IDEA! Avatar 2: Ava-Tarrer

[Cesario]

You're the one who didn't realize what part not genociding these people played in their business model. Don't complain when I break down the obvious for you.

Now, what part does not genociding the Na'vi play in the RDA's business model?

The part where Selfridge is concerned about PR and maybe not wanting to get sanctioned by socialist big government for violating business regulations on fucking war crimes?

Or the part where Selfridge deluded himself into being able to evict the Na'vi from their homes either with negotiations and trinkets and beans, or some tear gas and explosives (remember the RDA was surprised when the Na'vi started militarizing after the Home Tree destruction)?

Remember, Selfridge didn't really think the Na'vi would get pissed at being forced out of their homes, and was surprised that the natives got angry and all that.

You're asking me what weapons they didn't use, then you mention the Space EPA as your explaination for why they didn't use the dozen methods that have already been explained for nuking them from orbit, and you don't quite grasp that your hypothetical Space EPA is still an example of those evil, black hearted humans holding back. Just a means of doing so systemically.

Gasp! Turns out some humans may disagree with other humans and argue with them and contradict them and maybe hold them back from doing atrocities, or hang them in war crimes trials if they are caught doing atrocities?

How did those imperialists tend to do on the "anyone in power giving a shit about them comitting war crimes" front back in the analogue situations back on earth? Like I said, humanity is actually doing better, which is muddying the waters of the film's "humans are impure and evil" message.

Sorry, this is precisely as stupid as the Genni abducting McKay in Stargate Atlantis for his knowledge of nuclear physics, then not listening to him when he tells them to wrap some lead around their exposed reactors. Justify it however you like, but they had Jake there for precisely one purpose, and then they didn't listen to him when he was trying to help them in that purpose.

They got confused, did something stupid, and lost their game plan when shit broke down in a stressful situation. Why is this so hard to grasp? Unless you scream when people don't do the most logical thing when things around them are exploding and catching fire. Unless it's unfathomable if the Na'vi's change their minds and their attitudes.

Which would work, except that looking over the script, things don't start exploding and catching fire until after the Na'vi decide not to listen to Jake's pleas to get them to evacuate in the face of the impending firebombing. Indeed, Quaratch explicitly notes the Na'vi holding knives to Jake and Grace's throats before they commense the operation.

And the Na'vi acting like a bunch of high school elitists is supposed to make them less repulsive or stupid?

Wow. Them liking person B over person A is a "repulsive" act while assholes machinegunning people and evicting folks from their home just to mine some shit is not?

It's the "not trying to talk" part that I consider repulsive. You might have noticed that as a theme in my posts for the past four pages or so.

You're acting like one of those high school airheads who get into all sorts of gossipy catfights because Mary Jane didn't want to be your BFF forever and was hanging out with those other girls and not your clique or something.

Neither you nor I want to go over my high school experience. Suffice it to say, I'm perfectly fine with the majority of my graduating class being machine gunned to death or worse.

I didn't, idiot. I'm responding to someone else in this thread who posited that as an explaination for why the Na'vi aren't being anti-science. I'm pointing out how that explaination doesn't actually fix anything.

Why all the assumptions? After that rant about the evils of nerds, I'm the one making assumptions because I look at what we actually saw in the movie, the Na'vi rejecting the scientists and teachers and embracing the warior explicitly because he was a warior.

Uh, the movie made a big ass point that since Jake was a paraplegic, he really didn't give a shit about his life as a human being and this made him embrace the Na'vi life in a way unlike all the other scientists who weren't cripples and who could live as healthy humans and who still had something to lose, or something of value, in their lives as humans.

It was "Na'vi embracing Jake explicitly because he showed a sincere loving to their way of life". At first, they merely tolerated him because "he is a warrior, we can learn from him", yes. But it's painfully obvious that attitudes changed over time, and they went from "he is a warrior who we can learn from" to "hey this guy is more than a warrior, and because of his sincerity (and not his warriorness), we think he's ok."

The film also made a more subtle point about Grace not giving a shit about her human body either, and having fallen in love with Pandora and the Na'vi. Pity they rejected her but embraced him.

Why yes, they do come off differently. And the Na'vi rejected scientists doing research. What's your point?

The point was that Jake ended up actually acting totally like a Na'vi and figuratively becoming a Na'vi rather than some detached guy doing research, and this is what the Na'vi saw in him when they decided to accept him into their clan, and not their earlier notion of "he's a warrior, let's watch him".

It wasn't his warriorliness that made Jake fight for the Na'vi in the end. It was the fact that he considered himself one of them, which was in turn because he was a cripple in real human life and he found life as a Na'vi more real than his life as a wheelchair.

It was his warriorliness that made him fit in with their social order. They have no equivalent of scientists, especially if we accept Grace's comment that they've lived here like this for longer than the whole of human history. Now killing eachother over land, that's something they understand just fine.

But decided that when a professional killer showed up, that'd be the perfect guy to start jamming with. You know, someone they could relate to as opposed to the person who tried to stop their children from being shot.

And? Your argument on the Na'vi being bad has now degenerated to "waaah they leiked Jakey Wakey better than Ellen Ripley". Which makes them all reprehensible and horrible! *machineguns blue people*

Maybe you are superficial enough to put words over actions, but that doesn't make it an admirable trait. Grace got a bunch of the Na'vi to safety during that machinegunning incident, while Jake utterly failed to do anything of benefit to the Na'vi before exploiting their sacred traditions to make himself chief and organize a resistance movement that convinced Quaratch to bomb the Well of Souls. But he was bitchin at parties, so obviously he's the person we want to keep around while we cast out the woman who saved our children's lives.

Like I said, stupidity is fine, but when it's stupidity that goes against greed it shatters suspension of disbelief. You're still not getting the ammout of waste that was involved in getting those private armies and mech suits to Pandora in the first place.

I guess the private armies and mech suits had dual purpose in dealing with the fuckoff monster wildlife.

Yes, now that you mention it, that makes sense. Doesn't change the fact that a war with the Na'vi would be more expensive on top of the current situation.

Anyway it's obvious that when things didn't go according to plan (natives not wanting to leave their homes), Selfridge and company were at a loss and were trying to ignore problems and making shit up on the spot and deluding themselves or whatever.

You can boil it down to three mindsets. The scientists who are still into "woah exploring awesome science", the business people like Selfridge who've just become totally apathetic (explaining why the whole system broke down because they really stopped giving a fuck) and thus became irrelevant in the sequence of events, and the mercenaries who went, well, insane. I guess that's what happens to their mentalities when they're stuck there for a decade in a weird ass environment, scientists who explore cope, mercenaries who want to kill things cope, and businessmen and accountants who are just doing their boring jobs... can't cope in that situation.

The businessmen didn't have a problem until the mercs who were supposed to protect them staged a coup and threatened to murder them on an alien planet, and used their distance from anyone who could stop them as their sole justification. The businessmen you so dispise for their weakness just found themselves in the middle of a hostage situation conducted by a madman. The scientists only ended up in a different place from the businessmen because they were already physically distant from Quaratch, not because they were any better as people or as survivalists.

If you ar a far flung operation with a shortage of men, machines and munitions, then nuking the place from orbit is a lot easier and will waste far fewer of those men, machines and munitions than doing it the soft and subtle way of firebombing the Na'vi's tree city or hauling a bomber through the magnetic choke-point escorted by mechanised infantry.

Dropping a rock on the planet at about the right vector would have done more damage to the Na'vi, cost them fewer resources, and made the point in far more dramatic fassion. The only reason not to do so is if they genuinely didn't want to nuke the Na'vi for the sake of not nuking the Na'vi. The Na'vi did nothing positive for their operation at all, so the only reason not to get them out of the way pemanently and brutally is humanitarian reasons.

Instead, the RDA waste time, human lives, and limited resources with a measured, symbolic attack in the hopes of getting the Na'vi to back down.

Where would they get orbital nukes when they can't even get large conventional gravity bombs and had to jerry rig their daisy cutter in the first place? How long would it have taken them to fly their spaceship off into the Pandora star system's asteroid belt, rig the asteroid belt to an industrial space winch, and haul it back over to Pandoran orbit and drop it over the Na'vi population centers?

As people have pointed out in dozens of these threads before, you don't need a lot of specialized equipment if you've got orbital superiority. Drop something heavy out of an orbital craft, and it will impact with the force of a nuclear bomb. They've got heavy shit they can drop out of their shuttle. No modifications required.

[Shroom Man 777]

Yep, one of these two is being respectful and is interested in learning about the Na'vi culture and the other is full of preconceptions, all right.

OMG turns out people can change, who knew. And Jake ended up taking things up to speed faster than anyone else ever did.

They didn't believe it. Instead they lash Jake and Grace to a post and go out to fight the mercs.

Also, I didn't remember this little scene right before the firebombing. Quaritch makes a good point here:

Was that scene in the special Massacred Children edition? I don't remember throat-knives in the original film.

This one is particularly useful when you note the mission Selfridge gives Jake. Find out what they want. Selfridge is trying to negotiate. He's willing to use force, but the first thing he notes is his desire for Jake to find a peaceful settlement. In his mind fighting and killing the Na'vi is not the best choice, but the Na'vi aren't negotiating. It takes the multimillion dollar skin suit they got Jake and litteral divine interevention to get him to the point of maybe being able to get them to tell him what they want, and Selfridge is trying to use this oportunity to ask what they want. What a mostache twirling villain, right?

He still ended up consenting to firebombing their homes, so he's still a mustache twirling shitbag?

Looking over Quaritch's initial briefing we have this:

Either they ran a lot of weirdly unecessary chemical analasys on a random discarded arrow, or they know how fast the neurotixin works on a human being precisely the way you would expect them to learn this fact.

I guess after massacring the Na'vi's children, a whole bunch of RDA mercenaries were probably able to chemically analyze those neurotoxin arrows. With their faces.

Another scene with our evil corporate monster:

Callous as they're trying to make Selfridge here, he raises a good point. They've had three months, and accomplished absolutely nothing in terms of finding out how to negotiate with the Na'vi. Grace asks for a few more weeks, but doesn't have an answer in terms of what difference it will make. She does look like she's just trying to delay the inevidable at this point.

He wanted to hear that they've been successful with their assigned mission of negotiating with the Na'vi, but they can't even bring him a single thing that indicates that real progress has been made. Not one want or need the Na'vi have that could be used as the carrot he asked for three months ago. Just Grace's assurance that they've been making incredible progress, which, realistically, they haven't. Not towards the goal that Selfridge had them working on. Maybe anthropologically, and from a pure research prospective, but Jake learned nothing about how to negotiate with or trade with these people. In three months of living as one of them. That's pretty good evidence from his prospective that they aren't going to be able to negotiate in a couple weeks or ever.

And this makes the act of firebombing their homes any less monstrous?

From Quaritch's briefing on the Well of Souls attack:

He could have bombed Jake's army into oblivion since Jake was conveniently gathering them all up in one place. Plus, he was being kind enough to do it in a place that wasn't suffering the electromagnetic disruption that made it even thinkable that Jake's army could stop the bombers. Instead, Quaritch went for the symbolic target, with the stated goals of making them too afraid to attack the humans. He was targeting, in his mind, a nonexistent spiritual diety as a demonstration of power, which means killing the Na'vi's will to fight without needing to kill their army.

The display shows an overhead image of the Well of Souls. It
looks like Woodstock in the jungle.

A symbolic target filled with a fuckload of people. A nonexistent spiritual deity surrounded by refugees from the Home Tree and pretty much everyone else.

And, uh, this is already after they obliterated the Home Tree with who knows how many people inside of it.

And note the response from our evil imperialist Selfridge:

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the attrocities from the imperialists in real life generally things that are callously approved of or looked the other way from by the corrupt corperate executives in charge?

Though it is interesting that Jake isn't at all taken aback by this. Are these sorts of military coups something he's used to? Sure seemed to surprise the hell out of Selfridge. Maybe it's got to do with him having already fully adopted the Na'vi mindset by now.

No one's denying that Selfridge lost his nerve when everything became psychotic. His losing his shit, after approving the firebombing of the Home Tree and realizing just how big a fucker he was and how because of this, everything is going insane, makes nothing better.

Just another fun note about things that the Na'vi might just not have enough imagination to ask for:

We know Selfridge offered medicine, and Tsu'tey is opting for ritual suacide because of a specific kind of neurological damage will leave him a cripple for life. We know that human medical technology can fix this sort of thing, as it's what they were offering Jake in the film. Pity it was impossible to negotiate with these people, since there was nothing stopping a mutually beneficial trade agreement except the Na'vi's own arrogance.

Pity it was impossible to negotiate with these people, since there was nothing stopping a mutually beneficial trade agreement except them not wanting to leave their ancestral home which they've lived in since even before human civilization began.

How the hell is that arrogance?

Since Jake is the Na'vi's leader at this point, I think we can take his narration as the Na'vi prospective on the cycle of life and death:

If they didn't take the "ruined forever" additude towards the ecological damage that's been done, why would they not take the same prospective towards the earlier mining the RDA was doing? Is it just that the filthy humans are off their pristine planet now? Do you have an alternate explaination for it?

I'm going to leave off there for the moment, but let's see how the conversation goes from there.

"Captain Planet says the oceans will heal from the ecological damage over time" = "hey British Petroleum you guise aren't so bad"?

It's incredible. You take the slightest poopsies uttered by the Na'vi, and contrieve it in such a way to make them look like the most horrible people in the universe. And, somehow, you take bullshit statements from Selfridge on the monetary value of unobtanium, construe it into being vital for the human race's survival, so you can somehow make firebombing population centers somehow seem less bad than the big mean Na'vi who say mean things.

"Oh they got their home firebombed and lots of people died, but look at how the evil Na'vi befriended Jake Sully faster! Look at how Selfridge was such a nice guy trying to save humanity!"

[Cesario]

Yep, one of these two is being respectful and is interested in learning about the Na'vi culture and the other is full of preconceptions, all right.

OMG turns out people can change, who knew. And Jake ended up taking things up to speed faster than anyone else ever did.

Why yes, people can change. Saddly precognition was not among the gifts the Na'vi are purported to get from being magical blue space elves, and it's their judgement in accepting Jake rather than Grace based on the knowledge they had at the time is what we're covering here.

They didn't believe it. Instead they lash Jake and Grace to a post and go out to fight the mercs.

Also, I didn't remember this little scene right before the firebombing. Quaritch makes a good point here:

Was that scene in the special Massacred Children edition? I don't remember throat-knives in the original film.

I didn't remember it either, but it was in Darth Tedious' script that he linked. Since no one trusts my memory of events, I'm going to go off the script from this point forward.

This one is particularly useful when you note the mission Selfridge gives Jake. Find out what they want. Selfridge is trying to negotiate. He's willing to use force, but the first thing he notes is his desire for Jake to find a peaceful settlement. In his mind fighting and killing the Na'vi is not the best choice, but the Na'vi aren't negotiating. It takes the multimillion dollar skin suit they got Jake and litteral divine interevention to get him to the point of maybe being able to get them to tell him what they want, and Selfridge is trying to use this oportunity to ask what they want. What a mostache twirling villain, right?

He still ended up consenting to firebombing their homes, so he's still a mustache twirling shitbag?

Traditionally your mustache twirlers (to earn the right to twirl their mustaches) don't take any interest in negotiating except as a means of hurting the other guy for its own sake. Selfridge wanted the negotiations to succeed.

Looking over Quaritch's initial briefing we have this:

Either they ran a lot of weirdly unecessary chemical analasys on a random discarded arrow, or they know how fast the neurotixin works on a human being precisely the way you would expect them to learn this fact.

I guess after massacring the Na'vi's children, a whole bunch of RDA mercenaries were probably able to chemically analyze those neurotoxin arrows. With their faces.

Nice to see you aren't disuputing that the arrows were used on humans, whether the mercs or the ordinary miners the mercs were there to protect, or maybe the scientists. Not like the Na'vi ever made a meaningful distinction between different types of "sky people". Heck, they specifically note when they meet Jake that they've never had the chance to observe a warrior before. Makes you wonder who they were killing.

I do note, however, that I don't think the arrows ended up in the face of whoever it was. That would screw up the mask, which would make the cause of death a lot less clear.

Another scene with our evil corporate monster:

Callous as they're trying to make Selfridge here, he raises a good point. They've had three months, and accomplished absolutely nothing in terms of finding out how to negotiate with the Na'vi. Grace asks for a few more weeks, but doesn't have an answer in terms of what difference it will make. She does look like she's just trying to delay the inevidable at this point.

He wanted to hear that they've been successful with their assigned mission of negotiating with the Na'vi, but they can't even bring him a single thing that indicates that real progress has been made. Not one want or need the Na'vi have that could be used as the carrot he asked for three months ago. Just Grace's assurance that they've been making incredible progress, which, realistically, they haven't. Not towards the goal that Selfridge had them working on. Maybe anthropologically, and from a pure research prospective, but Jake learned nothing about how to negotiate with or trade with these people. In three months of living as one of them. That's pretty good evidence from his prospective that they aren't going to be able to negotiate in a couple weeks or ever.

And this makes the act of firebombing their homes any less monstrous?

Yes. It does. Unlike yourself, I'm capable of seeing degrees of right and wrong.

For example, it's more wrong to blow up someone's house without trying to convince them to get out of it first. It's not wrong at all to blow up someone's house after you've given them whatever they asked for in exchange for the house and gotten out along with whatever posessions they valued. Selfridge was going for the last option, but ended up with merely the less bad option of "I tried".

From Quaritch's briefing on the Well of Souls attack:

He could have bombed Jake's army into oblivion since Jake was conveniently gathering them all up in one place. Plus, he was being kind enough to do it in a place that wasn't suffering the electromagnetic disruption that made it even thinkable that Jake's army could stop the bombers. Instead, Quaritch went for the symbolic target, with the stated goals of making them too afraid to attack the humans. He was targeting, in his mind, a nonexistent spiritual diety as a demonstration of power, which means killing the Na'vi's will to fight without needing to kill their army.

The display shows an overhead image of the Well of Souls. It
looks like Woodstock in the jungle.

A symbolic target filled with a fuckload of people. A nonexistent spiritual deity surrounded by refugees from the Home Tree and pretty much everyone else.

And, uh, this is already after they obliterated the Home Tree with who knows how many people inside of it.

Huh, you're right. I'd overlooked that Jake was explicitly gathering his army in the holy place that if attacked would effectively lobotomize their world spirit. Damn that man is an asshole.

And note the response from our evil imperialist Selfridge:

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the attrocities from the imperialists in real life generally things that are callously approved of or looked the other way from by the corrupt corperate executives in charge?

Though it is interesting that Jake isn't at all taken aback by this. Are these sorts of military coups something he's used to? Sure seemed to surprise the hell out of Selfridge. Maybe it's got to do with him having already fully adopted the Na'vi mindset by now.

No one's denying that Selfridge lost his nerve when everything became psychotic. His losing his shit, after approving the firebombing of the Home Tree and realizing just how big a fucker he was and how because of this, everything is going insane, makes nothing better.

Lost his nerve? So in your mind, he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. He continues along the evil imperialist path (which he wasn't on to begin with, but we'll go with it for the moment) then he's an evil imperialist who deserves to die. He changes his mind and decides not to bomb the holy site full of refugees (and a major army massing to killfuck every human on the planet) and he's just a limp-dick who lost his nerve and thus deserves to die for not being macho enough.

No wonder you're having so little trouble believing the humans must be the bad guys in this film.

Just another fun note about things that the Na'vi might just not have enough imagination to ask for:

We know Selfridge offered medicine, and Tsu'tey is opting for ritual suacide because of a specific kind of neurological damage will leave him a cripple for life. We know that human medical technology can fix this sort of thing, as it's what they were offering Jake in the film. Pity it was impossible to negotiate with these people, since there was nothing stopping a mutually beneficial trade agreement except the Na'vi's own arrogance.

Pity it was impossible to negotiate with these people, since there was nothing stopping a mutually beneficial trade agreement except them not wanting to leave their ancestral home which they've lived in since even before human civilization began.

How the hell is that arrogance?

We actually don't know how they would have felt about leaving Home Tree, since Jake never actually made an offer to them. I did note that the man was an utter incompetent at his actual job, right?

No, the arrogance was in the buildup of hostilities before this point. When it's established that Selfridge doesn't know what they want because they aren't fucking talking to him. That they think there is nothing the filthy humans can offer them that will meaningfully improve their idealized stone-age lives, when, as I note above, there are obvious things that could be offered, even within the categories Selfridge mentioned offering.

Since Jake is the Na'vi's leader at this point, I think we can take his narration as the Na'vi prospective on the cycle of life and death:

If they didn't take the "ruined forever" additude towards the ecological damage that's been done, why would they not take the same prospective towards the earlier mining the RDA was doing? Is it just that the filthy humans are off their pristine planet now? Do you have an alternate explaination for it?

I'm going to leave off there for the moment, but let's see how the conversation goes from there.

"Captain Planet says the oceans will heal from the ecological damage over time" = "hey British Petroleum you guise aren't so bad"?

More like, "if this is the way these ignorant stone age tribal people understand environmentalism, why weren't they applying the same logic when the humans were in the process of mining instead of breaking their shit and murdering their miners?" If they don't take to the idea of permanent environmental damage, which someone with a more sophistocated understanding like Grace could have explained to them (another reason I intially suspected her of being to blame for the deteriorating diplomatic situation) why would they care so much about the damage that's being done enough to start pissing off the guys with machine guns? All part of the cycle and all that.

It's incredible. You take the slightest poopsies uttered by the Na'vi, and contrieve it in such a way to make them look like the most horrible people in the universe.

They aren't exactly saints.

And, somehow, you take bullshit statements from Selfridge on the monetary value of unobtanium, construe it into being vital for the human race's survival, so you can somehow make firebombing population centers somehow seem less bad than the big mean Na'vi who say mean things.

No, that was clearly a result of something I must've read later, since apparently nothing about earth other than Jake's brother being knifed there and Jake saying "they killed their mother" was ever uttered in the film. I was wrong about that being in the film after looking over the script.

"Oh they got their home firebombed and lots of people died, but look at how the evil Na'vi befriended Jake Sully faster! Look at how Selfridge was such a nice guy trying to save humanity!"

I don't have a lot of intrinsic respect for people who value professional killers over scientists. I make no appologies for that value judgement.

[Shroom Man 777]

How did those imperialists tend to do on the "anyone in power giving a shit about them comitting war crimes" front back in the analogue situations back on earth? Like I said, humanity is actually doing better, which is muddying the waters of the film's "humans are impure and evil" message.

How does this change the fact that the RDA still acted like complete shitbags? How does this make firebombing people's homes any better?

The message was an indictment of corporate greed and callousness. There were craploads of good humans in the movie anyway. Evil asshole corporations oppressing blue natives and the natives rising up together with some turncoats, or evil asshole corporations sending mareens to get killed by acid-blooded alienoids.

Which would work, except that looking over the script, things don't start exploding and catching fire until after the Na'vi decide not to listen to Jake's pleas to get them to evacuate in the face of the impending firebombing. Indeed, Quaratch explicitly notes the Na'vi holding knives to Jake and Grace's throats before they commense the operation.

Exploding and catching fire was a figure of speech. Try "things start getting run over by columns of huge ass factory machines heading straight to their homes" making these guys lose their cool.

It's the "not trying to talk" part that I consider repulsive. You might have noticed that as a theme in my posts for the past four pages or so.

children being massacred is not conducive to talkativeness




WHO


KNEW

Neither you nor I want to go over my high school experience. Suffice it to say, I'm perfectly fine with the majority of my graduating class being machine gunned to death or worse.

you should ride a vtol and firebomb their secret treehouse clubhouse

The film also made a more subtle point about Grace not giving a shit about her human body either, and having fallen in love with Pandora and the Na'vi. Pity they rejected her but embraced him.

Paraplegic who is nobody as a human but can actually freaking walk as a Na'vi =/= chainsmoking scientist who does research (which she loves, ok) in Na'vi body, and in her human life can still walk and is award winning renowned paper publishing honcho

Her approach as a proper scientist was different from Jake's, well, whole idiot and like a careless child shtick and some people were more receptive to the latter and the former. Okay, they were also impressed by his macho bullshit. And the whole glowy glowy it's a religious sign.

It was his warriorliness that made him fit in with their social order. They have no equivalent of scientists, especially if we accept Grace's comment that they've lived here like this for longer than the whole of human history. Now killing eachother over land, that's something they understand just fine.

And? So? Killing each other, killing monsters, killing plants. H'okay.

His training as a Marine made him a good hunter. His lack of brains and his genuine happiness at being able to walk made him just glad to be in his Na'vi in a way not like any other Avatar pilot - and this is something we can't discount, because it's central to why the hell he went native in the first place. And his approach, due to these, were different from the scientists' researchingy approach.

None of the other Avatar pilots, though they loved the Na'vi lifestyle and shit, ever went so far in going native as Jake.

Maybe you are superficial enough to put words over actions, but that doesn't make it an admirable trait. Grace got a bunch of the Na'vi to safety during that machinegunning incident, while Jake utterly failed to do anything of benefit to the Na'vi before exploiting their sacred traditions to make himself chief and organize a resistance movement that convinced Quaratch to bomb the Well of Souls. But he was bitchin at parties, so obviously he's the person we want to keep around while we cast out the woman who saved our children's lives.

Technically, she didn't save their lives and they still got killed. And remember that "harrumph we will study this warrior" transitioned to "he's not such a bad guy he's okay" and then their relationships with the other human Avatar pilots also became better and awesome and they all became friends again. So there was a change of heart on part of the Na'vi. Yes, it took them trying to study a human warrior and then softening up to do it. Sure, they ended up liking him more than they liked the other guys. Okay. It doesn't seem like a big deal to me. But you make it sound so horrible while trying to make bullshit excuses for Selfridge Savior of Rome Earth.

Yes, now that you mention it, that makes sense. Doesn't change the fact that a war with the Na'vi would be more expensive on top of the current situation.

Their inept CEO was totally caught off guard by the whole getting into a war. He was dismissive of the whole concept, thought some guys with spears weren't a thread, and also deluded himself into thinking that either they could be peacefully convinced to leave their ancestral home on a whim or that a show of military force would cow them, end of story, and then he'd get his dineroes and retirement fund, etc. Then when it didn't happen, shit broke down, Selfridge lost his cool, and the psychos took over, and more people died.

The businessmen didn't have a problem until the mercs who were supposed to protect them staged a coup and threatened to murder them on an alien planet, and used their distance from anyone who could stop them as their sole justification. The businessmen you so dispise for their weakness just found themselves in the middle of a hostage situation conducted by a madman. The scientists only ended up in a different place from the businessmen because they were already physically distant from Quaratch, not because they were any better as people or as survivalists.

Those businessmen who approved of the firebombing in the first place, because they were just "doing their jobs".

Only when apparently things weren't smooth sailing after the firebombing did the businessmen start reconsidering things and become hesitant and confused and even scared, while the militarists continued on with their desire for even more firebombings. And this is when the militarists took over.

As people have pointed out in dozens of these threads before, you don't need a lot of specialized equipment if you've got orbital superiority. Drop something heavy out of an orbital craft, and it will impact with the force of a nuclear bomb. They've got heavy shit they can drop out of their shuttle. No modifications required.

How much time did they have to perfect their Ronald von Reagan Star Wars Strategic Defense Initiative KKV orbital rods from god objective interim bombardment system before the natives could get even with them for the Home Tree firebombing?

[Shroom Man 777]

Why yes, people can change. Saddly precognition was not among the gifts the Na'vi are purported to get from being magical blue space elves, and it's their judgement in accepting Jake rather than Grace based on the knowledge they had at the time is what we're covering here.

Responded to this in the previous post. Moving on.

I didn't remember it either, but it was in Darth Tedious' script that he linked. Since no one trusts my memory of events, I'm going to go off the script from this point forward.

There could be changes between script and film. Can anyone who's seen the Children Massacre Edition confirm if there was throat-knifing? Necron Lord?

Traditionally your mustache twirlers (to earn the right to twirl their mustaches) don't take any interest in negotiating except as a means of hurting the other guy for its own sake. Selfridge wanted the negotiations to succeed.

And when the negotiations didn't succeed, the firebombing to him was convenient and he still went with it. Faint praise, he's still a shit.

Nice to see you aren't disuputing that the arrows were used on humans, whether the mercs or the ordinary miners the mercs were there to protect, or maybe the scientists. Not like the Na'vi ever made a meaningful distinction between different types of "sky people". Heck, they specifically note when they meet Jake that they've never had the chance to observe a warrior before. Makes you wonder who they were killing.

EYTUKAN
(SUBTITLED)
No! This is the first warrior
dreamwalker we have seen. We need to
learn more about him.

Yes. It does. Unlike yourself, I'm capable of seeing degrees of right and wrong.

For example, it's more wrong to blow up someone's house without trying to convince them to get out of it first. It's not wrong at all to blow up someone's house after you've given them whatever they asked for in exchange for the house and gotten out along with whatever posessions they valued. Selfridge was going for the last option, but ended up with merely the less bad option of "I tried".

And agreeing to blow up their homes with people in it and not taking no for an answer still makes him a total slimeball.

Ironic you'd whine so badly over Na'vi choosing to make Jake their BFF over Grace and make mountains over that molehill, while not minding Selfridge's casual acceptance of firebombing because of some lame "he tried" shit.

Huh, you're right. I'd overlooked that Jake was explicitly gathering his army in the holy place that if attacked would effectively lobotomize their world spirit. Damn that man is an asshole.

Ha. Ha. Ha. Gathering people in a refugee site makes him sooooo bad, the Na'vi choosing Jake over Grace makes them soooo reprehensible, but you make all sorts of excuses for Selfridge's "I tried, oops, ok go firebomb their homes" and imagine him as a mining unobtanium for earth's survival.

Lost his nerve? So in your mind, he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. He continues along the evil imperialist path (which he wasn't on to begin with, but we'll go with it for the moment) then he's an evil imperialist who deserves to die. He changes his mind and decides not to bomb the holy site full of refugees (and a major army massing to killfuck every human on the planet) and he's just a limp-dick who lost his nerve and thus deserves to die for not being macho enough.

No wonder you're having so little trouble believing the humans must be the bad guys in this film.

He damned himself the second he approved the firebombing of the Home Tree.

I don't condemn him for losing his nerve, going "holy shit" when everything was going insane, and falling out with the militarists. That means he wasn't a psycho like Quarritch.

Maybe instead of "lost his nerve" he "found his sanity". But it was obvious he was rattled, and his earlier notion of "ho hum okay, i tried, now blow up their tree" has gone out of the window and now he's scared and considering it was a bad idea (but only because the Na'vi were getting angry and many? if the Na'vi just ran and hid as they planned, would he have reconsidered?).

But he's still a fucker for ordering the firebombing of the Home Tree.

We actually don't know how they would have felt about leaving Home Tree, since Jake never actually made an offer to them. I did note that the man was an utter incompetent at his actual job, right?

No, the arrogance was in the buildup of hostilities before this point. When it's established that Selfridge doesn't know what they want because they aren't fucking talking to him. That they think there is nothing the filthy humans can offer them that will meaningfully improve their idealized stone-age lives, when, as I note above, there are obvious things that could be offered, even within the categories Selfridge mentioned offering.

And? So? Boo-hoo they don't really want to ask anything from the humans. So what? Why is this, not caring to ask anything from the humans, such a great offense?

Why is it so offensive to you that these people don't want or need anything from the human lifestyle? Does it insult a Ryan Thunderesque "industrialism is the end all be all" shtick in you?

Apparently it's a great crime now for people to live satisfied and content and carefree? It's so horrible that they do this, rather than give up their homes for some gameboys so some assholes can wreck their ancestral land and plunder it?

The only offenses and arrogance is in those who massacre children, and who destroy the homes of others which you turn a blind eye to, or actively make apologisms for, or make lies to excuse.

More like, "if this is the way these ignorant stone age tribal people understand environmentalism, why weren't they applying the same logic when the humans were in the process of mining instead of breaking their shit and murdering their miners?" If they don't take to the idea of permanent environmental damage, which someone with a more sophistocated understanding like Grace could have explained to them (another reason I intially suspected her of being to blame for the deteriorating diplomatic situation) why would they care so much about the damage that's being done enough to start pissing off the guys with machine guns? All part of the cycle and all that.

So if flesh and tissue heals because of the human cycle of regeneration allows it, this means it's okay for people to join razor blade wrist cutting rallies?

Again, Sully's making some vague allusionary mumbo jumbo bullshit and you jump on it screaming and shrieking while making half-assed excuses for the RDA's atrocities.

They aren't exactly saints.

And? They're not the ones going to other people's homes and blowing their shit up.

No, that was clearly a result of something I must've read later, since apparently nothing about earth other than Jake's brother being knifed there and Jake saying "they killed their mother" was ever uttered in the film. I was wrong about that being in the film after looking over the script.

Thank you.

So, you admit that unobtanium may very well not be vital for Earth survival and may just be another overpriced piece of rock (with technological applications) that they're out there to mine?

I don't have a lot of intrinsic respect for people who value professional killers over scientists. I make no appologies for that value judgement.

No, but you have a lot of intrinsic respect and apologism for greedy shits who destroy others' homes and kill people. Some value judgment.

[Simon_Jester]

Cesario, you have still not proven the heart of your position: that the lives of the people of Earth depend on a supply of unobtainium.

If that is not true, then the bloodshed on Pandora cannot be justified by the need for unobtainium- unobtainium is just an expensive metal, and does not justify dispossessing and murdering the people who happen to be living on top of deposits of the stuff.

I think it's time for you to prove that point, or admit that your argument is founded on bullshit.

[Darth Tedious]

There could be changes between script and film. Can anyone who's seen the Children Massacre Edition confirm if there was throat-knifing? Necron Lord?

Just had a look, there were knives waving at throats in the theatrical release. I'd assume they must still be there in the Butchered Kiddies Edition.

Re the "damage recovery" dialogue: It is worth keeping in mind that while the mining was still happening, the damage was ongoing. You don't know if the damage will recover when you don't know how much more there will be.
Of course, once the RDA have fucked right off, you can assess how much damage has been done and whether it can be undone.

---

On topic: Shroomy, it's a kickarse idea all over. Especially the embodiment of Karma. Given Eywa's nature as a deity made real, it would be fantastic to see the Makers give form to various deities and spiritual concepts on Earth.

But what about this: The Na'vi aren't actually real people- they're all Avatars, and Pandora is the Maker's holodeck. The Makers could even add an extra layer of headfuckery to our come-uppance if they didn't make us into Na'vi, but stuck us in a matrix-y hive of dreaming peoples. Then they don't even have to bother terraforming, and we get the bonus irony of learning the error of our ways and embracing nature while we're still actually choking to death on the fumes of our polluted shitworld.

[Shroom Man 777]

Cesario, you have still not proven the heart of your position: that the lives of the people of Earth depend on a supply of unobtainium.

He's admitted that there is nothing in the movie substantiating this. And, I guess, the only thing he has for him was that Selfridge "tried", and that the Na'vi are reprehensible because they made Jake Sully their BFF first before Grace or some other high school drama that Cesario's turned into a musical (of screeches), and the Na'vi are gosh darned arrogant because, uh, they didn't really want anything from the humans that could allow humans to buy their ancestral homeland and rape and bulldoze it. Those fiends!

Cesario should be given an award in acrobatics and gymnastics.

[Shroom Man 777]

---

On topic: Shroomy, it's a kickarse idea all over. Especially the embodiment of Karma. Given Eywa's nature as a deity made real, it would be fantastic to see the Makers give form to various deities and spiritual concepts on Earth.

But what about this: The Na'vi aren't actually real people- they're all Avatars, and Pandora is the Maker's holodeck. The Makers could even add an extra layer of headfuckery to our come-uppance if they didn't make us into Na'vi, but stuck us in a matrix-y hive of dreaming peoples. Then they don't even have to bother terraforming, and we get the bonus irony of learning the error of our ways and embracing nature while we're still actually choking to death on the fumes of our polluted shitworld.

It would be in keepinger with Karma if the Na'vi were also much like humans before they too were made to achieve "enlightenment". Well, maybe they weren't like humans in raping other worlds, but before being Pandora'd they were also much different beings and either voluntarily or involuntarily, they were given betterment by the Pandora Makers.

I think all of our physical corporeal beings being liquefied and subsumed into a macroscopic divine electron by the Pandora Makers, in a cosmic sacrament of incomprehensibility, would be better than "what if your brain was in a computor". But that's because I'm trying to evoke all the worst parts of the Bible. It is a religious story.

[PeZook]

You know, Cesario, I have to admit I was wrong.

You don't think of the Na'Vi as blue XXI century humans ; When you consider the situation and the nature of the RDA's offer, you are saying the Na'Vi are retarded for not signing their own version of the Indian Treaties. In other words, you say they are stupid and primitive because they did not trust the RDA.

But why should they? Anything the humans could offer them would be either temporary (like your ride to another planet, or religious texts) or have a supply chain entirely controlled by the humans (weapons, medicine, radios, parachutes). In exchange, the Omaticaya would have to give up their main settlement and hunting grounds. Essentially, they'd have to give up their ancestral lands, their home, their livelihood, possibly their entire culture in exchange for an uncertain future and hope the humans won't just renege on the deal the moment they got what they wanted.

No XXI century human would have taken that deal, either!

So I was wrong. I'm sorry.

Enough with the nitpicking bullshit.

Provide evidence there would be a mass die off on Earth if that specific deposit was not mined in that specific timeframe, thus necessitating the forcible and immediate eviction of the Na'Vi in the name of the greater good.

I don't believe that to be the case. I'm sorry if you've managed to get that impression from our exchanges, but my position was that they needed to mine some, and that the Home Tree deposit was chosen because it was rich, and because blowing up Home Tree was more likely to discourage attacks than trying to mine anywhere else. The Na'vi were attacking already before Home Tree was destroyed, and actually looked like they were going to just move on with their lives until Jake rallyed them. Them not attacking RDA miners means no more machinegunning children as a nice side-effect, and no "earth getting frustrated and deciding that nuking them from orbit might not be such a bad idea after all" to boot.

Ah, so the situation wasn't urgent at all! Thank you: this makes your argument fall apart. If that specific deposit was not yield or time critical to survival of humans on Earth, then Selfridge had no justification for making a mafia-styled offer to the Omaticaya (take what we pay you or feel the pain!)

He could've just thrown in the towel and redirected the bulldozers to a smaller deposit elsewhere, accepting smaller yields of unobtainium, but avoiding having to commit mass murder. Maybe he could even find his brain and actually try to make some sort of amend for murdering schoolchildren instead of shrugging and continuing on.

We don't tend to love them so much that we'll make the same offer to the guys who's job is killing our wariors (and apparently schoolchildren), though. The Na'vi apparently do.

Actually we are very likely to grant respect and fair treatment to enemy soldiers just because they wear the uniform. Even if they're likely complicit in mass murder. Witness people who celebrate Operation Ovelord with a minute of silence for the Allied and Wehrmacht soldiers equally.

Yes. It does. Unlike yourself, I'm capable of seeing degrees of right and wrong.

For example, it's more wrong to blow up someone's house without trying to convince them to get out of it first. It's not wrong at all to blow up someone's house after you've given them whatever they asked for in exchange for the house and gotten out along with whatever posessions they valued. Selfridge was going for the last option, but ended up with merely the less bad option of "I tried".

What if the owner of the house doesn't want to sell it?

He just doesn't. His land has valuable stuff on it, so you want it, but he doesn't want to sell it because he's too old to move and has lots of nice memories of growing old in that house.

So you send some armed men to start digging on his land anyways ; He tells them to get out, they don't, so he shoots one and destroys their equipment.

Then you send mercenaries to murder his son in retribution, so now he just shoots your men on sight whenever they show up.

Should he get out? Would you be at all morally justified to bring in gunships to firebomb his house? After all, you think he should be able to name a price for the land if he has any brains. He has no chance fighting your company and is likely to die if he tries, and he's no longer interested in any further negotiations, because giving your company their Danzig corridor is just not acceptable to him.

Now, I think you would be justified in evicting/killing him if countless lives were depending on that mining operation.

But you just admitted they were not.

uh, whoops?

[Ryan Thunder]

And? So? Boo-hoo they don't really want to ask anything from the humans. So what? Why is this, not caring to ask anything from the humans, such a great offense?

Why is it so offensive to you that these people don't want or need anything from the human lifestyle? [...]

If they don't want or realize that they need anything we have then it would be out of ignorance. Which is understandable.

They just need education (like many people.) Then they'll understand.

[Simon_Jester]

If the price of being educated in what we can offer them is "flee your homes and give up your way of life," I can't blame them for not taking the offer.

I mean, they may not be benefiting from all the cool stuff they could have if they were on our good side, but the Na'vi are basically content. They are not conscious of any active misery or discomfort in their own lives. For them to give up their contentment, permanently and irrevocably, in exchange for vague promises extended to them by people who have proven willing to kill their children... well, I can't imagine any group of people from any era being willing to sign on for that.

[Ryan Thunder]

Oh, I'm not even going to touch that discussion. I'm under no illusion that the RDA are somehow good guys.

[Cesario]

How did those imperialists tend to do on the "anyone in power giving a shit about them comitting war crimes" front back in the analogue situations back on earth? Like I said, humanity is actually doing better, which is muddying the waters of the film's "humans are impure and evil" message.

How does this change the fact that the RDA still acted like complete shitbags? How does this make firebombing people's homes any better?

If you can't see the degrees, I really can't help you. Once you evolve beyond pure black and white thinking, come back and we'll have a discussion about the particular shade of grey we are looking at in this instance. Until then, enjoy your magical native americans triumphing forever against the evil european mennace who will never return to Pandora, ever.

The message was an indictment of corporate greed and callousness.

Then they really should have made the corrupt corporate executive more callous. Ideally not have him need to be overthrown by the mercs and just have him sign on to the Well of Souls bombing. Probably should have also had him less interested in negotiating with the Na'vi from the start. If that's the message we want to actually send.

There were craploads of good humans in the movie anyway.

Too bad the only ones the film presented as good either died horribly for the sin of being human or were purified into becoming blue space elves themselves.

Evil asshole corporations oppressing blue natives and the natives rising up together with some turncoats, or evil asshole corporations sending mareens to get killed by acid-blooded alienoids.

Was this connected to anything else you've said in this post, or was this just stream of consiousness ranting?

Which would work, except that looking over the script, things don't start exploding and catching fire until after the Na'vi decide not to listen to Jake's pleas to get them to evacuate in the face of the impending firebombing. Indeed, Quaratch explicitly notes the Na'vi holding knives to Jake and Grace's throats before they commense the operation.

Exploding and catching fire was a figure of speech.

Sure it was. I believe you. It's not possible that you just misremembered the order things happened in. I'm the only one allowed to misremember the film in this discussion after all.

Try "things start getting run over by columns of huge ass factory machines heading straight to their homes" making these guys lose their cool.

Which is precisely the time you want that military intelligence thing that you've been sitting on for the past three months.

It's the "not trying to talk" part that I consider repulsive. You might have noticed that as a theme in my posts for the past four pages or so.

children being massacred is not conducive to talkativeness




WHO


KNEW

Except they obviously weren't talking before that point either, since what Selfridge was asking Jake to get was the most basic information possible about the wants and needs of the natives.

Neither you nor I want to go over my high school experience. Suffice it to say, I'm perfectly fine with the majority of my graduating class being machine gunned to death or worse.

you should ride a vtol and firebomb their secret treehouse clubhouse

They don't gather into easily murdered groups. Maybe I should hire Jake to rally them.

The film also made a more subtle point about Grace not giving a shit about her human body either, and having fallen in love with Pandora and the Na'vi. Pity they rejected her but embraced him.

Paraplegic who is nobody as a human but can actually freaking walk as a Na'vi =/= chainsmoking scientist who does research (which she loves, ok) in Na'vi body, and in her human life can still walk and is award winning renowned paper publishing honcho

Her approach as a proper scientist was different from Jake's, well, whole idiot and like a careless child shtick and some people were more receptive to the latter and the former. Okay, they were also impressed by his macho bullshit. And the whole glowy glowy it's a religious sign.

Concession accepted.

It was his warriorliness that made him fit in with their social order. They have no equivalent of scientists, especially if we accept Grace's comment that they've lived here like this for longer than the whole of human history. Now killing eachother over land, that's something they understand just fine.

And? So? Killing each other, killing monsters, killing plants. H'okay.

His training as a Marine made him a good hunter. His lack of brains and his genuine happiness at being able to walk made him just glad to be in his Na'vi in a way not like any other Avatar pilot - and this is something we can't discount, because it's central to why the hell he went native in the first place. And his approach, due to these, were different from the scientists' researchingy approach.

None of the other Avatar pilots, though they loved the Na'vi lifestyle and shit, ever went so far in going native as Jake.

They weren't brought as far in as Jake.

Maybe you are superficial enough to put words over actions, but that doesn't make it an admirable trait. Grace got a bunch of the Na'vi to safety during that machinegunning incident, while Jake utterly failed to do anything of benefit to the Na'vi before exploiting their sacred traditions to make himself chief and organize a resistance movement that convinced Quaratch to bomb the Well of Souls. But he was bitchin at parties, so obviously he's the person we want to keep around while we cast out the woman who saved our children's lives.

Technically, she didn't save their lives and they still got killed.

Ahem:

GRACE
They killed Sylwanin in the doorway.
Right in front of Neytiri. Then shot the
others.
(MILDLY)
I got most of the kids out, before they
shot me.

And remember that "harrumph we will study this warrior" transitioned to "he's not such a bad guy he's okay" and then their relationships with the other human Avatar pilots also became better and awesome and they all became friends again. So there was a change of heart on part of the Na'vi. Yes, it took them trying to study a human warrior and then softening up to do it. Sure, they ended up liking him more than they liked the other guys. Okay. It doesn't seem like a big deal to me. But you make it sound so horrible while trying to make bullshit excuses for Selfridge Savior of Rome Earth.

Does it really sound horrible the way I tell it? Because you aren't acting like someone who thinks what I'm saying sounds horrible.

Yes, now that you mention it, that makes sense. Doesn't change the fact that a war with the Na'vi would be more expensive on top of the current situation.

Their inept CEO was totally caught off guard by the whole getting into a war. He was dismissive of the whole concept, thought some guys with spears weren't a thread, and also deluded himself into thinking that either they could be peacefully convinced to leave their ancestral home on a whim or that a show of military force would cow them, end of story, and then he'd get his dineroes and retirement fund, etc.

From Selfridge to Grace very early in the film:

SELFRIDGE
Those savages are threatening our whole
operation. We're on the brink of war and
you're supposed to be finding a
diplomatic solution. So use what you've
got and get me some results.

Then when it didn't happen, shit broke down, Selfridge lost his cool, and the psychos took over, and more people died.

Selfridge lost his cool after the psychos took over. Were you paying no attention at all?

The businessmen didn't have a problem until the mercs who were supposed to protect them staged a coup and threatened to murder them on an alien planet, and used their distance from anyone who could stop them as their sole justification. The businessmen you so dispise for their weakness just found themselves in the middle of a hostage situation conducted by a madman. The scientists only ended up in a different place from the businessmen because they were already physically distant from Quaratch, not because they were any better as people or as survivalists.

Those businessmen who approved of the firebombing in the first place, because they were just "doing their jobs".

Only when apparently things weren't smooth sailing after the firebombing did the businessmen start reconsidering things and become hesitant and confused and even scared, while the militarists continued on with their desire for even more firebombings. And this is when the militarists took over.

Again, the businessmen didn't become scared until they were taken hostage by the mercs who were supposed to be protecting them.

As people have pointed out in dozens of these threads before, you don't need a lot of specialized equipment if you've got orbital superiority. Drop something heavy out of an orbital craft, and it will impact with the force of a nuclear bomb. They've got heavy shit they can drop out of their shuttle. No modifications required.

How much time did they have to perfect their Ronald von Reagan Star Wars Strategic Defense Initiative KKV orbital rods from god objective interim bombardment system before the natives could get even with them for the Home Tree firebombing?

It's a lot easier and faster to calculate the reentry trajectory of one object than it is to work the logistics of a complicated attack utilizing a repurposed shuttle. Especially if you've got a computer specifically designed to calculate reentry trajectories. I presume they might have something like that on their shuttle, but I'll admit I'm making an assumption and it was never stated in the movie that they did, in fact, have such a computer.

Traditionally your mustache twirlers (to earn the right to twirl their mustaches) don't take any interest in negotiating except as a means of hurting the other guy for its own sake. Selfridge wanted the negotiations to succeed.

And when the negotiations didn't succeed, the firebombing to him was convenient and he still went with it. Faint praise, he's still a shit.

Concession accepted.

Nice to see you aren't disuputing that the arrows were used on humans, whether the mercs or the ordinary miners the mercs were there to protect, or maybe the scientists. Not like the Na'vi ever made a meaningful distinction between different types of "sky people". Heck, they specifically note when they meet Jake that they've never had the chance to observe a warrior before. Makes you wonder who they were killing.

EYTUKAN
(SUBTITLED)
No! This is the first warrior
dreamwalker we have seen. We need to
learn more about him.

Huh, youre right. They did make a distinction. Guess they didn't need to learn anything about the filthy humans, but if he's blue, then he's worth looking into.

Yes. It does. Unlike yourself, I'm capable of seeing degrees of right and wrong.

For example, it's more wrong to blow up someone's house without trying to convince them to get out of it first. It's not wrong at all to blow up someone's house after you've given them whatever they asked for in exchange for the house and gotten out along with whatever posessions they valued. Selfridge was going for the last option, but ended up with merely the less bad option of "I tried".

And agreeing to blow up their homes with people in it and not taking no for an answer still makes him a total slimeball.

Ironic you'd whine so badly over Na'vi choosing to make Jake their BFF over Grace and make mountains over that molehill, while not minding Selfridge's casual acceptance of firebombing because of some lame "he tried" shit.

Still not grasping that "less bad" is not the same thing as "good", I see. Once again, when you gain the ability to percieve shades other than black and white, let me know.

Huh, you're right. I'd overlooked that Jake was explicitly gathering his army in the holy place that if attacked would effectively lobotomize their world spirit. Damn that man is an asshole.

Ha. Ha. Ha. Gathering people in a refugee site makes him sooooo bad, the Na'vi choosing Jake over Grace makes them soooo reprehensible, but you make all sorts of excuses for Selfridge's "I tried, oops, ok go firebomb their homes" and imagine him as a mining unobtanium for earth's survival.

This is garrisoning your troops in a church or school territory Jake was in here. I'm not sticking up for him on it. Why are you sticking up for him? Did him being blue at the time make you forget he was still a filthy human on the inside?

Lost his nerve? So in your mind, he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. He continues along the evil imperialist path (which he wasn't on to begin with, but we'll go with it for the moment) then he's an evil imperialist who deserves to die. He changes his mind and decides not to bomb the holy site full of refugees (and a major army massing to killfuck every human on the planet) and he's just a limp-dick who lost his nerve and thus deserves to die for not being macho enough.

No wonder you're having so little trouble believing the humans must be the bad guys in this film.

He damned himself the second he approved the firebombing of the Home Tree.

I don't condemn him for losing his nerve, going "holy shit" when everything was going insane, and falling out with the militarists. That means he wasn't a psycho like Quarritch.

Maybe instead of "lost his nerve" he "found his sanity". But it was obvious he was rattled, and his earlier notion of "ho hum okay, i tried, now blow up their tree" has gone out of the window and now he's scared and considering it was a bad idea (but only because the Na'vi were getting angry and many? if the Na'vi just ran and hid as they planned, would he have reconsidered?).

But he's still a fucker for ordering the firebombing of the Home Tree.

You still seem to not grasp that it wasn't the Na'vi at all that are scaring Selfridge. Quaritch's coup was what did that.

We actually don't know how they would have felt about leaving Home Tree, since Jake never actually made an offer to them. I did note that the man was an utter incompetent at his actual job, right?

No, the arrogance was in the buildup of hostilities before this point. When it's established that Selfridge doesn't know what they want because they aren't fucking talking to him. That they think there is nothing the filthy humans can offer them that will meaningfully improve their idealized stone-age lives, when, as I note above, there are obvious things that could be offered, even within the categories Selfridge mentioned offering.

And? So? Boo-hoo they don't really want to ask anything from the humans. So what? Why is this, not caring to ask anything from the humans, such a great offense?

Why is it so offensive to you that these people don't want or need anything from the human lifestyle? Does it insult a Ryan Thunderesque "industrialism is the end all be all" shtick in you?

Apparently it's a great crime now for people to live satisfied and content and carefree? It's so horrible that they do this, rather than give up their homes for some gameboys so some assholes can wreck their ancestral land and plunder it?

You haven't been bothering to read my responses thus far. If you had, it would be clear that things of actual value, not "some gameboys" were on offer, which the Na'vi either couldn't imagine existing so they didn't ask for it, or they rejected an offer of things that could actually improve their lives, and not have people committing ritual suacide over the shame of being a cripple.

Hm, strange that we don't get more exploration of Jake killing Tsu'tey because Tsu'tey was ashamed of being a cripple. You'd have thought that would be an obvious point to show shared experience, and the sort of thing Jake could help him through.

The only offenses and arrogance is in those who massacre children, and who destroy the homes of others which you turn a blind eye to, or actively make apologisms for, or make lies to excuse.

Lies implies a deliberate misrepresentation. When evidence was presented that demonstrated my recollection was in error, I admitted the error and moved on. I realize that sort of behavior makes me look weak to fuckwads like yourself, but I'm not answerable to you and your standards of behavior. I'm answerable to my own.

More like, "if this is the way these ignorant stone age tribal people understand environmentalism, why weren't they applying the same logic when the humans were in the process of mining instead of breaking their shit and murdering their miners?" If they don't take to the idea of permanent environmental damage, which someone with a more sophistocated understanding like Grace could have explained to them (another reason I intially suspected her of being to blame for the deteriorating diplomatic situation) why would they care so much about the damage that's being done enough to start pissing off the guys with machine guns? All part of the cycle and all that.

So if flesh and tissue heals because of the human cycle of regeneration allows it, this means it's okay for people to join razor blade wrist cutting rallies?

Kinda, yes.

Again, Sully's making some vague allusionary mumbo jumbo bullshit and you jump on it screaming and shrieking while making half-assed excuses for the RDA's atrocities.

Screaming and shrieking? I don't recall altering my font in any of the standard indicative ways in my response to Jake's particular bit of nonsense here.

They aren't exactly saints.

And? They're not the ones going to other people's homes and blowing their shit up.

Only because they can't. Not because they're morally better people.

No, that was clearly a result of something I must've read later, since apparently nothing about earth other than Jake's brother being knifed there and Jake saying "they killed their mother" was ever uttered in the film. I was wrong about that being in the film after looking over the script.

Thank you.

So, you admit that unobtanium may very well not be vital for Earth survival and may just be another overpriced piece of rock (with technological applications) that they're out there to mine?

It may not be vital to earth's survival based soely on the film. I clearly must have read this in the expanded universe material somewhere. You have my concession on this point.

I don't have a lot of intrinsic respect for people who value professional killers over scientists. I make no appologies for that value judgement.

No, but you have a lot of intrinsic respect and apologism for greedy shits who destroy others' homes and kill people. Some value judgment.

I realize you missed this point, but both sides were killing people.

Cesario, you have still not proven the heart of your position: that the lives of the people of Earth depend on a supply of unobtainium.

If that is not true, then the bloodshed on Pandora cannot be justified by the need for unobtainium- unobtainium is just an expensive metal, and does not justify dispossessing and murdering the people who happen to be living on top of deposits of the stuff.

I think it's time for you to prove that point, or admit that your argument is founded on bullshit.

Now I know you aren't reading my posts. Thanks for providing incontrovertable proof that you aren't arguing in good faith.

---

On topic: Shroomy, it's a kickarse idea all over. Especially the embodiment of Karma. Given Eywa's nature as a deity made real, it would be fantastic to see the Makers give form to various deities and spiritual concepts on Earth.

But what about this: The Na'vi aren't actually real people- they're all Avatars, and Pandora is the Maker's holodeck. The Makers could even add an extra layer of headfuckery to our come-uppance if they didn't make us into Na'vi, but stuck us in a matrix-y hive of dreaming peoples. Then they don't even have to bother terraforming, and we get the bonus irony of learning the error of our ways and embracing nature while we're still actually choking to death on the fumes of our polluted shitworld.

It would be in keepinger with Karma if the Na'vi were also much like humans before they too were made to achieve "enlightenment". Well, maybe they weren't like humans in raping other worlds, but before being Pandora'd they were also much different beings and either voluntarily or involuntarily, they were given betterment by the Pandora Makers.

I think all of our physical corporeal beings being liquefied and subsumed into a macroscopic divine electron by the Pandora Makers, in a cosmic sacrament of incomprehensibility, would be better than "what if your brain was in a computor". But that's because I'm trying to evoke all the worst parts of the Bible. It is a religious story.

Trouble with that theory is that the Na'vi are still just like humans. The only differences are some utterly unimportant bits of biology. Mentally, morally, spiritually, they are as human as humanoid aliens come in sci-fi. That's why they can be judged by the same standards as we judge humans.

You know, Cesario, I have to admit I was wrong.

You don't think of the Na'Vi as blue XXI century humans ; When you consider the situation and the nature of the RDA's offer, you are saying the Na'Vi are retarded for not signing their own version of the Indian Treaties. In other words, you say they are stupid and primitive because they did not trust the RDA.

But why should they? Anything the humans could offer them would be either temporary (like your ride to another planet, or religious texts) or have a supply chain entirely controlled by the humans (weapons, medicine, radios, parachutes). In exchange, the Omaticaya would have to give up their main settlement and hunting grounds. Essentially, they'd have to give up their ancestral lands, their home, their livelihood, possibly their entire culture in exchange for an uncertain future and hope the humans won't just renege on the deal the moment they got what they wanted.

No XXI century human would have taken that deal, either!

So I was wrong. I'm sorry.

Yeah, education is a real temporary thing that the Na'vi would never be able to make use of to continue improving the lives of their people on their own. I can see why you would think that would be completely worthless to a stone age society.

Still, I can't help but point out that the Na'vi never actually rejected any offer for Home Tree. Jake never presented an offer for Home Tree. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.

Enough with the nitpicking bullshit.

Provide evidence there would be a mass die off on Earth if that specific deposit was not mined in that specific timeframe, thus necessitating the forcible and immediate eviction of the Na'Vi in the name of the greater good.

I don't believe that to be the case. I'm sorry if you've managed to get that impression from our exchanges, but my position was that they needed to mine some, and that the Home Tree deposit was chosen because it was rich, and because blowing up Home Tree was more likely to discourage attacks than trying to mine anywhere else. The Na'vi were attacking already before Home Tree was destroyed, and actually looked like they were going to just move on with their lives until Jake rallyed them. Them not attacking RDA miners means no more machinegunning children as a nice side-effect, and no "earth getting frustrated and deciding that nuking them from orbit might not be such a bad idea after all" to boot.

Ah, so the situation wasn't urgent at all! Thank you: this makes your argument fall apart.

No it doesn't. The need doesn't need to be urgent, just inevidable, for my argument to hold up. It apparently wasn't demonstrated to be so in the film, but if you're going to continue arguing against me based on the premise that my original position was true, I'll continue to tear your pathetic attempts to do so appart.

If that specific deposit was not yield or time critical to survival of humans on Earth, then Selfridge had no justification for making a mafia-styled offer to the Omaticaya (take what we pay you or feel the pain!)

Wrong. As Selfridge said, what do a few more weeks matter if the answer is going to be the same regardless of how long he waited?

He could've just thrown in the towel and redirected the bulldozers to a smaller deposit elsewhere, accepting smaller yields of unobtainium, but avoiding having to commit mass murder.

Except for all the Na'vi his mercs would have to kill in self defense after they started murdering the miners for mining there.

But I guess a million smaller scale murders are much worse than killing a thousand people at one time in your mind?

Maybe he could even find his brain and actually try to make some sort of amend for murdering schoolchildren instead of shrugging and continuing on.

How was he going to make ammends if the Na'vi won't talk to him, want litterally nothing an entire interstellar civilization could possibly offer, and apparently don't think enough of those "schoolchildren" to mention them ever in the film. (The script only has Grace talking about the situation, not the Na'vi ever mentioning it.)

And Selfridge was trying to find something he could give them. His one option, which required litteral divine intervention, was getting nowhere. He's done his due dilligence.

We don't tend to love them so much that we'll make the same offer to the guys who's job is killing our wariors (and apparently schoolchildren), though. The Na'vi apparently do.

Actually we are very likely to grant respect and fair treatment to enemy soldiers just because they wear the uniform. Even if they're likely complicit in mass murder. Witness people who celebrate Operation Ovelord with a minute of silence for the Allied and Wehrmacht soldiers equally.

While the war is still ongoing?

Yes. It does. Unlike yourself, I'm capable of seeing degrees of right and wrong.

For example, it's more wrong to blow up someone's house without trying to convince them to get out of it first. It's not wrong at all to blow up someone's house after you've given them whatever they asked for in exchange for the house and gotten out along with whatever posessions they valued. Selfridge was going for the last option, but ended up with merely the less bad option of "I tried".

What if the owner of the house doesn't want to sell it?

He just doesn't. His land has valuable stuff on it, so you want it, but he doesn't want to sell it because he's too old to move and has lots of nice memories of growing old in that house.

So you send some armed men to start digging on his land anyways ; He tells them to get out, they don't, so he shoots one and destroys their equipment.

Then you send mercenaries to murder his son in retribution, so now he just shoots your men on sight whenever they show up.

Should he get out? Would you be at all morally justified to bring in gunships to firebomb his house? After all, you think he should be able to name a price for the land if he has any brains. He has no chance fighting your company and is likely to die if he tries, and he's no longer interested in any further negotiations, because giving your company their Danzig corridor is just not acceptable to him.

Interesting proposal. Too bad he started murdering people before they even realized there was anything valuable under his house, and the postal worker who was supposed to deliver an offer of a million dollars for the land decided not to deliver the letter and instead escalated hostilities to the point that the old man's entire family were talked into rallying at the local church to ultimately make a pointless charge into the jaws of death because their Wako style gathering scared the mercs assigned to protect the miners shitless.

Now, I think you would be justified in evicting/killing him if countless lives were depending on that mining operation.

You do realize this is the absolute first time in this entire thread you've made that admission, right?

But you just admitted they were not.

uh, whoops?

I come from a school of debate where if there's evidence presented that proves you wrong, you accept that and move on, rather than lying about it so you can continue to troll pointlessly. I'm very sorry you were from a different school.

If the price of being educated in what we can offer them is "flee your homes and give up your way of life," I can't blame them for not taking the offer.

I mean, they may not be benefiting from all the cool stuff they could have if they were on our good side, but the Na'vi are basically content. They are not conscious of any active misery or discomfort in their own lives. For them to give up their contentment, permanently and irrevocably, in exchange for vague promises extended to them by people who have proven willing to kill their children... well, I can't imagine any group of people from any era being willing to sign on for that.

Yep, killing yourself out of shame for a disability is something they should want to preserve as a cultural norm. And those dead "children" really don't seem to have registered well enough for them to mention them even once in the film.

[PeZook]

Yeah, education is a real temporary thing that the Na'vi would never be able to make use of to continue improving the lives of their people on their own. I can see why you would think that would be completely worthless to a stone age society.

Dude, education is going to help them after several generations ; By that time they might ceause to exist as a separate nation, seeing as they'll have to leave their ancestral home and hunting grounds, forever, to live God knows where, possibly being gobbled up by other tribes.

Holy crap their children will know how to write and by the time human numbers grow exponentially and spread they might even discover metallurgy thanks to the preserved knowledge!

Real generous offer, that.

Still, I can't help but point out that the Na'vi never actually rejected any offer for Home Tree. Jake never presented an offer for Home Tree. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.

If the Na'Vi never were presented with an offer for their land, why the hell did Selfridge list all the things the RDA tried to offer them?

No it doesn't. The need doesn't need to be urgent, just inevidable, for my argument to hold up. It apparently wasn't demonstrated to be so in the film, but if you're going to continue arguing against me based on the premise that my original position was true, I'll continue to tear your pathetic attempts to do so appart.

You said yourself that this specific deposit was not critical to the operation, so stop backpedalling. They could've taken their time by mining elsewhere.

Wrong. As Selfridge said, what do a few more weeks matter if the answer is going to be the same regardless of how long he waited?

Or maybe perhaps kinda some sort of solution could be reached when you stopped acting like the Capo di Tutti Cappi?

Except for all the Na'vi his mercs would have to kill in self defense after they started murdering the miners for mining there.

But I guess a million smaller scale murders are much worse than killing a thousand people at one time in your mind?

You really think the skirmishes fought due to mining a different deposit would've killed a million Na'Vi? Is that another one of those things you "misremembered" about the movie?

How was he going to make ammends if the Na'vi won't talk to him, want litterally nothing an entire interstellar civilization could possibly offer, and apparently don't think enough of those "schoolchildren" to mention them ever in the film. (The script only has Grace talking about the situation, not the Na'vi ever mentioning it.)

He had an emissary amongst them by that time! Once Jake was initiated into the tribe, he could've served as an ambassador.

But yeah why wait the answer is obvious (Or it will be after we commit yet another atrocity)!

While the war is still ongoing?

We firebomb unarmed civilians while giving POWs access to care packages, so yeah.

Interesting proposal. Too bad he started murdering people before they even realized there was anything valuable under his house, and the postal worker who was supposed to deliver an offer of a million dollars for the land decided not to deliver the letter and instead escalated hostilities to the point that the old man's entire family were talked into rallying at the local church to ultimately make a pointless charge into the jaws of death because their Wako style gathering scared the mercs assigned to protect the miners shitless.

Jesus christ, now you're blaming Jake for escalating hostilities?!

You do realize this is the absolute first time in this entire thread you've made that admission, right?

Actually I said that a couple pages before. Feel free to present the evidence this is actually the case with the RDA at any time.

I come from a school of debate where if there's evidence presented that proves you wrong, you accept that and move on, rather than lying about it so you can continue to troll pointlessly. I'm very sorry you were from a different school.

Really, dude? Really?

Do you think people are unable to read?

You said yourself, there'd be no die-off if that particular deposit was not mined at that particular time. The RDA could've waited until Jake could credibly begin to mend relations had they not had problems with premature bulldozerization.

[Ryan Thunder]

Neither you nor I want to go over my high school experience. Suffice it to say, I'm perfectly fine with the majority of my graduating class being machine gunned to death or worse.

Well, shit. This explains a lot.

[Cesario]

Yeah, education is a real temporary thing that the Na'vi would never be able to make use of to continue improving the lives of their people on their own. I can see why you would think that would be completely worthless to a stone age society.

Dude, education is going to help them after several generations ; By that time they might ceause to exist as a separate nation, seeing as they'll have to leave their ancestral home and hunting grounds, forever, to live God knows where, possibly being gobbled up by other tribes.

Holy crap their children will know how to write and by the time human numbers grow exponentially and spread they might even discover metallurgy thanks to the preserved knowledge!

Real generous offer, that.

More likely they'll just use the weapons they buy from the RDA and killfuck the tribe next door and steal their land. And it will be all noble and at peace with nature when they do it, right?

Still, I can't help but point out that the Na'vi never actually rejected any offer for Home Tree. Jake never presented an offer for Home Tree. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.

If the Na'Vi never were presented with an offer for their land, why the hell did Selfridge list all the things the RDA tried to offer them?

And again I quote:

SELFRIDGE
Look, Sully -- find out what these blue
monkeys want.
(MORE)

52.

SELFRIDGE (cont'd)
We try to give them medicine and
education. Roads! But no -- they like
mud. I wouldn't care except --

Selfridge wanted to find out what to offer them, since his previous offers didn't get anywhere. Jake was supposed to find out what they could possibly want or need so he could issue another offer.

Jake never did that.

No it doesn't. The need doesn't need to be urgent, just inevidable, for my argument to hold up. It apparently wasn't demonstrated to be so in the film, but if you're going to continue arguing against me based on the premise that my original position was true, I'll continue to tear your pathetic attempts to do so appart.

You said yourself that this specific deposit was not critical to the operation, so stop backpedalling. They could've taken their time by mining elsewhere.

They could've mined elsewhere and continued to be murdered by the Na'vi, yes.

Wrong. As Selfridge said, what do a few more weeks matter if the answer is going to be the same regardless of how long he waited?

Or maybe perhaps kinda some sort of solution could be reached when you stopped acting like the Capo di Tutti Cappi?

Not familiar with this individual. Why are you comparing him to me? And what would me deviating from his behavior do to change Selfridge's bargaining position?

Except for all the Na'vi his mercs would have to kill in self defense after they started murdering the miners for mining there.

But I guess a million smaller scale murders are much worse than killing a thousand people at one time in your mind?

You really think the skirmishes fought due to mining a different deposit would've killed a million Na'Vi? Is that another one of those things you "misremembered" about the movie?

I think killings continuing unchecked would eventually add up, but you seem to think one attrocity of potentially lower total deaths is worse than a million smaller battles as the mining everywhere but hometree continues for the entirety of the forseeable future.

How was he going to make ammends if the Na'vi won't talk to him, want litterally nothing an entire interstellar civilization could possibly offer, and apparently don't think enough of those "schoolchildren" to mention them ever in the film. (The script only has Grace talking about the situation, not the Na'vi ever mentioning it.)

He had an emissary amongst them by that time! Once Jake was initiated into the tribe, he could've served as an ambassador.

But Jake didn't do that, did he?

But yeah why wait the answer is obvious (Or it will be after we commit yet another atrocity)!

Why wait when his emisary has done precisely jack shit during his entire time there towards the goal of finding out what we can offer these people to get them to stop killing our miners? Because all evidence is that his emisary is going to continue doing precisely jack shit towards that goal.

While the war is still ongoing?

We firebomb unarmed civilians while giving POWs access to care packages, so yeah.

Jake was a POW? Seems to me he was quite capable of coming and going as he pleased, with nothing stopping him from grabbing a mech suit and murdering a few dozen Na'vi at his leasure.

Interesting proposal. Too bad he started murdering people before they even realized there was anything valuable under his house, and the postal worker who was supposed to deliver an offer of a million dollars for the land decided not to deliver the letter and instead escalated hostilities to the point that the old man's entire family were talked into rallying at the local church to ultimately make a pointless charge into the jaws of death because their Wako style gathering scared the mercs assigned to protect the miners shitless.

Jesus christ, now you're blaming Jake for escalating hostilities?!

He did escalate hostilities. What film were you watching?

You do realize this is the absolute first time in this entire thread you've made that admission, right?

Actually I said that a couple pages before. Feel free to present the evidence this is actually the case with the RDA at any time.

Feel free to provide a post number for your previous admission. Because, quite frankly, you're lying.

Or at least didn't read your own posts well enough to recall what you have and haven't said. You've claimed your qualifiers and maybes are trivial and meaningless before, but let's see if you can put your money where your mouth is and show that you've accepted this basic moral truth anywhere in this entire thread. Maybe you'll prove me wrong.

One difference between us is that I am capable of admitting when I've been presented evidence that refutes my position, so why not exploit that horrible weakness in my character and present the evidence to force me to show weakness and confess to being wrong again?

I come from a school of debate where if there's evidence presented that proves you wrong, you accept that and move on, rather than lying about it so you can continue to troll pointlessly. I'm very sorry you were from a different school.

Really, dude? Really?

Do you think people are unable to read?

Yes. Or rather, you could just be a misserable liar unwilling to admit what was said dispite the posts still being right there and anyone being able to go back and read for themselves to see what the truth is.

You said yourself, there'd be no die-off if that particular deposit was not mined at that particular time. The RDA could've waited until Jake could credibly begin to mend relations had they not had problems with premature bulldozerization.

Except Jake had no intention of attempting to mend relations. He had no ability to mend relations with or without the bulldozers. He was making zero progress towards the goal of mending relations, and only made any progress on doccumenting trivialities of the Na'vi culture. It was a great boon for anthropology, but did nothing towards his actual job.

And Selfridge correctly realized this.

Neither you nor I want to go over my high school experience. Suffice it to say, I'm perfectly fine with the majority of my graduating class being machine gunned to death or worse.

Well, shit. This explains a lot.

To repeat, you don't want to go over that, dipshit.

[mr friendly guy]

Trekkie : The Executor is so weak, a few X-wings crashing into it damaged it severely.

Warsie : you retard. Ackbar ordered "all ships" to fire on the Executor knocking out its shields before the X-wings crashed into it.

Trekkie : Did not.

Warsie : You didn't see the film did you?

Trekkie : I did. But I am not going to waste money on seeing it again. Nah nah nah nah nah nah.

Geez, that sounds familiar.

Its that time again, for more miliwanker fan fiction.

General Zod : The military wanker’s wet dream

The man giving the speech on live television was nothing to look at. He was a middle age man who had risen the ranks of power through the process known as democracy. To the onlookers he appeared flustered and nervous. Naturally, given he had just surrendered America’s sovereignty to General Zod. The President of the USA was about to give his last speech. He may have surrendered, but he was far from beaten.

“My fellow Americans. Today General Zod and his kryptonians have sent us a message. That they can take whatever they want…and no one can stop them. Well we will send them a message. You spread this to the four corners of the world. To the walls of the Kremlin, and the parliaments of Western Europe. To the ears of Superman. You tell them that the President calls to them. And we will show Zod that he cannot take whatever he wants. Because this is our land.”

Those were the last words he got out before Ursa’s heat vision disintegrated his head. “He was disobeying your orders General.”

Zod nodded in agreement. “But I am curious, who is this Superman?”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

“The son of Jor El?” Zod savoured the thought of torturing his greatest enemy, long dead and burned with Krypton’s destruction. If he could not destroy the man, then he will destroy his son.

“Yes, he goes by the monicker Superman.” Lex Luthor muttered the name in a whimsical tone.

“How do we find this Superman,” Zod asked.

“Well I hear he likes the Daily Planet.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

“Her. Lois Lane. He has something for her. Grab her and you get him.” Luthor pointed to a young brunette. Immediately Non moved to grab her.

“Let me go you freak.” Lois screamed.

“I believe you were looking for me General.” Everyone including the 3 kryptonians turned towards the voice. Standing there was Superman. “Why don’t we take this outside.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The fight had been going on for the better part of an hour. Despite his best efforts, Superman could only match the 3 kryptonians.

“Why do you fight for these humans Kal-El?” Zod taunted.

“He has lived among these primitives so long, he has lost touch with real culture.” Ursa added. “Or perhaps its because the human whore spreads her leg for him.”

“Indeed Ursa,” Zod chimed in. “He has lost touch with his culture. The great Kryptonian philosopher Sar-Evok would describe humans as primitives. They have crime. They do not even have a methodology to look after the sick properly. Their technology does not even have planet wide information network. In short the lives are no better than the animals that live in their own excrement.”

“The primitives as you call them Zod, choose not to live under your tyranny Zod.”

“The fact that they choose to live their live this way, does not mean that their lives are anything but SHIT.” Zod was screaming now, quoting the words of the Kryptonian philosopher Sar-Evok. “This world is essential for the survival of our race.”

“Brainiac considered us primitives too, but you would have fought with your all to defend Krypton Zod. Your hypocrisy is sickening.” Superman was giving as good as he got in this verbal joust.

“The Kryptonian general A-Dam-Griff would say there is no absolute right or wrong. However if we are attacked, expect us to defend ourselves.”

“In other words, might makes right. The justifications of thousands of conquerors before you Zod. Like those people you will be defeated.” So saying Superman flew…away.

“He flees,” Ursa remarked. “What cowardice.”

“No. He means to lure us into a trap.”

“What you order General,” Non asked.

“We create our own trap. And Kal-El has given us the means to do it. After all might makes right.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Ursa and Non began pushing the moon. Slowly but inexorably the moon began creeping closer to Earth. First the nations of the Pacific noticed the tides had changed and a tsunami swept Asia. Superman roused by the disaster flew away from the fortress of solitude to stop the Kryptonians. However Zod had anticipated the plan and before Superman was anywhere close Zod had intercepted him. The two Kryptonians fought with Superman finally gaining the upper hand and knocking Zod out the way. However by then it was too late, as the moon impacted the earth with more energy than the asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs.

“No,” Kal-El shrieked.

“Should we finish Kal-El off,” Ursa asked.

“No. The one called Luthor told me that Kal-El does not kill. How pathetic. He will no longer fight us. His precious humans are dead. There is nothing more to protect. I suppose he will travel to other worlds, but for now let us savour our victory.”

“Why we didn’t throw big rock into Earth in first place?” Non asked.

“As a great Kryptonian playwright remarked, then there would be no story.” Zod laughed as his own joke.

BTW Necronlord, wasn't there supposed to be an Avatar sticky so that military wankers would read that first rather than regurgitate the same tired arguments again?

[Shroom Man 777]

If they don't want or realize that they need anything we have then it would be out of ignorance. Which is understandable.

They just need education (like many people.) Then they'll understand.

Maybe the ones who need education are not those living in content lifestyles in an environment made by scientific principles incomprehensible to man, but the asshole shitpieces invading that planet, wasting its environment, and killing and destroying just for material profit.

Maybe the ones who need education are those people who simply can't wrap it around their heads that there are alternative ways of life that don't fit into their lame sterile imagination-amputated uncreative axioms and paradigms regarding industrialization and western human civilization being the end all be all in the universe.

Why do you defaultly assume that we should be the ones educating them, rather than they educating us, or both of us educating each other? Just because they lack dumb factories belching acid rain or economic systems dependent on the exploitation of countless peoples, and instead have a world-spanning biotechnological neural network that influences every strata of their ecosystem, means they are uneducated and ignorant and must be taught to be "better" by humanity?

Now this is the kind of ignorance that is supposed to be educated by "Pandora Makers come in and liquefy humanity". Then you'll understand.

Because this is the exact same dour pretentious and extremely arrogant mindset held by men in the turn of the century, which they used to justify their actions in mutilating other "lesser" nations or peoples, in order to "educate" them and make them "understand". The worst part is, I don't even know if you intend to come off this way, or you can't even see how this attitudes make you come off like an absolute thickie.

[Cesario]

If they don't want or realize that they need anything we have then it would be out of ignorance. Which is understandable.

They just need education (like many people.) Then they'll understand.

Maybe the ones who need education are not those living in content lifestyles in an environment made by scientific principles incomprehensible to man, but the asshole shitpieces invading that planet, wasting its environment, and killing and destroying just for material profit.

Maybe the ones who need education are those people who simply can't wrap it around their heads that there are alternative ways of life that don't fit into their lame sterile imagination-amputated uncreative axioms and paradigms regarding industrialization and western human civilization being the end all be all in the universe.

Why do you defaultly assume that we should be the ones educating them, rather than they educating us, or both of us educating each other? Just because they lack dumb factories belching acid rain or economic systems dependent on the exploitation of countless peoples, and instead have a world-spanning biotechnological neural network that influences every strata of their ecosystem, means they are uneducated and ignorant and must be taught to be "better" by humanity?

Now this is the kind of ignorance that is supposed to be educated by "Pandora Makers come in and liquefy humanity". Then you'll understand.

Because this is the exact same dour pretentious and extremely arrogant mindset held by men in the turn of the century, which they used to justify their actions in mutilating other "lesser" nations or peoples, in order to "educate" them and make them "understand". The worst part is, I don't even know if you intend to come off this way, or you can't even see how this attitudes make you come off like an absolute thickie.

Some time ago, it occurred to me that the Na'vi might be a degenerate species like the Eoli from H. G Wells' The Time Machine. A race that acheaved extreme technological mastery, destroyed all the life forms on their planet that didn't suit them, reshaped all the others to suit themselves better, and then, no longer needing the knowledge that allowed them to conquor their world, lost it. Under this theory, the Na'vi are all that remains of the Pandoramakers. They're the beneficiaries of their ancestors' greatness, but are themselves little more than animals due to not needing to be more than that to live a contented, idylic existence by their own standards.

Whether it's better to be ignorant, weak, and happy or to have the power to ensure you can maintain that happiness if something your ancestors didn't anticipate happens is a question worthy of consideration in that case, I should think.

[Ryan Thunder]

Well, Shroom, you assume that exploitation is endemic to technological civilization and not something that technological civilization can correct through the presence of authority and public education--neither of these are things the Na'vi would have due to problems that are endemic to subsistence living. Like a lack of free time to do things besides hunt/gather for anybody who isn't in the upper echelons of the tribe (hello, chief's daughter), lack of a reliable information storage medium (paper, magnetic discs/tapes, and the like), etc.

The short version; they're primitives. Of course we're going to be the ones teaching them. What are they going to teach us that we can't figure out on our own? Maybe they can tell us in general about the local flora and fauna, but they don't understand biology, chemistry, physics, neurology, etc. like we do. All they can do is point out the obvious and wonder at it. They don't seem to have any drive to go any further than that. It's tragic, really.

Furthermore, there's nothing to be learned from your retarded fantasy other than that some people think "I can turn any situation around and pretend its the same goddamn thing and the only reason you don't see that is because you're prejudiced or something."

Get off your goddamn high horse. Go take your goddamn car for a drive or ride the train or something. Go play a symphony on your goddamn fucking MP3 player and hear it in high quality through your goddamn headphones without disturbing the goddamn neighbours. The only reason you can share your poorly formed argument in the first place is because of that technological civilization you so greatly abhor. Go ahead. Give it up for a while. See if you like it so much when you don't have something as simple as goddamn 2-ply toilet paper. You won't, because even with all the shit going on in the world, science and technology make it better, and no amount of your useless whining about 'simpler lifestyles' or how 'ignorance is bliss' is ever going to change that.

[Shroom Man 777]

If you can't see the degrees, I really can't help you. Once you evolve beyond pure black and white thinking, come back and we'll have a discussion about the particular shade of grey we are looking at in this instance. Until then, enjoy your magical native americans triumphing forever against the evil european mennace who will never return to Pandora, ever.

If you can't see how it's still a horrible act of murder and destruction and evil, then you can't be helped.

Then they really should have made the corrupt corporate executive more callous. Ideally not have him need to be overthrown by the mercs and just have him sign on to the Well of Souls bombing. Probably should have also had him less interested in negotiating with the Na'vi from the start. If that's the message we want to actually send.

His greed did make him callous. He still approved the murderous firebombing.

Too bad the only ones the film presented as good either died horribly for the sin of being human or were purified into becoming blue space elves themselves.

Uh, Grace Ripley died for the sin of helping the good guys and getting shot by Quarritch. Same with Michelle Rodriguez, except with a missile. Quarritch wasn't killing them for being human.

Whereas that scientist who looked like Shaggy Doo, and a lot of the other scientists (I remember there was also a fat guy scientist helping them?), didn't get killed by anyone and I don't think they were purificated either.

Was this connected to anything else you've said in this post, or was this just stream of consiousness ranting?

It's a comparison on how in the Alien movies and in the Avatar movies, it's still greed that threatens the people.

Sure it was. I believe you. It's not possible that you just misremembered the order things happened in. I'm the only one allowed to misremember the film in this discussion after all.

Which is precisely the time you want that military intelligence thing that you've been sitting on for the past three months.

Which is also precisely the time people, especially those who've never encountered this kind of destruction, tend to panic.

Except they obviously weren't talking before that point either, since what Selfridge was asking Jake to get was the most basic information possible about the wants and needs of the natives.

Before that point, the Na'vi were learning English from the humans. Unless they learned English via cassette tapes or sign language, I think an ESL course involves a lot of talking.

They don't gather into easily murdered groups. Maybe I should hire Jake to rally them.

Maybe the fact that they liked Jake better and voted him as prom queen is the reason why you want to murder those reprehensible blue sophomores and seniors.

Concession accepted.

Bull.

Either way, the intricate criteria involved in the Na'vi selecting Jake as prom queen over Grace is pretty much a side show over the fact that firebombing the Home Tree is a murderous act no matter what, and that it turns out your unobtanium = save the earth shtick was wrong.

They weren't brought as far in as Jake.

They didn't go in as far as Jake. They still considered themselves scientists and had lives outside of their Avatars. The whole point is that Jake ended up considering himself more of a scientist than a (pathetic paraplegic) human who had no life outside of his Avatar.

This is like a karate student who only goes to the dojo twice a week while studying in uni or otherwise doing stuff most of the other time, and another student who goes to the dojo every day and dedicates his entire life to the pursuit of the martial art. One of them will impress Mister Miyagi more and get a black belt.

GRACE
They killed Sylwanin in the doorway.
Right in front of Neytiri. Then shot the
others.
(MILDLY)
I got most of the kids out, before they
shot me.

A pretty shitty situation all around. I never saw the Children Massacre Edition.

Does it really sound horrible the way I tell it? Because you aren't acting like someone who thinks what I'm saying sounds horrible.

You act like the Na'vi choosing Jake to be prom queen over Grace is super-horrible, much more so than slimeballs consenting to murderous firebombings. If it is indeed more horrible than people enacting mass death and destruction, then it's gotta be very... very... very horribel.

Jake Sully being the Na'vi's best friend will be 911 times 2356.

My God, that's... I don't even know what that is!

Nobody does!

SELFRIDGE
Those savages are threatening our whole
operation. We're on the brink of war and
you're supposed to be finding a
diplomatic solution. So use what you've
got and get me some results.

Yet when it came down to it, he still consented to the murderous firebombing.

Selfridge lost his cool after the psychos took over. Were you paying no attention at all?

Again, the businessmen didn't become scared until they were taken hostage by the mercs who were supposed to be protecting them. [/quote]

Wow, okay.

I originally thought that witnessing the mass death and destruction of the Home Tree firebombing made Selfridge reconsider what he just did. Apparently, they didn't get fazed by the murderous act, and thought nothing of it and of their acts until the coup.

So if the mercs didn't do anything, Selfridge and co. would've thought what they did (firebombing the Home Tree) was A-OK and continued on business as usual. What a bunch of shitbags.

It's a lot easier and faster to calculate the reentry trajectory of one object than it is to work the logistics of a complicated attack utilizing a repurposed shuttle. Especially if you've got a computer specifically designed to calculate reentry trajectories. I presume they might have something like that on their shuttle, but I'll admit I'm making an assumption and it was never stated in the movie that they did, in fact, have such a computer.

That's like saying, just because NASA has a Space Shuttle or an Apollo capsule with the computers in it, they can easily produce KKVs within a week or a month and throw it out of the Shuttle to blow up Baghdad or something.

Traditionally your mustache twirlers (to earn the right to twirl their mustaches) don't take any interest in negotiating except as a means of hurting the other guy for its own sake. Selfridge wanted the negotiations to succeed.

And when the negotiations didn't succeed, the firebombing to him was convenient and he still went with it. Faint praise, he's still a shit.

Concession accepted. [/quote]

How is it a concession? Selfridge is still a morally bankrupt shitstain who agreed to firebombing the Home Tree and killing countless of people.

Huh, youre right. They did make a distinction. Guess they didn't need to learn anything about the filthy humans, but if he's blue, then he's worth looking into.

I guess English isn't anything.

It's not like they were gonna have a mercenary go over there and get himself interviewed.

Still not grasping that "less bad" is not the same thing as "good", I see. Once again, when you gain the ability to percieve shades other than black and white, let me know.

It's still bad, it's still horrible, to such a degree that makes any slight about the Na'vi choosing Jake as prom queen look microscopic in comparison.

This is garrisoning your troops in a church or school territory Jake was in here. I'm not sticking up for him on it. Why are you sticking up for him? Did him being blue at the time make you forget he was still a filthy human on the inside?

The humans suddenly attacked the Na'vi's primary population center in the Home Tree and destroyed it with countless people inside it.

I guess there's no reason why they could possibly want to have soldiers near their refugee site population center filled with people who just survived that previous attack. Unless, uh, maybe... somehow... possibly... some people might probably want to be... uhh... defended from another attack? Just a guess.

You still seem to not grasp that it wasn't the Na'vi at all that are scaring Selfridge. Quaritch's coup was what did that.

And if Quarritch hadn't pulled a coup, Selfridge wouldn't have been bothered by the fact that his approved firebombing of the Home Tree killed god knows how many people (and thus pissed the fuck out of the Na'vi)? Okay, man, for a second there I thought he was actually reconsidering the morality of his heinous actions when in fact, he wasn't, and if Quarritch hadn't bullied him, he wouldn't have actually realized just what kind of murderous shit he just pulled off. What a fucker.

You haven't been bothering to read my responses thus far. If you had, it would be clear that things of actual value, not "some gameboys" were on offer, which the Na'vi either couldn't imagine existing so they didn't ask for it, or they rejected an offer of things that could actually improve their lives, and not have people committing ritual suacide over the shame of being a cripple.

Hm, strange that we don't get more exploration of Jake killing Tsu'tey because Tsu'tey was ashamed of being a cripple. You'd have thought that would be an obvious point to show shared experience, and the sort of thing Jake could help him through.

Well, he also had a chest full of bullets and a backbone's worth of falling over thousands of feet.

Lies implies a deliberate misrepresentation. When evidence was presented that demonstrated my recollection was in error, I admitted the error and moved on. I realize that sort of behavior makes me look weak to fuckwads like yourself, but I'm not answerable to you and your standards of behavior. I'm answerable to my own.

Okay, so you weren't lying. So you just moved on to griping about how terrible the Na'vi were for accepting Jake as prom queen before Grace, oh god the horror. And haggling over how, because of Selfridge's efforts at being the great communicator negotiator but when the moment came still thought nothing of violence, the whole firebombing of the Home Tree was not atrocious but just murderous - oooh such great lesser degrees of how horrible mass death and destruction is.

Kinda, yes.

How can the flesh heal if the people are still continuously wrist-slitting?

Screaming and shrieking? I don't recall altering my font in any of the standard indicative ways in my response to Jake's particular bit of nonsense here.

You take every tiny little statement by them, like "nature heals", and conflate it to make them sound oh-so-horrible. While at the same time, trying to play down the RDA's atrocities in firebombing the Home Tree. What the hell, man?

Only because they can't. Not because they're morally better people.

Their lifestyle hasn't led them to waste their environment, go to other people's homes and commit atrocities to plunder their lands out of single-minded murderous greed, so yes, they are morally better than the RDA.

It may not be vital to earth's survival based soely on the film. I clearly must have read this in the expanded universe material somewhere. You have my concession on this point.

So the whole "unobtanium for humanity's survival" tangent is gone. There is no pressing life-saving need for humans to justify killing others to save themselves.

I realize you missed this point, but both sides were killing people.

The RDA was destroying population centers and machinegunning children just to mine some rocks. The Na'vi weren't.

[Shroom Man 777]

Ryan Thunder, you're an idiot. In the context of their environment where there is a living breathing world-mind and where animals have living organic USB-ports, their lifestyle does make sense and it IS a viable alternative to industrialization.

Information storage? Their soul tree can transfer consciousness from one body to another. Ride a train? Drive a car? They can stick their tendrils in a pterodactyl and fucking fly. MP3s? They stick their tendrils on a tree-anemone and listen to divine music of the spheres voices of the ancestors shit that's infinitely more beautiful than any pre-packaged pop music we'll ever hear.

Unlike subsistence societies on Earth, the Pandoran ecosystem allows them to do this - it is a viable way of life because they live in an environment that's not like anything humanity then has ever encountered before. And you going "lol cars, lol industrialization" is just plain blindness to that.

I don't abhor technology. I abhor idiots who can't imagine and who are unable to see, when confronted with the fantastic (in the form of a science fiction planet of strange things that go beyond human understanding no less), past their own shitty preconceptions.

You literally can't see that the live in an entirely different way of existence and immediately assume that they're no different from some pygmies dying of malaria in the Amazon, rather than blue people on an artificial ecosystem who can commune with a living breathing world-mind. You can't imagine it at all.

[Shroom Man 777]

To add to this, if someone's imagination can't get just how alien the Na'vi are, and how having the Eywa and the living Pandoran ecosystem changes everything, then they should be the last ones who should suggest what the Na'vi should or shouldn't do, or what they should or shouldn't be taught.

You have to understand before you can teach, you have to learn, and if your cup is already full, if you think you know "better" (because you do!!11), then you won't understand jack shit about the Na'vi psychology, the Na'vi way of life, the implications of living on a world where the ecosystem itself lives and thinks and is connected as a one being (with the Na'vi themselves included), and the thousands of years worth of knowledge, belief and understanding the Na'vi have on this. You end up instantly dismissing these due to your own preconceptions of primitive lifestyles on Earth, and so you're the one who should be educated.

Man is encountering something on another world, something alien, something different, something that has developed entirely separately from us. We shouldn't forget this, we shouldn't let stifled imaginations and creativity get in the way of appreciating the strange and the never before seen, and we shouldn't let ourselves be fooled into thinking that these alien things will conform to our preconceptions based on our own entirely different experiences on Earth.

Whether it's better to be ignorant, weak, and happy or to have the power to ensure you can maintain that happiness if something your ancestors didn't anticipate happens is a question worthy of consideration in that case, I should think.

And if, in attaining that kind of happiness, maybe some societies might just relinquish their power due to their contentment.

[Junghalli]

Ryan Thunder, you're an idiot. In the context of their environment where there is a living breathing world-mind and where animals have living organic USB-ports, their lifestyle does make sense and it IS a viable alternative to industrialization.

Information storage? Their soul tree can transfer consciousness from one body to another. Ride a train? Drive a car? They can stick their tendrils in a pterodactyl and fucking fly. MP3s? They stick their tendrils on a tree-anemone and listen to divine music of the spheres voices of the ancestors shit that's infinitely more beautiful than any pre-packaged pop music we'll ever hear.

Unlike subsistence societies on Earth, the Pandoran ecosystem allows them to do this - it is a viable way of life because they live in an environment that's not like anything humanity then has ever encountered before. And you going "lol cars, lol industrialization" is just plain blindness to that.

You're kind of touching on something I've been thinking of reading this - I think it might have been interesting if Avatar put more emphasis on developing the idea that, thanks to their symbiosis with an alien intelligent planet-spanning plant mind, the primitivism of the Na'vi is actually superficial and if you scratch the surface their society is in its own way just as "advanced" as ours. Consider needs that industrial civilization meets, and how their symbiotic relationship might serve the same purpose (I'm talking here about how the film might have been done here, not how it actually was done):

Medicine. I think there's actually some background material that Eywa supposed keeps them from suffering infectious diseases. If it can do that, it might also be skilled and capable at repairing other kinds of injuries too, quite possibly being more capable than Avatar-verse future medicine in which having spines repaired is apparently at least too expensive for everybody to get it. Also, even if their bodies do die they have actual factual downloading and immortality, maybe even the capability to swap minds between bodies so a lot of them are actually thousands of years old Methuselahs in their hundredth body or something. It sounds to human observers at first glance like reincarnation spiritual bullshit, but it's actually real.

Food. The thing can control animals, and if it has gardened the whole ecosystem to serve itself, it could probably likewise optimize it to serve the needs of its symbiotes. The forest is stacked with food. When they want meat some random lame or old animal comes along and just lets them kill it. Hunting and shit is stuff they'd only have to do for sport, or socio-religious reasons, much as is the case with ourselves. Sure they probably don't have our kinds of population, because they aren't the dominant component of their gardened ecosystem, but then they're probably themselves engineered by the plant-mind, maybe they can consciously control their own fertility or something.

Entertainment, or the thing that makes you feel more than just alive. If the plant-mind is an organic internet, how about it providing them the equivalent of cyberspace, full of virtual reality environments shaped by their imagination, to fulfill and delight every fantasy both subtle and gross? TV, computers etc. would seem laughably limited by comparison - we're the quaint aborigines making do with singing songs and banging drums while other people watch cable television here, not them.

What about instead of they don't need anything we can give them because they're such perfectly fulfilled Noble Savages it's more they don't need anything because humans at the beginning classifying them as technological primitives have them pegged wrong, and in fact they already have as good or better equivalents to any technological shit we could give them, it's just that human observers don't see it because they're looking at them through their own preconceptions, so say when they hear them say stuff like "I totes had past lives going back thousands of years" they think they believe in some bullshit reincarnation mumbo jumbo when in fact the guy was telling you the actual factual literal scientific truth? Earnest white man wanting to offer them the benefits of blackberries and Jeeps and antibiotics you have it exactly backwards, look a bit deeper and you'll realize that in fact you're the horse and buggy guy here, not them.

You thought Pandora is some primaeval jungle? Ha ha, it's an environment every bit as artificial as downtown New York or a giant corn farm in the Midwest, it's just all set up to serve the needs of something like King Clone on steroids that can think instead of some clever handy animal. You're looking at a highly advanced and extremely alien intelligence rivalling our own civilization in power, which has transformed its world every bit as radically as we have, you just can't see it even when it's right under your nose because you're looking in the wrong place for the dominant species; automatically assuming it has to be the thing that looks most like you, you mistake the sheepdogs for the shepherds.

Personally, my biggest gripe with Avatar is I would have preferred it to push an angle like that more - to be less Dances With Wolves In Space and more Solaris. Eywa strikes me as a potentially much more interesting alien than the Na'vi - it is a truly alien intelligence, with an incredibly different evolutionary history and surely totally different instincts and ways of looking at the world than us, and of the two (apparent) intelligent species on Pandora it strikes me as being the one much more likely to give us a run for our money in knowledge and capability. That would have been a concept I'd find pretty cool personally - human explorers land on planet, it looks to them like wilderness inhabited by savages, they act accordingly, later to find out that it is in fact the home of a civilization rivalling their own, of intelligent plants, while the creatures they thought were the most advanced lifeforms were really more like the plant civilization's equivalent of dogs, and when they were dealing high-handedly with the "savages" from their position of assumed greater power what they were really doing was the equivalent of going into a human city and kicking the shit out of some of the dogs.