>31922This, it would actually be perfect to have a villain who is full fleshed out, is a fully realized individual with understandable motivations and emotions, and still remains an antagonist to the bitter end, since that’s what real world evil people are like anyway
No.31951
>>31942>It struck a nerve.It surely did. I think that why I hated the first movie back when I was a lib. I was coping.
No.31954
>>31943This. IDK why that's a stumbling block for people. Nobody thinks that Romeo and Juliet or Julius Caesar or Othello were speaking English in canon just because the actors were. It's just to make it more relatable for the audience. The language being alien in the first movie makes more sense because Jake is a foreigner to the culture and just learning.
>>31945Yeah but it's easier for the audience to digest if the dialogue is rendered in a language they are familiar with. Jake and Neytiri are probably canonically speaking a mix of na'vi and English to each other and their kids since there are English words that don't have a na'vi equivalent and vice versa.
>>31944>From the Navi perspective I think it’s probably worse when they realized the humans aren’t even evil demons or something, they’re literally just bizarre aliens from a warped culture that values symbolic tokens over life itselfYeah, that's definitely meant to be understood by the audience. Neytiri's mom says directly that Jake will be their experiment to "see if your insanity can be cured," i.e. to see if humans can be deprogrammed of their ideology or if it's just in their nature to be this way. She's also the one to set him and grace free after the humans do 9/11 to the big tree. It barely gets any discussion but her skepticism of "human nature" and willingness to gamble that humans can change is literally what enables him to do anything in the first place. Everybody else was ready to kill him when he first showed up and again after he warned them about the sky people coming.
No.31955
>>31953Fucking redditors got to reign Supreme and be catered to for over a decaded with their super hero bullshit. I really hope Antman flops hard and we see an Era of sci-fi come back. Hell maybe we will see the red mars trilogy adapted to the big screen. The creator of bayblon 5 has also been trying to get his show rebooted too. I want to see actual media that's about humanity and not some God like figures doing quips at each other.
No.31956
>>31955Don't give me hope like that, my heart won't take it well
No.31958
>>31955In a lot of ways Avatar is the anti-redditor movie.
Like the Chapos pointed this out, but a lot of mainstream films these days are just entertaining slop. Marvel is the king of this, because it's a fundamentally insincere work. The quips, the irony, it's all a shield to prevent the characters from anything meaningful.
Say what you will about how "cringey" some of the scenes in Avatar is, like the two tails interlocking, but it's pretty fucking clear that Cameron is treating the project with complete sincerity.
No.31959
>>31955Excuse me sweaty but the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the modern day equivalent of Greek or Norse mythology.
Not all great literature has to be your boring serious dramas like Breaking Bad or The Sopranos (glorified soap opera). There are bigger and more interesting things to entertain ourselves with than the conflict within the human heart and society, like "who would win in a 1v1 fight between Hulk and Thanos?"
No.31960
>>31958I still don't understand what they think was "cringe" about the movie. I've also started hating that word. They hated that Jake had a loving and intimate relationship with his family?
But I think you're right that this is the anti reddit movie. Because the redditors saw themselves in all the weasley and imperialist humans. Who wore Oakleys and did cliché quips at each other. Redditors could never be navi. That's why they hate this movie because it exposed as the mindless evil consuming drones that they are.
>>31954>Yeah, that's definitely meant to be understood by the audience. Neytiri's mom says directly that Jake will be their experiment to "see if your insanity can be cured," i.e. to see if humans can be deprogrammed of their ideology or if it's just in their nature to be this way.It's the navi that need to civilize the humans not the other way around. But the next movie is supposed to be about fire navi. Who I'm guessing are going to collaborate with the humans. It really seems like Cameron is doing a full retelling of the colonization of the America's. Except with all the mythology stripped from it. I really do think America needs a reckoning with native American holocaust. Sadly these movies are the closeted were going to get.
No.31961
>>31960Cringe is just a word you use when you encounter something earnest that you can't relate to.
No.31962
>>31939clip from an interview that pretty much confirms this is what cameron's going for
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9-DgIwPe96I No.31965
>>31958it says a lot about our culture that a huge mainstream project by the director of Titanic which was considered cliché in 2009 has to now be compared favourably and considered 'sincere' compared to the shit that is currently released
No.31966
>>31965I see your argument but in retrospect people calling it cliché seems like a cope. It also doesn't really have any bearing on how sincere something is. Archetypes become clichés because they're popular, and Cameron proved it at the box office.
No.31968
>>31953It really is Bizarre to me that you could say all those things swinging in defence of the Marvel movies. I'm not quite sure anything is currently more "normal" than being a fan of what must the biggest grossing movie franchise currently in existence?
This is the kind of thing people I know who are all about like Tsarkovsky and all that noise say about mainstream cinema in general. Or at least, when they were 20 they would say these things nobody really bothers to be that way now
No.31969
>>31938It was actually one of the things i was kind of meh on in the film. I think there is enough conflict+motivation for the earthlings to be invading, without tacking on the live forever serum. Kind of dilutes the "earth is dying because humans killed it" message to a more "humans flee earth in search of eternal life" message.
But maybe, the question for the viewer will become: well, the earth is destroyed, no going back to it, and, the only thing the elites offered you was a place on their ship as a lowly technician and, now you have arrived on this new planet, containing said eternal life juice, wouldn't YOU do anything to live forever?
You can live at one with the Na'vi, or you can slurp the juice and destroy the Na'vi. Now, this far into the future, the eternal whiteoid will probably come to destroy Pandora, and with it, the source of the eternal life juice. I imagine once the hive mind breaks down, this sort of thing breaks down too. Or simply just overfishing.
No.31970
>>31969The live forever juice is probably more motivation to kill whales, which needed to be there to have the Save the Whales narrative. Billionaires would fund expeditions to harvest the whale serum whether or not earth was dying and humans would be settling pandora to escape a dying earth whether or not billionaires were hunting whales. They're kind of unrelated except they're both extensions of capitalism's effect on Earth and pandora.
The humans aren't all going to move to Pandora though. That's too big of a move for the scope of these movies unless there's a time jump of like a century or more. And IIRC Cameron says in one of the sequels there will be Earth scenes including
some of the na'vi going to Earth.
No.31980
>>31979This is why I only consume coffee from zapatista territories
No.31981
>>31832>we need a general for that shitThere's at least 2 film threads and 1 noble savage thread already.
No.31982
>>31981>>31832Having a thread for a specific product/franchise now and then is not really out of pocket for /hobby/. Looking at the catalog I see
<Joker<Lord of the Rings<Batman<Game of Thrones<Star Wars<Harry Potter<Capeshit (basically just 2 franchises)<Warhammer<Star Trek<Avatar (the other one)<Dune<George Orwell's writings<the NFL (burger ball)<the Chernobyl HBO series<Bong Joon Ho movies<The Expanse<Snowpiercer<Westworld<The Boys<Judge Dredd<The SCP Foundation<House of the Dragon (2 threads for the GoT franchise!)and that's just the top 1/4 of the catalog.
Avatar is basically the biggest blockbuster film ever and is pretty unique. IDK why it warrants a thread less than most of these.
No.31983
>>31982That's way too fucking much threads tbh.
Remember, each time one thread is made, one died.
No.31984
>>31979was avatar actually more red pilled for its time than initially thought?
No.31985
Matt Christman is entirely right, we live on fucking pandora
it makes zero sense for us to not be philosophical zombies unless it's the universe itself that's conscious but unthinking and we're partitioned instances within it that give it emotions and sapience; the torturer tortures himself.
we can either institute socialism and protect ourself or continuously be reborn as self harming atrocity-commiting fascists
No.31986
>>31889>that picNow that's dialectics.
No.31987
Here's a 30 minute interview Cameron did with Charlie Rose back when the first movie came out. He spends a bulk of the time specifically addressing the political angles, criticisms, and artistic intent.
>>31984Was certainly my impression watching it again recently.
No.32007
>>31980>This is why I only consume coffee from zapatista territoriesI would too if the shipping to my cunt wasn't $300 :\
No.32016
>>31984I mean the Chapos kind of hit the nail on the head. James Cameron literally got American audiences to cheer for American soldiers being killed by third world natives.
No.32017
>>31987tl;dw here's the main takeaways
<Yes it is the noble savage trope and that's fine because these are aliens. We're not fetishizing real people or cultures. (he implies this is a right-wing criticism btw)<It's also a nuanced take on what Rousseau's "state of nature" would look like, since the harmony is about "knowing your place in the food chain" and the na'vi are not on top.<No Jake is not a white savior because the story is based on the reality of colonial struggles, and that reality is if you don't have someone from the colonizers giving the disadvantaged group an edge with supplies, inside knowledge, etc they are 100% fucked (the exact same argument Chapo makes btw).<Cameron wants the movie to resonate with people emotionally and to make them care, hoping that the movie will make some difference in people's attitude toward the environment and politics/economics and help course-correct (also what Chapo says). No.32056
>>32015In fact that part kinda got left to the wayside in all of this but yeh, that is pretty crazy idea for a super villain. Perhaps an excuse just to have the same villain every time, but still
No.32060
It was an overrated film when it came out. Not watching.
No.32066
Spoilers for future movies if you care.
James Cameron has hinted at a "bad tribe" appearing in future movies. Ash peoples. They could have decoupled from Eywa to develop high tech. This would be a primitivist route for the story.
No.32067
>>32066It depends on how he goes about it, it could be that these are people who have embraced an alienated and imperialist relationship to the world and people in it
Honestly I think the idea of primitivism is pretty Eurocentric and almost inherently supremacist in nature, and tries to explain history in evolutionary terms while failing to understand evolutionary theory
No.32068
>>32016And nerds hated on the film because they’re pathetic shitty little fuckers who are more akin to the smarmy corporate bureaucrats than Jake Sully and thus prefer their faggy cinematic celebration in comparatively (to Jake) shallow characters like Tony Stark
No.32069
>>32066>>32067Primitivism would be a weird angle for Cameron considering his fascination with science and technology. I don't really think there's anything anti-technology in the movies. The na'vi just don't have technology when humans arrive and aren't especially interested in the stuff humans willingly share with them (notably not weapons). The avatar program is technology and it leads to the na'vi winning. I think too many people sleep on the fact that Jake becoming a na'vi is half the magic of Eywa and half the technology of the avatars.
IDK why people expect anything for the franchise's trajectory besides the merging of the two worlds and "abolishing the frontier." Ending the first movie on that note as a sublime happy ending is pretty on the nose as foreshadowing. This is the same movie where Sigourney Weaver says "what are you gonna do, shoot me?" to which Quaritch says "I can do that" and like 30 minutes later he does do that.
No.32070
>>32069I think the real point of the films definitely isn’t that technology or science are bad, after all the scientists are the only good humans we see outside of the working class grunts (Jake and Michelle Rodriguez’ character), it’s that the spiritual and emotional significance the Navi give to their world is also good, and also holds a significant truth
The humans of Avatar did exactly what human societies are doing right now, destroying the live green Earth which actually matters to produce dead commodities that will collect dust once their production brings an end to our existence. The point isn’t that the scientists are wrong or bad people, but they’re close minded, and humans definitely aren’t bad since Jake, the most average motherfucker out there, gives everything just to do the right thing and experience freedom for the first time in his life
I think the ultimate point of Avatar will be, as you say, regular people on Earth overthrowing their oppressive corporate rulers and using their technology and knowledge alongside the spiritual knowledge of the Navi to form a new foundation as people free to live interconnected with the nature they are part of
No.32071
>>32070>>32066I heard about the
Ash Na'vi but I didn't hear about the
abandoning Eywa and using technology plot point. I wouldn't be surprised though, because if the story is going in the direction of merging technology and nature, than it would stand to reason that Eywa keeping the na'vi primitive ends up being a mistake, just like how humans disregarding nature is a mistake. That does risk "both sides"ing it though.
No.32072
>>32071forgot to type this before replying, but regarding the spoilers it would make sense if there are na'vi who are
rebelling against Eywa's luddism for being dumb.
What I heard though wasn't that they were
tech users but that they were simply
bad guys.
No.32077
>>32071The thing is, I don’t think the Navi are primitive, they have everything they need to survive, their planet is literally interconnected with some humans refer to as an information database, and the Navi only face true danger when dealing with the outside context threat presented by a race of parasitic aliens that intend to go world to world devour each planet they encounter until their civilization runs out of steam.
Like, say what you will about the Navi, at least their planet is habitable
No.32085
>>32084what is dark god capital theory
No.32093
>>32085>>32088yes, here's Matt Christman referencing it (video posted on Ian Wright's channel, 36 seconds)
tl;dr of the concept is that Capital functions like an artificial intelligence in the sense that the logic of business transcends the mind or choices of the humans that constitute it, not unlike how a brain transcends the neurons (that's the metaphor Cameron uses)
No.32230
>I have no doubt that many people who watch the Avatar films will come away from the experience thinking deeply about humanity’s current path. Perhaps this is the reason why there are so few memes. One of the talking points surrounding Avatar in the media-sphere is that it has ‘no cultural impact’. What this means is that the film has not spawned a Star Wars-like industrial fandom or a Marvel-universe parade of easily meme-able quotes. This is of course a stupid argument, one that says more about the people who say it than the film itself. Avatar hits people in an emotional place that is the antithesis to disposable culture. The last thing they want to do after seeing it is hop on twitter to scroll through funny pictures. It did when I watched it. So this isn’t some righteous call for a boycott. If you like films it’s better than most.
>What’s stayed with me though, the nagging, deeper message of the film is that it’s not enough to say you’re against something. you have to be against it. The message of Avatar is that sacrifice is necessary. For Jake Sully it is his entire human body he must consign to oblivion. There are other characters in the series, early Dr Grace and Dr Garvin. They don’t hold guns. They like and respect the Na’vi. And yet their lifestyles could not exist without others holding guns and killing Na’vi. And that’s what seems to make Avatar such a polarising film, especially with western liberals. It holds that mirror up and says yes you say you hate the right wing, yes you hate war, yes you hate racism, but your entire way of life is supported by these evils.
>As noted above, culture helps to frame our view of the world and thus is inextricably linked to political struggles. In the case of Avatar, it’s difficult to see how the framing of the problem and the resulting struggle can be anything other than the need for the complete destruction of the industry that makes films like Avatar and our own complicity within that system as consumers.https://exmultitude.substack.com/p/avatars-politics-call-for-its-own No.32241
>>31979how casual he drinks the coffee is the same as how casual the entire planet of earth's capitalist system will strip mine other planets and consume their essences like a sip of coffee. this disgusting system must be abolished
No.32242
>>32230radical anarcho-primitivism and boycott of all industries to the greatest extent possible? what would happen?
No.32243
>>32230>>As noted above, culture helps to frame our view of the world and thus is inextricably linked to political struggles. In the case of Avatar, it’s difficult to see how the framing of the problem and the resulting struggle can be anything other than the need for the complete destruction of the industry that makes films like Avatar and our own complicity within that system as consumers.based
No.32244
>>31830I've only seen the first movie and thus I'm working with limited information, so bear with me.
The premise is good (fight against imperialist exploitation by a native population and their allies), but the execution turns out to be a fucking Kazyinski-ite shitshow about how the solution to existence in a sci-fi futuristic space-imperialist society being shitty is to abandon that society and return to monke rather than try and overthrow or do any sort of meaningful change to it. The Na'vi and other alien societies humanity come across will inevitably get genocided/enslaved and have their planetary ecosystems irreversibly ruined because they're sitting on a pile of valuable resources and human society even in this far future setting still continues to function in a capitalist mode of production, which by its nature requires an increasing amount of said resources to fuel its constant growth regardless of the cost.
The fact that in the first movie, the Na'vi and the humans who went turncoat for them merely fought off the security arm of the colonization effort and sent the survivors packing solves nothing beyond pushing the conflict to a later date when the next colonization effort comes in with a bigger, proper military detachment (we know for a fact that imperialist powers will use standing armies to prop up colonization efforts, its been shown throughout history) rather than a token force of corporate security because imperialism is not just something you can defeat by driving out one small group of its lapdogs.
No.32298
Just watched the second movie and overall it was pretty good for what it is. The +3hs went by thanks to mesmerizing special effects and world building and despite the hostage situations back forth at the end of the movie. Can you nag about certain aspects you don't like? White savior trope, noble savage myth or whatever? Sure but the other themes all hit the spot, imo, especially the portrayal of the American military and mercenaries explicitly being the harbingers of destruction and exploitation with direct references to war crimes such as the burning of Cam Ne for example. Love the hightenend progression from resource extraction to settlement and I'm excited to see what planet earth has turned to, probably some absolute shithole, kind of like a combination of Matrix' earth and Coruscant. I don't know but the story doesn't feel as basic anymore now that it's an pentalogy with a long lead-up.
People have talked about the coffee trope and I think there are many interesting themes that can be observed from the obvious ones. The importance of breath and the atmosphere, exile and displacement, adaption and assimilation to new environment vs. dominating it. Split/double loyalities and identity crisis.within an antagonist bicultural context, extension of human life whatever the cost, pacificism vs. violent resistence, woke imperialism, children as victims of war, deep ecology, the complicity of science as an institution under capitalism, the whole Moby-Dick part and much more tbh. I can already see the myriad of YouTube essays flying in.
I watched the movie with someone who has lived in a neo-colony up until her late twenties, her first 3D movie in fact and it made her cry a few times.
No.32299
>>32244I mean what you have described is basically the whole point of why the are making it a pentalogy. They are obviously coming back and the last movies will play on earth.
No.32306
>>32244Tbh I think that you kind of have to spend the first movie entirely on the part where you break away from the capitalist society before you can go anywhere else with the story and trying to fight back. The first movie is really about waking up from capitalist brainwashing, which is step 1.
No.32321
>>31939> irony is a shield and sincerity requires acknowledging a certain kind of vulnerability.noticed how people started saying "unironic" instead of "sincere." That was the moment irony and sarcasm became the default mode of culture.
No.32330
>>31983 1) Make an archive board
2) Most of the threads that are deleted are absolute trash
3) there are still a shit ton of old ass threads
No.32369
>>31839Anti-imperialism and anti-Americanism are not the same thing. For it to be anti-American, it has to be against the United States specifically, which this movie is not.
>>31889>An American being the protagonist has no impact on it being anti-american or not.There's a big difference between something being anti-imperialist and anti-American. You could say with reasonable certainty that it's anti-imperialist, but the protagonist and basically all the good guy scientists being Americans while the human expedition on Pandora officially being an international project (even if its played primarily by Americans) puts a massive dent in the idea that this is a movie criticizing the United States specifically.
What's more, the sort of direct military imperialism and colonialism depicted in the film isn't how American imperialism typically works. If it was specifically about American imperialism rather than imperialism in general, a US expedition would have invaded and "liberated" a few Na'vi tribes. They probably would have given their ruling comprador castes a taste of sky people luxuries, conveniences and technology, and promised to give them more with a predatory loan payable in unobtanium. And then unobtanium mining operations would largely be overseen by these officially independent but de facto colony Na'vi states run by the aforementioned caste of comprador Na'vi directly interested in keeping the sky people dominance over their lands. And when the rebel Na'vi overthrew this regime, these same comprador Na'vi would flee to Earth with stories about how their tribes had been taken over by evil tyrants who eat babies for breakfast and kick puppies for fun.
No.32422
>>32369> a US expedition would have invaded and "liberated" a few Na'vi tribes. They probably would have given their ruling comprador castes a taste of sky people luxuries, conveniences and technology, and promised to give them more with a predatory loan payable in unobtanium.You are going to love Avatar 3 then
No.32439
>>31973I hope not. That retarded faggot shouldn't breed.
No.33550
Just watched this film!
Very good, absolutely fantastic, the colonialism in the first film to settler colonialism in the second.
The theme of revolution is very good, Jake's reluctance to fight, how he believes to run, to escape the powers that be and then finally understanding and his consciousness being risen, that he must rebel, that capital will always go after him, his family and people, therefore you cannot run and must resist…beautiful takeaway from the film.
looking forward to the 3rd, anymore predictions for the franchise/saga or any new comments and analysis on the 1st or 2nd film?
No.33551
>>33550Also it's now able to be torreneted so get your copy
No.33553
When will Cameron release the 10 hour director's cut with 6 hours of Jake reading Mao to his kids as they grow up?
No.33578
>>33553Haha, looking forward to the directors cut though!
No.35488
The first Avatar was a good movie with phenomenal visual effects and a decent story that has a balance of overarching plot and individual arcs.
The Way of Water throws away everything good about the previous story for angst and an inane theme about "muh humans bad" far more heavy handed than any environmental film in the past. The mere fact of mind transference destroys the entire meaning and stakes of the film itself and the prior film as well.
No.35493
>>31865>Who am I supposed to be siding with in this?No-one, it's retarded twatter drama
No.35494
>>31928Oh Yeah, Sid Meier's Alpha Centuari. One of my fave games. it really influenced me as a 11 year old back in 1999 or so.
No.35495
>>35488>The mere fact of mind transference destroys the entire meaning and stakes of the film itself and the prior film as well.But that's the central plot device of the first movie…?
No.35496
>>35488>theme about "muh humans bad"I thought the theme was "colonialism bad" but that's just me.
No.35512
>>35495>that's the central plot device of the first movie In the second film they literally have this "oh I saved my memories into a hard-drive and can upload it into a new body" which utterly destroys the premise and stakes of the first film since, among the desire for Unobtanium, was extension of lifespan, when simply transferring your mind to a new, youthful body would be infinitely superior. Moreover it means that (for example) Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) could have just saved her memories and uploaded them into a new body. Hell, why did they need Jake Sully, when they could just use a memory bank for his brother to fully upload him into the Avatar body? I'm just going off of the basics, not even going into the actual details and ignoring several other critical plotholes.
>>35496 Except the way it's portrayed conveys a different message, the humans are completely generic bad-guys. In the first film the human antagonists are career soldiers/hired guns and greedy corporate pigs with the scientists mostly being passively disapproving but essentially taking no action. It's a criticism of capitalism and corporate exploitation, but doesn't make out humanity to be these irredeemable sadistic swine that the second film does, all for some poorly made environmental message. You can make a heavy handed criticism of humanity and human nature's evil tendencies and still make it compelling, I recently rewatched Nausicaa in the Valley of the Wind, by Hayao Miyazaki, when they re-aired it in theatres. In it, and in Princess Mononoke and in numerous other Miyazaki films human hubris and abuse of nature and other people is not sugar-coated, but the message in the end of these films is that people can over-come this and can be harmonious with nature.
No.35513
>>35512>extension of lifespan, when simply transferring your mind to a new, youthful body would be infinitely superior.They state outright that it's not a 1:1 copy and they just have the person's memories. Blue Quaritch clearly behaves like a different version of the character.
>Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) could have just saved her memories and uploaded them into a new body.Evidently she didn't have that technology though. Only the military branch got to use it. It only seems weird if you forget the part where the science is an afterthought only done for PR. The company is there for resource extraction in the first movie, so they're not worried about understanding Pandora more than necessary to kill the wildlife and mine.
>Hell, why did they need Jake Sully, when they could just use a memory bank for his brother to fully upload him into the Avatar body?That incident may have been what pushed them to get that kind of tech operational. The Avatar bodies are super expensive after all. And it's not established that the Avatars built for brain-to-brain would be compatible with the Recom technology. Eywa can patch it but that doesn't mean humans can. The Recoms are a more advanced version of the technology, remember.
>I'm just going off of the basicsWell they don't give a lot of details but there's a pretty long time that passes and they make it clear the technology has improved in that time.
>Except the way it's portrayed conveys a different message, the humans are completely generic bad-guys.Not really. There are still scientists who helped the Na'vi in the first movie hanging around, and there's Spider. There might be sympathetic humans in the new colony but that's not where the focus is. The marine biologist is the same as the scientists in the first movie except he never really gets a chance to join some resistance.
>but the message in the end of these films is that people can over-come this and can be harmonious with nature.They did that in Avatar 1. The sequels probably won't be repeating it. Avatar 1 was about how you can't just live inside the imperial core, you should fight against it and you can leave it. Avatar 2 is about how you can't run away from it or just struggle to free yourself, because it comes for everyone eventually - you are in a struggle to the death with the machine whether you realize it or not.
No.35514
>>35513>they just have the person's memoriesMemories make up who we are, they form the basis for behavior, opinions, etc. they are life experiences that form a person
>Blue Quaritch clearly behaves like a different version of the character.No he doesn't he's literally the same character, just even more cartoonishly villain-like.
>Evidently she didn't have that technology thoughThe memory copies were made while Quaritch was still alive, she was on the science team involved in the entire Avatar and mind-meld project, it makes more sense for her to have it available than a bunch of jarheads.
>Only the military branch got to use it.The military wouldn't get to use it if R&D didn't get to test it out first and use it themselves.
>The company is there for resource extraction in the first movie, so they're not worried about understanding Pandora more than necessary to kill the wildlife and mine Yes, that's what makes the first story good and have an effective message.
>That incident may have been what pushed them to get that kind of tech operational.If it was operational as of Quaritch's deployment to Pandora as shown, then it was already in operational capacity. A scientist that clearly is already involved in the program is more valuable than a crippled soldier, especially if you can permanently bond the scientist to their Avatar, eliminating the need for those bulky neural beds.
>it's not established that the Avatars built for brain-to-brain would be compatible with the Recom technology It's a fairly logical deduction given that Quaritch is revived into an Avatar. The Na'vi may even be more receptive to it in general because of the whole tail-mind-connecting thing
>there's a pretty long time that passes and they make it clear the technology has improved in that time. The technology shown is either supposed to have existed before the story of the first film, or are technologies that have existed in one form or another for decades-centuries.
>There are still scientists who helped the Na'vi in the first movie hanging around Yes, and typically depicted as hippie kumbaya types that liberal media tries to portray as "a good thing" They may as well have been robots for all their 'character'
>SpiderDon't get me started on that inanity
>There might be sympathetic humans in the new colony but that's not where the focus is.The viewer isn't supposed to fill in the gaps with such speculation. The first film demonstrated
>They did that in Avatar 1Yes I agree, they didn't in Avatar 2 in spite of that idiotic ending attempting it
>The sequels probably won't be repeating itThen what's the point? There's no story, not really, it's just things happening, striking the same beats from the prior film and even story-lines but in water, it's functionally a repetition but stupider.
>it comes for everyone eventually - you are in a struggle to the death with the machine whether you realize it or not.Except they fumbled the ball on this message, with plot-holes, retroactive rewriting, asspulls and other hosts of reasons.
No.35517
>>35514I checked the wiki timeline and the development of the technology adds up just fine.
>2148: Tom Sully dies and Jake ships off to Pandora almost immediately>2150: Quaritch Recom body is created (Quaritch's page says his recom was 20 years old when they uploaded his mind to it in 2170).>2154: Jake gets to Pandora, most of Avatar 1 happens over 3 months, backups created for the recoms>2160~: when the humans sent back from Pandora would have arrived on Earth>2168: RDA returns to Pandora, 14 years after Avatar 1 for a 2 year gap between the people returning and the first wave sent back.>2170: Blue Quaritch arrives/wakes up and most of Avatar 2 happenshttps://james-camerons-avatar.fandom.com/wiki/TimelineThey were already planning to do military versions of the avatars (Quaritch hints at this in the first movie) and then pivoted to the mind uploading thing because they already had the avatar bodies and figured out in 2148 that they should have a backup plan if a pilot dies. They could have expedited and sent brain scanners and the flash drives to Pandora on the same ship with Jake or on a ship that arrived while he was there (they were coming in regular rotations which is why they could send people back when the next one showed up). They knew there would be at least 12 years between sending brain scanners and getting any scans back, which is a lot of time to build on the avatar tech to make the the scans usable.
No.35523
>>35517You realize that this is retroactive rewriting right? Moreover most of this isn't in the movie itself, at least timeline wise and so-on. They don't introduce it as 'new' tech that they didn't have before, but as a "oh yeah we got this ability to essentially make people functionally immortal through body uploads and we're using it to bring a dead antagonist to life. It's cheap. And it still doesn't change the fact that the story is honestly lame compared to the first one, with muddled superficial complexity trying to masquerade as "deeeep" when it's utterly unnecessary.
No.35553
For once it is reversed?
>isekai, japanese anime
<get outta here with that escapism, gook porky!!!
>isekai, american cinema
<thx fur di anticapitalist theme, american porky!!!
Never learn, leftypolack, eh?
No.35561
>>35553I mean it's not unilateral on /leftypol/ as demonstrated ITT and in the scifi thread that generated this thread in the first place, there's plenty of people that recognize it for the issues it has.
No.35650
>>35553How is it an isekai? The plot revolves around the two worlds not being separate, and the nice "escapist" place (which the main character explicitly compares to Earth in this regard) is under siege by the "normal" (capitalist) world. The whole point of the series is telling you that you can't just live in the nice world, you have to fight the bad one. It's an overt warning about what we are doing IRL to our planet. The core conflict of the plot is that escapism doesn't work and you have to actually earn a world that isn't shit.
>>35561The people who like it don't think it's perfect either, but there's a lot of criticism that seems based on wrong assumptions or misunderstanding the text, which is weird given how simple the story is. I'd rather see it criticized for being unnecessarily expensive or exploitative as a product personally, since I think that's more of a problem than issues with storytelling. It's certainly extremely indulgent and ego-centric for a rich guy like Cameron to make this whole saga based on his personal fantasies and pet issues. It would be nice if he really was at least a fellow traveler who betrayed his class to make propaganda for the masses, but I think the movies are more cynical than that, and their success are based on reflecting how the audience already feels more than the ability of a filmmaker to impress certain ideas on them. In that sense you could call it a highly effective recuperation. For as much as you can identify clear anti-colonial themes and criticism of capitalism, what impact does the movie actually have on people? How many people saw the movie and experience any internal change in how they viewed US imperialism? There's a degree to which the movie's message is just an "emperor has no clothes" deal, except it has to shroud that message in the thinnest veil imaginable. There's a serious perversity to the fact that moviegoers will turn out in droves to sympathize with blue alien indigenous people but a comparatively miniscule amount even acknowledge the similar situations that exist in the real world. Does the movie actually make any difference at all? Is it even possible to know?
>>35514>>The sequels probably won't be repeating it>Then what's the point? There's no story, not really, it's just things happening, striking the same beats from the prior film and even story-lines but in water, it's functionally a repetition but stupider.The point is to tell new stories in the sequels, like you should. The same beats hit are intentional parallels either between Quaritch and Jake or Jake and his kids.
I know what you mean about lacking a plot, because avatar 2 is structured more like several episodes tied together, but it's still connected by a throughline of Quaritch hunting Jake's family. That's a fine preference to have, it's indulgent to structure a feature film that way and Cameron should explore releasing as a series if he wants to include this much content. He's talked about doing that.
>The viewer isn't supposed to fill in the gaps with such speculation. (about sympathetic humans in the colonies)Not every movie in a series has to cover the same things. If they did the whole sympathetic humans defecting angle again it would be re-treading the first movie with little relevance to the story in 2.
It seems like you're complaining whether things are different or the same.
>If it was operational as of Quaritch's deployment to Pandora as shown, then it was already in operational capacity.There's a difference between being able to do a brain scan to store data and being able to actually copy it over to a body and use it. We can do pretty detailed brain scans with today's technology. After losing a guy who "represented a significant investment" it makes sense to start scanning brains and pushing the tech to upload them. Idk why that's a sticking point. If you want to call it a hokey plot device I agree but I don't think it's that out of place in a movie where the tree internet already did something similar with Jake.
>why not back up Sigourney Weaver or other scientistsThey're not gonna brain-copy turncoats. Why would the corporation want to revive anybody who fucked up their operation intentionally? The avatars were already implied to be set up for combat like the recoms, that's not even subtext. Quaritch suggests it openly in the first movie, "potent mix" etc. Putting soldiers in the bodies makes a lot more sense because the hostility of the planet makes the human versions so vulnerable. It would work better if they were used like regular avatars but that doesn't work if people die, so you fix that problem with brain scans. It's pretty 1-2-3 kind of logic, and fits the world and themes as some black mirror type of thing where you're stuck fighting for space porky for eternity.
>Memories make up who we are, they form the basis for behavior, opinions, etc. they are life experiences that form a personThat's a subject of debate and largely debunked by modern science. Your mind and body are much less separate than conventional wisdom tells us. The movie also clearly disagrees with this, at least with the tech in its universe. The characters literally say that's not how it works, that blue Quaritch is a new guy. It's not a totally new concept in this movie either. Jake as a human vs Jake in the avatar body are very different even with the same mind, and the schism between the two versions is a major part of his internal struggle. Quaritch being a different person as a revived avatar is just taking an established theme/plot device and extending it.
>>35523You can call anything that's introduced as happening during a previous entry "retroactive" - that doesn't make it bad. Nothing was retconned, they just added new details to set up this story element. Not liking nonlinear storytelling is just a matter of taste.
>They don't introduce it as 'new' tech that they didn't have beforeQuaritch had clearly never done the backup before, which only makes sense if it was new. Given how dangerous pandora is, they would be doing this as soon as they could. There was a ship arriving around that time, since Jake was supposed to leave on it just before he flipped sides. 2+2 = they got the tech for backups on that supply rotation. What wasn't new was the idea of having these people pilot avatars, since they already had personalized ones being made. The backups were a precaution that ended up paying off, keeping the avatars belonging to dead people from being a total loss.
>It's cheap.I agree, there's no real way to make this kind of plot device not cheap. It's an inherently silly concept that cheapens death. I put up with it for its story potential since I like that kind of exploration of personality and identity. It's an occasional element in science fiction, and can be used in ways that justify its existence or it can just be a cheap way to chicken out of killing characters off.
So far it seems more like the former since blue Quaritch has more nuance than human Quaritch did and has his own angle on being stuck between worlds that's different from Jake's in the first movie. The fact that they're actually stuck in the bodies and less likely to be brought back if they die this time (making avatar bodies is expensive) gives back some of the stakes for death. Cost-effectiveness being a person's only barrier to virtual immortality is not so different from cost-effectiveness being the only barrier to remaining paralyzed in a wheelchair.
No.35659
>>35650>Text-walling like thisJesus H. Christ, you really oughta pare down your responses, because there is way too much written in response to even single-sentence posts. w
>Inb4 "I can't read" I can read it just fine, it's just there's a lot said that's unnecessary/redundant.
>The core conflict of the plot is that escapism doesn't work and you have to actually earn a world that isn't shit. NTA but the problem is that it's muddled and redundant in the face of Sully literally leading a unified revolt against the corporation and defeating it, retaking their lands and gaining unity and harmony in the process. The second film muddles it up and has Sully behave out of character, suddenly just abandoning his responsibilities as chief and hiding with the sea clan when something goes a little wrong, essentially abandoning the forest tribes rather than taking them with him away from the terror. He SHOULD has stayed and fought with them against the imperialism, but if he decided it was a losing battle and wanted to retreat and flee, then he should have taken the tribe rather than just abandoned the people he took responsibility for. And the BS about him being a "personal target" because of Quaritch is a very flimsy excuse given that Quaritch or not, he was a target regardless, as the leader of the revolt.
I'll address more of this post later, but that's just one point of many to make in why Way of Water is not a simple story, or rather that plot points in it and the meandering aspect of the story in many areas makes the pacing disjointed and the themes and message mucked up and contradictory. This is fine for real life, because real life has contradictions like that, but a story has to minimize contradictions within it, because it needs to be consistent more to retain it's cohesiveness.
No.35665
>>35659Hey it's cool, I appreciate the effort even if we disagree.
>even single-sentence postsI saved space by only quoting the key bits. I'm replying the the substance of the whole post more than random out-of-context lines, anon.
>uddenly just abandoning his responsibilities as chief and hiding with the sea clan when something goes a little wrong, essentially abandoning the forest tribes rather than taking them with him away from the terror.I agree that's a weak point. They try to address it by saying they're hunting him specifically but that rings hollow when the forest people are actively fighting a war of resistance. It's an example of the plot leading the characters' actions and a solid criticism. They could have cut some the the playing around in water scenes to spend some time explaining how the whole operation had to change after Spider got captured and make it more believable. As it is it does feel contrived. It makes the overall point of the movie feel less impactful, although not less obvious or more contradictory. It's Jake being dumber than he should be for convenience.
>This is fine for real life, because real life has contradictions like that, but a story has to minimize contradictions within it, because it needs to be consistent more to retain it's cohesiveness.Eh, contradictions can be great for stories. The problem is more having too many of them. That I will grant, the original movie is much more focused and tightly written. Even with 4 sequels there's already a lot on the plate to resolve from avatar 2.
No.36191
>>36190everyone should be pumped with testesteron so that we can achieve the perfect society of hyper masculine chad philosopher kings
No.36193
>>36190>>36191>>36192>calling others manchildren when posting this shitleast insecure moids lmao
No.36194
>>36193>M-moids!<N-no testosterone baaaaaad! Cope and seethe more. Testosterone is just another hormone of the body and like any other is necessary for proper puberty and development of the physical and mental aspects of humans. Women also have and need it, btw, retard.
Now go back to /pol/, baitkun
No.36195
>>36193if everyone is a moid then nobody is
No.36196
>>31837>>31832Actually most of the internet including Cameron himself thought it would fail at the box office (although the last could have been PR stunts to get people to go or buy it since he also said to syfy that he thought it wouldn't flop because he makes blue-collar movies). A lot of theaters were completely empty for Avatar 2 too, and China's run didn't do well. Pics rel are the reviews for the pre-release screenings. So the idea and thought of it failing or not doing as well wasn't impossible and was a sentiment shared by a large portion of people, ranging from reddit and /tv/, to news sources and critics. (Pics 1 and 2)
> Could Avatar 2 flop at the box office? “Who asked for this?” asked the New York Times in November of the coming Avatar sequel, The Way of Water. Not me. I’m not the audience for this film. I did not contribute to Avatar‘s $2.92 billion global box office. I don’t, for example, post in the “Tree of Souls” forum, which has 2,093 members (a tiny number). Does Avatar have an army of fanatics waiting to be unleashed at the box office? I don’t know anyone obsessed with Avatar, do you? Is it as meme-friendly as Minions: The Rise of Gru? No. Will it draw as many teens as an MCU movie? Probably not. Avatar does not have the built-in fanbase you need to carry a franchise. It requires a global audience — it needs mainstream buzz. It needs the press raving that it’s a “visual masterpiece.” But is that enough? Avatar: The Way of Water has a trailer with roughly forty million views. It generated this in thirty days on YouTube. By comparison, Taylor Swift’s video for “ME!” generated sixty-five million views in a single day. It’s a bad comparison, but all forty million views tell me is that moviegoers are curious about the film’s visual spectacle. The latest IMAX poster sells Avatar 2 as an underwater nature film. The deep water visuals are the hook for a general audience, but most of the chatter around this film has focused on James Cameron saying ridiculous things in the press, e.g., telling trolls to “shut the fuck up.” The Twitter discourse around Avatar 2 centers on James Cameron’s quotes, not the film or its visual allure in 3D. Cameron has turned himself into an exhausted auteur with hot takes. He’s become a meme. Cameron recently told GQ that to break even, Avatar 2 has to be the “third or fourth highest-grossing film in history,” beating or at least matching the likes of Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($2.07 billion) and Avengers: Infinity War ($2.05 billion). This is what people care about: whether or not the film will make history — whether or not James Cameron will sink or swim. With a cost of production hovering near $450 million, with Disney spending north of $1 billion on the sequels, and Hollywood not yet fully recovered from the pandemic, this is James Cameron’s biggest test.https://archive.ph/dCr8z#selection-2155.0-2178.0 James Cameron Admits ‘Avatar 2’ Needs to Gross $2 Billion to ‘Break Even’ >The ”Titanic“ filmmaker said the sequel represents ”the worst business case in movie history.“ >In order to be profitable, he told studio executives, “you have to be the third or fourth highest-grossing film in history. That’s your threshold. That’s your break even.”>Only five movies have crossed the $2 billion mark in history, including two made by Cameron.>Cameron wouldn’t say exactly how expensive the lavish “Avatar 2” production was — “Very f***ing,” he told the magazine — but like the original, it required a raft of specialized, and expensive, technology, with GQ noting he and his team had to start all over again despite the technological advancements made for the first “Avatar.” >Disney also dropped a third and final trailer for the 3-D opus, targeting it at not just the dedicated moviegoer but the casual fan who might not have been aware there was a sequel on its way. The marketing campaign is also expected to span traditional media like linear, commercial television along with a heavy online presence, all of which will be necessary to draw the record numbers to the audience.>Of course, Cameron has faced pressure many times before, including on the first “Avatar.” When asked if he has a theory as to why his 2009 film was so successful, the filmmaker responded, “I think anybody that’s seen the movie knows why; it’s a f–king gigantic adventure that’s an all-consuming emotional experience that leaves you wrung out by the end of the movie. And it was groundbreaking visually, and it still holds up today. So I don’t think I need a theory.”https://www.thewrap.com/avatar-2-needs-to-gross-2-billion-to-break-even-james-cameron/ Of course Avatar 2 did well eventually, coming in as the 3rd Highest Grossing film yet (not adjusting for inflation) and scraped in over 3 billion dollars. Considering the expensiveness of the 3D Imax pre-ordering tickets (pic 3) that makes sense. People didn't want to watch it in regular Cinema and wanted the whole and more expensive lightshow experience. Disney's financials still took an initial hit and even the later high-numbers of the gross box-office returns weren't enough to prevent Disney stocks from dropping.
https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/avatar-2-box-office-results-unexpected.html https://www.deseret.com/2022/12/20/23519126/avatar-the-way-of-water-opening-weekend-boxoffice-earnings-push-disney-stock-even-lower No.36202
>>36190>Why is James Cameron such a hypocritical ass?Hes not a hypocrite, he's just forwarding his class interests, of keeping the masses weak and servile - first you take away the strength of their minds and bodies, then you take their guns. Now they have NOTHING to defend themselves with.
No.36215
Pirate Mega of the film for anyone not willing to Stream
https://mega.nz/file/cihF0JaD#Z5zXdy088QeyEQwoPYeUVT4IuzsCoQ-HORDv2waW81I As a side note related to
>>36196 Russia pirated the fuck out of Avatar 2 and played in theatres even though they weren't officially distributed to them.
https://celluloidjunkie.com/2022/12/13/russian-cinemas-set-to-screen-pirated-copies-of-avatar-the-way-of-water/ >>36202 Basically, actually Cameron even cut out 10 minutes of extra gun fighting action because he didn't want to "fetishize" guns anymore. Which is ironic considering the movies immense length and large amount of violence regardless.
https://ew.com/movies/james-cameron-cut-10-minutes-of-gun-violence-avatar-2/ No.36218
>>36216LOL what fever-dream shit is this?
No.36243
>>36220If only feminist slam poetry could be this good all the time
No.36244
>>36215Avatar 2 is also literally a blood and soil fantasy with a white-male-inserted surrogate for a native, with his hot loyal ethnic wife.
I dont think a few extra guns can make it more "problematic".
No.36268
>>36215>Russia pirated the fuck out of Avatar 2 and played in theatres even though they weren't officially distributed to themRussia has really the best pirate culture.
No.36270
>>36268 >Russia has really the best pirate culture Confirmed
As a side note, Pirate thread
>>>/siberia/437227 No.36271
I wonder if Abatap from /tv/ is still alive or got sent to Ukraine.
No.36273
>>36272No. Why would an American be sent to Ukraine?
There was a Russian guy who was obsessed with the first movie back when it came out and spammed the board until he became a meme.
No.36284
>>31830>will a movie change anythingIf popular art with dissident themes could by itself change that much we'd be living in a green-tech anarcho-communist utopia by now. Hollywood hasn't lacked for dissident themes smuggled into its erstwhile propaganda by filmmakers hiding their power level while trapped making said propaganda
No.36286
>>36244So did you smoke crack and then watch the movie or smoke crack and hallucinated the plot without even watching it once?
No.36287
>>36286>>36244Blood and soil is when you are mad that colonizers are spilling your blood an taking your soil.
No.36384
>>36377Tell me of the top of your head the names of the protagonists of Predator, Jaws and Titanic
No.36385
>>36384>PredatorThe Predator and Schwarzy
>JawsThe shark, people eaten by the shark, people who weren't eaten by the shark
>TitanicDiCaprio, Dicaprio's bitch, the boat and the iceberg
No.36387
>>36384FYI
>>36385 is not the same anon as
>>36377 (me)
As to your query. I never watched the Titanic, so I don't know the main characters other than that old lady that got memed and Dicaprio, never cared for the film.
Jaws: Bruce the Shark, Chief Brody, Quint survivor of the Indianopolis and the greedy Mayor, the main characters and focuses of the story. I can recall their names easily
Predator: Billy the Indian an aware quiet warrior, The Predator (obviously), Dillon the CIA sellout, Anna the captured guerilla girl, Blain the Texan with a minigun, his friend Mac the crazy Black Guy that first wounds the Predator and Hawkins the guy making pussy jokes and first to be killed by the Predator.
Jesse Ventura, Arnie, Shane Black, Bill Duke, Carl Weathers and the rest of the cast are iconic, I can recognize their faces immediately.
No.36388
>>36384>PredatorDutch, also Dillon (you son of a bitch!)
>JawsQuint (he was the cool one)
>TitanicJack and Rose
Most viewers struggle to remember character names from movies like Star Wars too.
No.36389
>>36388 >>36384>>36377>Most viewers struggle to remember character names from movies like Star Wars too.Anon, ask anyone the names of the main characters of Star Wars and everyone will be able to name Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine, Luke, Anakin, Princess Leia, Chewbacc, Jabba the Hutt, Boba Fett and Han Solo at minimum, even though some of them have very little screentime relative to the films. Even in the Disney-Star Wars films, Rey and Finn are memorable, (for being such terrible characters, but still remembered).
Avatar has neither. Quaritch, Sully and Neytiri are remembered but literally any of the other character's names are a blur to me. Even Sigourney's character even though I love Weavers' performances, is forgettable. Quaritch was the only really interesting character outside the main protagonist and Neytiri was the waifu, otherwise the corporate rep behind the operation is just a vague porky, the conscientious objectors that side with Sully are forgettable, the chieftian and other Nav'i are forgettable etc. They're not bad characters just bland and flat; NPCs for the story.
No.36442
>>36389>They're not bad characters just bland and flat; NPCs for the story.I stand by chapo take that they are the everyman who the audience can fill in as, and their lack of memorability is an important point
No.36446
>>36442Cameron said about the first movie that the characters and story were broad and archetypal on purpose because he wanted it to be easier to relate to, given the scifi/fantasy elements.
No.36448
>>36443arcee makes me cum
No.36450
>>36448 We get it Jack, you
ride your motorcycle GF, what would she say about bragging?
No.36451
>>36449>It being intentional doesn't make it betterClearly it worked though. Avatar got more of an audience than the Terminators.
No.36462
>>36452Terminator has no themes except "robot bad", Avatar is about anti-colonial people's war. They are not the same
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7CtTo88QOIhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59s-a-BFD3g No.36463
>>36452>Because it was made in a time of social-mediaThe first movie came out in 2009 lol. Social media was not a thing then like it is now.
No.36464
>>36462>Terminator has no themes except "robot bad"I like avatar and all but don't be retarded. That doesn't even apply to the shitty sequels.
No.36466
>>36462>Terminator has no themes except "robot bad" LMAO you can't defend Terminator being far more iconic and popular and remembered, so you resort to CinemaSins-tier oversimplifications. And I'm not watching your Chaposhit, it's no different to RLM except with a "leftist" angle.
Terminator alone has many themes, the sequel multiplies this even further. Even the shittiest sequel (5 and 6) have themes even if they're retreads of the original 2. And the Sarah Connor Chronicles takes it to another level.
Putting that aside, the music in Terminator is iconic to the point that it's a meme in itself, as are phrases from the film "I'll be back" becoming something Arnie used in almost every movie he was in after.
>>36463 >2009Facebook, 4chan, reddit etc. all existed at the time. At the time of release of Terminator's release the internet was beyond primitive and movies relied on posters, pre-screening promos and trailers aired on the limited channels to get heard of, and the less money you had, the less heard you would be, with a movie's good or bad aspects traveling word-by-mouth literally and through critic articles in the news. Moreover Cameron was a no-name director at the time. In 2009 Cameron and his films were household names and the hype of a 3D film of this scale was huge and was advertised massively.
No.36468
>>36466just me or arnold kinda looks like a woman in that pic? (in a good way
No.36469
>>36462Skynet was explicitly a Cold War weapon and followed that logic to a T, Terminator is also much more about the nature of human resilience, the power of love such that it’s unbound by time itself, and ultimately what it means to be human. The Terminators themselves, which don’t actually act like machines, aren’t meant to be simply a reflection of how tech might turn out, the films have very heavy and very blatant religious metaphors (“Judgement Day”, “John Connor, J.C.” a child born of impossible circumstances meant to save the world, etc.)
You just have the most surface level read like most internet addled zoomer fucktards
No.36472
>>36468It's a Rule-63 edit, so yes.
>>36469 This.
No.36474
>>36469>You just have the most surface level read like most internet addled zoomer fucktardsits called a shitpost i made between wage slaving u internetoid f*ck CALM DOWN SIS
No.36581
I've seen people try to criticize the Avatar movies for supposedly engaging in the "noble savage" trope, but the Na'vi both aren't supposed to be any real world indigenous group, but a race of aliens from a different solar system, and are really so far removed from humanity they come across more as sci-fi Wood Elves* (or your local equivalent) from a fantasy setting. One can argue that elves are semi-divine beings in many depictions, because their concept comes from the myths of nature spirits, not aliens that evolved into being, however the Na'vi are the servants and favored children of a physical god. They're sentient beings and have clans, warrior-hunters etc. so they're not alien anprim hippies from a romanticized concept of Native American harmony n' peace.
Their home planet is explicitly different from Earth, whereas life on Earth is connected through our relationships to each other, life on Pandora is connected in this fashion but also by the biological ability to connect their nervous systems, and thus their thoughts and emotions directly. The culture of the Na'vi isn’t only similar to contemporary indigenous cultures, it is similar to how ALL human societies started out, even the one of you Europeans, before your people rejected the notion that life had value and nature is more than a tool to exploit. The Na'vi can’t lose their connection to their world the way humans did because of their ability to directly interface with it using those fiber-optic tails of theirs.
The film(s) borrow aesthetics from various indigenous groups, but they aren't a direct representation of any of them. Not even an idealized one. The closest is the teal water Na'vi adhering to the whole native Hawaiian "Aloha" pacifism thing, but that's where it ends. There was a deleted scene from the first movie that's obviously an alien version of an Ayahuasca trip.**
What's more, the whole "noble savage" thing usually promotes the idea that the main thing distinguishing the "noble savages" is their lifestyle and culture. If you or I were kidnapped as a child and raised in a noble savage tribe, we would be come like them with their manly virtues or closeness and respect for nature or whatever good qualities is being attributed to them that civilization supposedly lacks because of decadence, luxury, artifice, pollution and whatnot.***
The primary thing making the Na'vi the way they are is their biology. It doesn't matter how in-tune with nature a human is, they will never commune with Eywa, they will never bond with or ride any of Pandora's animals, and so on. This isn't the difference between "civilized man" and the "noble savage", this is human adventurers blundering into the sacred, enchanted forest of the elves, if said sacred, enchanted forest was the size of a planet.
Cameron has said that after Avatar came out he was contacted by leaders of various indigenous groups who felt the movie spoke to their struggles with neocolonialism, and he took that into consideration with the writing for the sequels. He also seems to think that the noble savage criticism of Avatar 1 at least has some merit because the third movie is supposed to include a group of navi who are assholes. 2 already moves away from that kind of characterization though because the plot involves the water tribe being somewhat blind to the effects the humans are having on the ocean and having taboos/superstitions that cause unnecessary conflict.
*Apparently the elves/na'vi idea is not new at all
https://james-camerons-avatar.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:Avatarismyconstant18/Similarities_between_the_Na%27vi_in_Avatar_and_the_Elves_in_The_Lord_of_the_Rings!
**
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud-0j4sU7Bs ***It's worth noting that the origin of this as a meme is the fact that it happened many times, with already grown adult settlers "going native" because they liked the indigenous society more. Also worth noting is that while there were lots of people who left European settler society for the indigenous peoples there were relatively very few who went the other way, including people who grew up in European cultures originally. This probably has less to do with the "nobility" of these indigenous cultures and more to do with the problems of European civilization and in particular the difficulty the settlers had in adapting to unfamiliar lands.
No.36582
>>36581>2 already moves away from that kind of characterization though because the plot involves the water tribe being somewhat blind to the effects the humans are having on the ocean and having taboos/superstitions that cause unnecessary conflict. Yeah it's kind of weird that 2 has been criticized for the water tribe being kind of silly and irrational with their beliefs, but that's just how ideology works. It's less obvious but the forest tribe has a similar problem at first with not being equipped to respond to the human invaders until the seriousness of the threat is made clearer. And of course one of the main points of the series is how irrational the humans' political economy is.
On the one hand people complain about noble savage tropes and on the other they start doing the Cinema Sins treatment whenever they start noticing the nuance.
No.36583
>>36582Interesting thing that I noticed as an aside is that the Water Tribe is clearly Maori inspired, while the Jungle tribe has clear Amazon tribe inspirations
No.37046
I think people forget that Disney has partial rights to James Cameron's Avatar.
https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/destinations/animal-kingdom/pandora-world-of-avatar/ https://www.wdw-magazine.com/passage-through-pandora-4-navi-river-journey-facts/ It's apparently an actually fun ride BTW… at least going by photos, it's quite possible this is just PR.
No.38808
>>37125fuck these proto-kiwifarms dweebs, sure avatar is mass market popcorn but at least it criticises jingoism and exploitation which is more than their shithole has ever achieved
No.38816
>>388112 what? Days, Weeks, Months, Years… Decades?
No.38825
>>38818>I think it's more than just a reddit problem but a Burger problem in general.True. There is even apparently an epidemic scale problem of burgers not knowing how (or refusing) to wash/wipe their own ass, almost as if parents are so uncomfortable with bodies that they neglect to teach their own children basic hygiene.
>I blame (among others) Freud and his obsession with penises, tainting Western mentality into making everything about sex.It goes back further than that. Medieval Europeans were actively censoring classical era artworks by covering or destroying their genitals. The Vatican really pushed this with its "fig leaf campaign" but it was widespread outside of that too.
No.38826
>>38825>almost as if parents are so uncomfortable with bodies that they neglect to teach their own children basic hygiene. That's part of why circumcision is so common in the USA - it's easier to keep clean and those that aren't circumcised never get taught to, y'know, wash under the skin. I know a guy who never knew you were supposed to wash under there, which is why he got circumcised later on, because of how much that shit bothered him as a kid.
>Medieval Europeans were actively censoring classical era artworks by covering or destroying their genitals. True, but to be fair that was more part of the superstructure part of the culture, ordinary peasants and so on really didn't care as much… it's also called the dark-ages for a reason, even if modern Western historiography does its best revisionist effort to deny said dark-age.
No.38956
>>38954>New research method on plant-to-plant communication makes the leaves glow. This post me think of pic rel, LMAO
Also post links and titles, Embed is trash on leftypol;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hd-h_y1X4oA Mindblowing Video of Plants Talking to Each Other In Real Time
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-41589-9https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(19)31027-9 No.40615
>TFW you're in a movie that is so CGI'd that you forgot you're in it LMAO, even Orson Welles wasn't this dismissive of his role as Unicron in the Transformers Movie
https://www.cbr.com/kate-winslet-forgot-avatar-2-role/ No.40618
Imagine being so dumb you think America, a traditionally anti imperialist state which overthrew its imperialist rulers and became the world's biggest supporter of liberalism and biggest defense against Imperialism, is somehow imperialist. Read a book sometime dude.
No.40835
>>38807Don't know, but it's gonna be great when it comes out, 1 and 2 were fantastic anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist storytelling in a sci fi setting.
No.40836
>>40618shitty bait, the US is imperialism itself.
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