IDEA! Avatar 2: Ava-Tarrer

[Shroom Man 777]

This thread makes me sad. Shroomy throws out an awesome idea, and then blowhards have to come along and ruin it with pages of pedantic rambling bullshit racism and jingoism.

It's a natural reaction of those whose minds have been stifled by the concentration camps of the imagination, and whose creativities have been amputated, to shriek when exposed to different things that push the boundaries of their limited perspectives and preconceptions, and it is only expected for them to try and cage and bottle these different things - to contain them in the same concentration camps of the imagination that have constrained them, so that these different things will become... the same as them.

It's industrialization. Conveyor belts pre-fabricating carbon copy conformist creativities and imaginations all according to some pre-determined bland inoffensive template that won't rock the boat of the establishment's order. Homogeneous fiction. Tasteless, flavorless, odorless, imitation gruel fantasy. Sameness. Visionless blind men who will never see a rainbow. Monochrome eyes that can only perceive the world in black and white and shades of grey, never seeing the colors of a rose. It is like describing the scent of cologne to a man who cannot smell. The taste of fine wine to a man whose tongue has been cut off.

Yeah. Although it really does highlight the basic premise that inspired the post in the first place- there are people who look at Avatar and just do not get the basic point of the work, or who are so technophilic that they get it and then refuse to consider it legitimate.

Exactly. And this is why the original work is actually so effective. There are people who sympathize with the Na'vi and their plight, this work of fictional oppressed people resonates with real life people who can feel for those who get oppressed.

And there are those fuckfaces who, when confronted by this, blubber and bluster and try to make bullshit justifications to legitimize selfishness - either selfishness on their part, or on their nation's part, or on the part of fictional parties that are allegorically representative of them or their nation or to whatever it is they identify their technophilic industrio-centric milwanking narrow-minded natures with.

The reactions of these people is part of the whole experience. Like how the work of Filipino hero Jose Rizal incensed the Catholic Church, whose friars he was trolling with his works. Or like how diamond companies got pissed by the film Blood Diamond, etc.

[Stofsk]

I really don't get nerd's reaction to Avatar. I don't see how anyone can even pretend to argue that RDA were in the clear over everything that happened in the film. I liked the film but I feel a legitimate point of criticism against it is that RDA was almost comic bookish in their level douchebaggery.

[Shroom Man 777]

Then again, you could say that a lot of real-life people were almost comic bookish in their level of douchebaggery towards those weaker than them that they exploit.

You can imagine Dick Dastardly twirling his moustache in his CEO board room office as he lobbies the US State Department to convince the Haitian government not to raise minimal wages for peasants sowing together Levi Jeans. Likewise some United Fruit exec going to the CIA and having them coup de'tat Guatemala cause Arbenz Guzman was going to redistribute land to the farmers. Etc.

Some people really were comic bookish in their level of douchebaggery towards, well, those of us living in the rest of the world.


[Face it. If the Na'vi were instead some good old Arkansas boys, the Home Tree was instead some farm in the middle of a golden wheat field, and the RDA were instead turbaned Musslemen with thick facial hairs, and we have these Joes riding dragons farm tractors throwing harpoons at the Achmeds, nobody would be minding the unambiguity of their evilness or one-dimensionalness or whatever.]

[Darth Wong]

Indeed. I've often compared Avatar to The Last Samurai, which was in turn compared to Dances With Wolves, which was a western. But you could short-circuit that whole chain and just say that Avatar directly fits the mould of a western.

You have the family (tribe in this case) living on a ranch (or foraging habitat in this case), and then the asshole businessman coming by trying to take their land: first by offering unacceptable terms, then by subterfuge, then by harassment, then by naked violence. Add to this mix the stranger, who rides in from out of town, fits in with no one, takes up residence with the besieged family, and defends their ranch against the businessman's hired thugs.

And then you would have Douchebaggio saying that the businessman in this scenario is the good guy, because the family were assholes for refusing to give up their land.

[Shroom Man 777]

With Der Last Samuroid, Tomo Kuruzu was also partaking in killing the living crap out of the Native Americans before sticking it up for the Samuroids. In fact, his trauma and guilt was what made him shriek SAAAAAKEEEEE deep into the night. So even The Last Samurai has direct ties to Westerns, with actual American Indians being shot in the face, tear-trailed, raped and reservationed, rather than Space American Indians being shot in the face, tear-trailed, raped and reservationed.

(While the whole western gaijin helping Samurais was totally unnecessary and they could've made the movie entirely about Ken Watannabe and no Tom Cruise at all, I think the movie was still very great and well done for some reason. It's very touching. Maybe I'm susceptible to artsy fartsy sentimental bullshit like that, unlike all these hard macho badass strong tough guy men who were undoubtedly cheering on the gatling guns as they mowed down the samurai and booing when Lieutenant Custer got samurai sworded in the throat. )

Imagine, the RDA probably planned putting the Na'vi Reservations on those flying mountains, cutting off all the root-bridges connecting that thing to the ground, so the Na'vi would be trapped, and then they would poison or otherwise murder or hunt to extinction all those pterodactyls so the Na'vi couldn't fly out, thus they would be trapped and all those VTOL choppers would only deliver tiny inadequate food rations to the marooned Na'vi Reservationists once a month or something.

The Western convention you brought up with the lone outcast wandering into town now just reminded me of The Outlaw Josey Wales.

[weemadando]

I wonder if we replaced "Businessman" with "Gub'mint" we'd have a different response from people.

"G'DDURN BIG GUB'MNT EXPANSIONISM WELFARE STATE TAXES!"

[Shroom Man 777]

Maybe if the Na'vi's Home Tree was a giant naturally occuring biotech organic lemonade shack, and those unobtanium-festooned flying islands were instead giant flying lemons in the sky, and the Na'vi thus had a private small business enterprise selling lemonade before ushanka wearing Selfridgeskis on VTOL Katyusha T-80s tried to enforce FEMACORN on them and put them in a Superdome concentration camp as space hurricanes buffet Pandora in the monsoon season. Yeah.

[mr friendly guy]

You know it amuses me people who can see Avatar having a message that being luddites is good, when the technologically inferior Navi were losing until Captain Planet Erwa came to the rescue. Do people see the humans in Independence Day, War of the Worlds or V as luddites because the aliens were technologically superior?

Its just a case of a bad guy having more raw power than their opponents and for the good guys to win they require some other means rather than brute strength. In Independence day it was a silly computer virus, War of the Worlds and V it was biological weapons. In Avatar it was Captain Planet Erwa.
There are many reasons an author could use to make the villain more stronger than the protagonist. Having better technology is just one of the explanations.

But it is amusing people with their quasi imperialistic mindsets try to justify it as Navi are Luddites wah wah wah. Its like they are too cowardly to just come out and say what they really want to say, that might makes right. Its only after you push them and take apart their retarded apologeticism that they are forced to do so.

[Shroom Man 777]

You have the family (tribe in this case) living on a ranch (or foraging habitat in this case), and then the asshole businessman coming by trying to take their land: first by offering unacceptable terms, then by subterfuge, then by harassment, then by naked violence. Add to this mix the stranger, who rides in from out of town, fits in with no one, takes up residence with the besieged family, and defends their ranch against the businessman's hired thugs.

It's also amazing how if you changed the family of Arkansas good old folks with Mary Sues and Bobby Joes and turned them into exotic strange different blue non-human foreigners, turned their idyllic farmy warmy lifestyle into some woo-woo nature-worshiping primitivist jungle people stuff with glowy plants, and instead of having Clint Eastwood portray the stranger, you have a disillusioned traitor-Marine who is all paraplegic AND sentimental over the native's wishy-washy stuff, the people who otherwise would root for the small townsfolk would end up vilifying these guys and shrieking about how they are reprehensible and whatnot.

And give the asshole businessman some fancy shmancy military hard-dick machinery, replace the slimey incompetent goons with mustaches for US MAREENS HUT HUT HUT, and you've got people bending over and flip flopping and fellating these guys as SAVIORS OF THE WORLD HARVESTING MIRACLE ROCKS TO SAVE HUMANITY! And making up all sorts of bullshit justifications for them.

Again, it's an excellent examination of prejudices. And like they say, there are no guys more prejudiced than...

[PeZook]

In the extended edition, Jake says outright in the beginning that he joined the Marines because he wanted to have a cause worth fighting for. So it's a doubly Western theme

[Darth Tedious]

Also, since you're now accepting that wiki:

Unobtanium (pronounced un-ub-TAIN-e-um) is a highly valuable mineral found on the moon Pandora. Humans mine unobtanium to save the Earth from its energy crisis; bluntly put, they need it for their survival.

http://james-camerons-avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Unobtanium

Strange that in your scouring this wiki for things you think will destroy my case, and your absolute certainty that everything in the EU contradicts my position, you never bothered to look at the obvious article on Unobtainium.

Really?

Unobtanium (pronounced un-ub-TAIN-e-um) is a highly valuable mineral found on the moon Pandora. Humans mine unobtanium to save the Earth from its energy crisis; bluntly put, they need it for their survival.[citation needed]

Make sure you read that last bit:

[citation needed]

The articles everyone else else been quoting have been referenced back to canonical sources (be it the Pandorapedia, or the ASG).

Where is this energy crisis ever mentioned in the EU? Please, citation needed.

Also, here's another fun link for you:
http://james-camerons-avatar.wikia.com/ ... #Crisis.3F

It's a bunch of people asking for references to the energy crisis, and a bunch of other people not providing them. Very much like what we have here.
Please, evidence is required to back up this energy crisis. People have been asking for this for 14 pages now. You claimed to have conceeded, but are now apparently flogging this dead horse again.

Now, check this out: http://www.pandorapedia.com/
This is an official page, cited as a source for many of the wiki articles.

Here's a really important bit about the RDA's history.

With millions of shareholders, RDA is the oldest and largest of the quasi-governmental administrative entities (QGAEs). But its origins are far more modest. The entity that would become RDA was little more than a Silicon Valley garage startup in the early 21st century, when its two founders borrowed money from family members to begin the company.
Within a few decades, the company had the stature to propose the construction of a world-spanning rapid transit system that would allow entire population groups to conveniently commute hundreds or even thousands of miles to perform work where it was needed, without impinging on the cultural values of host populations. This led to the current global network of maglev trains that require the superconductor unobtanium for their continued operation.

The company's early expeditions to Pandora were seen as a colossal risk; the construction of the first interstellar vehicle alone put an enormous strain on capital resources. But with exclusive mining rights to unobtanium (which, at time of publication is valued at $20 billion per kilo), and potential profits from countervirals, biofuels, and cosmetics, the enormous capital investment has paid off.

Absolutely nothing about an energy crisis.
Where's the energy crisis? Please, present evidence that there was one.

Because the fact that the RDA was able to build a fucking INTERSTELLER STARSHIP TO BOLDLY GO WHERE NO ONE HAD GONE BEFORE very strongly suggests that they weren't exactly strapped for cash (at least not before they poured all their money into a GIANT AWESOME SPACESHIP).

But it gets even better:
Think of the timeline of these events. The company formed in the early 21st century, and within a few decades proposed a GIANT MAGLEV TRANSIT SYSTEM.
Now, this thing needed unobtainium to run, but wait up a second...
Pandora wasn't discovered until 2129.

The RDA proposed to build something that they didn't have the means to build. They created the demand for unobtanium. They wanted it so they could build their railway.

The RDA then spent a shit ton of the world's money sending spaceships out- for what?
Did they use Jedi precog to know that there would be magic rocks on the elf-planet?
The justification for the mining is no better than "We spent a lot of money getting here, we better get something to show for it."
Then there's the circular creation of further demand- "We 'need' more unobtainium so we can build MORE spaceships to mine MORE unobtanium!"

There was no actual need for unobtanium in the first place.
It was a massive propellant for the economy, that there is no doubt.
But where was the economic crisis? Where was the energy crisis?

We need EVIDENCE.
You need to provide evidence.

And this applies to a lot of your arguments.

We can say "hey, here's an EU source, and it has no mention of any energy crisis/mining treaty with the Na'vi"
And you can say "that doesn't prove that there wasn't an energy crisis/mining treaty with the Na'vi."
You need to prove that there was an energy crisis/mining treaty with the Na'vi.

I mean, ffs:

Didn't you notice that I conceeded that there was no evidence that the mineral was necessary for human survival in the film some time ago?

And you're now trying to argue that there was (again), based on an unreferenced single sentece in the wiki, with no supporting evidence?

I guess supporting evidence doesn't mean much to you, given that you can hold fast to a position that has none.

---

HEY! THAT WAS BORING! TIME FOR SOME MORE FUN FACTS ABOUT THE RDA!
Courtsey of: http://www.pandorapedia.com/unobtanium_ ... d_refinery

Closer inspection by an orbiting ISV revealed that there are many deposits of unobtanium on Pandora, some of which are even richer than that at ESM 01. It is expected that further exploitation of Pandora’s unobtanium deposits will eventually result in construction of further mines, with at least twenty-five potential sites already located. Plans are already underway to develop a substantial deposit within a few miles of ESM 01.

WOW! They totes could have mined SOMEWHERE OTHER THAN HOME TREE! At least 25 sites!

Unobtanium’s unique properties are largely dependent on the inner structure of the material, which must be preserved through the refining process. Initial purification is done in large ball mills, followed by successive nitric and hydrofluoric acid rinses. Acidic effluent is discharged into the stream to help control growth of life forms near the mine workings.

WOW! That's so environmentally friendly!
How green of them to think to SPRAY HYDROFLOURIC AND NITRIC ACID EFFLUENT AS WEED KILLER.
Tell us all again how a company that sprays its toxic waste at the native wildlife is nicer than the native people who don't want their home demolished.

---

In the extended edition, Jake says outright in the beginning that he joined the Marines because he wanted to have a cause worth fighting for. So it's a doubly Western theme

Add the fact that the bad guys wanted to build a railroad.

[PeZook]

In the extended edition, Jake says outright in the beginning that he joined the Marines because he wanted to have a cause worth fighting for. So it's a doubly Western theme

Add the fact that the bad guys wanted to build a railroad.

Yes. Mang, the energy crisis shit is hilarious: the unspecified city that Sully resides in has the sky completely obscured by holographic commercials, dirt-poor jobless veterans have huge wallscreen TVs in their tiny apartments, people are cremated in huge-ass complexes that operate dozens of furnaces, traffic lights actually change the color of the entire piece of asphalt instead of just a light post...

And of course they send starships away using a laser whose power source could, at minimum, deliver 100x the electricity consumed annually by the average American today to 33 billion people. Clearly they are in danger of running out of energy

EDIT: Oh, and they can afford the luxury of trying to recreate extinct species with bioengineering.

[Ryan Thunder]

US MAREENS HUT HUT HUT

Do we actually have any evidence that the RDA mercenaries were US Marines aside from perhaps Jake and Quaritch?

Just, y'know, since you're talking about prejudices and all that. :v

[Shroom Man 777]

US MAREENS HUT HUT HUT

Do we actually have any evidence that the RDA mercenaries were US Marines aside from perhaps Jake and Quaritch?

Michelle Vasquez Rodriguez was Mohican so I guess maybe the infantry had US MAREENS while the VTOLOL pilots were from the Mohican Sandinista Aerospace Commandante. El SAC does not turn back, Jefe! Arriba arriba ay carrumba! Fuego de los muertes! Torro! Torro! Or maybe she got confused between casting for Machete and Avatar, and when James Cameron said "aliens" she thought he meant "illegal aliens".

Or maybe the USMC got disbanded and Space America ended up privatizing its military forces into for-profit private military companies. It was all Space Pelosi's fault that they couldn't nuke the blue people from orbit. Socialist hag!

Just, y'know, since you're talking about prejudices and all that. :v

Well, I was thinking that Earth and the RDA would have to send their best and brightest to Pandora, and there's no one else more industrialized than Space America. Since they're the most industrialized, that also makes them most qualified to educate other less-industrialized and not-human people.

[Darth Wong]

Where is this energy crisis ever mentioned in the EU? Please, citation needed.

Perhaps more to the point, why would anyone assume that an energy crisis is an existential crisis, or that it is not self-inflicted through absurd overuse of energy?

If America said "we need oil" and invaded another country for it, who besides Americans would think that this makes them the good guys?

[PeZook]

Do we actually have any evidence that the RDA mercenaries were US Marines aside from perhaps Jake and Quaritch?

Just, y'know, since you're talking about prejudices and all that. :v

Does it matter what formation exactly they represent?

They're something some Americans can identify with (since they speak English and use vaguely american-shaped equipment)

Perhaps more to the point, why would anyone assume that an energy crisis is an existential crisis, or that it is not self-inflicted through absurd overuse of energy?

If America said "we need oil" and invaded another country for it, who besides Americans would think that this makes them the good guys?

I actually brought this up with the example of Germany invading Poland to plunder its resources and stave off an economic crisis. Nobody except Germans thought they were justified in doing that, but according to Cesario this is somehow COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

[Shroom Man 777]

Perhaps more to the point, why would anyone assume that an energy crisis is an existential crisis, or that it is not self-inflicted through absurd overuse of energy?

If America said "we need oil" and invaded another country for it, who besides Americans would think that this makes them the good guys?

What is the composition of that other country? How different are those people living there, how different is that nation's ways, and how easy is it for people to doublethink their way into thinking that the invasion would be justified because these people are strange or follow "wrong" ways or have "inferior" systems than America and nations and peoples like America?

For some people, anything can be justified.

They're something some Americans can identify with

These guys have space Vietnam-looking gear and are invading and murdering vaguely Mohican-ish primitives for their land and for the resources under it to fuel corporate greed. That's a lot of somethings some Americans can identify with.

[Xess]

In the extended edition, Jake says outright in the beginning that he joined the Marines because he wanted to have a cause worth fighting for. So it's a doubly Western theme

Add the fact that the bad guys wanted to build a railroad.

Yes. Mang, the energy crisis shit is hilarious: the unspecified city that Sully resides in has the sky completely obscured by holographic commercials, dirt-poor jobless veterans have huge wallscreen TVs in their tiny apartments, people are cremated in huge-ass complexes that operate dozens of furnaces, traffic lights actually change the color of the entire piece of asphalt instead of just a light post...

And of course they send starships away using a laser whose power source could, at minimum, deliver 100x the electricity consumed annually by the average American today to 33 billion people. Clearly they are in danger of running out of energy

EDIT: Oh, and they can afford the luxury of trying to recreate extinct species with bioengineering.

My favorite part is where the starships are decelerated on the outgoing voyage and accelerated on the return voyage by anti-matter, but they only carry enough anti-matter to do that once. That means RDA built giant ass anti-matter production facilities that can produce at least as much energy as that laser... 4.2 light-years away!

EDIT: http://www.pandorapedia.com/human_opera ... nture_star Read all about it here.

EDIT 2:

Range:
4.4 light-years. This range is set by onboard fuel supply and its containment system, and the life-support consumables, and the infrastructure needed to contain them. Because each gram of mass must be accelerated and decelerated (as well as the onboard fuel to accomplish this), every possible weight-saving measure has been taken. The ship carries only enough fuel for the planned mission profile, and a minimal amount of additional maneuvering. There are only enough supplies for the minimum crew needed to remain out of cryosleep. Air, water, and food must be replenished at Pandora, and the ship refueled there with locally-manufactured anti-matter and hydrogen and deuterium harvested from Polyphemus.

[starfury]

t's also amazing how if you changed the family of Arkansas good old folks with Mary Sues and Bobby Joes and turned them into exotic strange different blue non-human foreigners, turned their idyllic farmy warmy lifestyle into some woo-woo nature-worshiping primitivist jungle people stuff with glowy plants, and instead of having Clint Eastwood portray the stranger, you have a disillusioned traitor-Marine who is all paraplegic AND sentimental over the native's wishy-washy stuff, the people who otherwise would root for the small townsfolk would end up vilifying these guys and shrieking about how they are reprehensible and whatnot.

And give the asshole businessman some fancy shmancy military hard-dick machinery, replace the slimey incompetent goons with mustaches for US MAREENS HUT HUT HUT, and you've got people bending over and flip flopping and fellating these guys as SAVIORS OF THE WORLD HARVESTING MIRACLE ROCKS TO SAVE HUMANITY! And making up all sorts of bullshit justifications for them.

Again, it's an excellent examination of prejudices. And like they say, there are no guys more prejudiced than...

Ironically this also applies to the Tau vs the Imperium in 40k, as Games workshop handed them all the mary sue wank that in a more typical sci-fi setting would have the Humans as the dyanimac and advanced and other shit vs the decaying and bloated alien powers or even other human states I direct you to star kingdom of manticore vs both the solarian league and republic of haven, strange these same people don't minded these wank for their precious little libertarian wank being all so mary sue good vs comic good enemies.

[Ryan Thunder]

Does it matter what formation exactly they represent?

Not really, and we know they're stateless mercenaries anyway. I'm just chuckling at Shroom's freudian projections. They're bad people doing bad things, so the natural assumption is US MARIENS HUT HUT HUT.

Because the root of the problem is nationalism and not corporatism run amok, clearly.

They're something some Americans can identify with (since they speak English and use vaguely american-shaped equipment)

They're something people can identify with because they're human, unlike anything else on that rock.

[Darth Wong]

Does it matter what formation exactly they represent?

Not really, and we know they're stateless mercenaries anyway. I'm just chuckling at Shroom's freudian projections. They're bad people doing bad things, so the natural assumption is US MARIENS HUT HUT HUT.

Because the root of the problem is nationalism and not corporatism run amok, clearly.

It's amazing how much bullshit you can read into a throwaway smart-ass interjection like "US MARINES HUT HUT HUT". Apparently, that one little line contradicts everything else he's been saying now.

[Ahriman238]

I thought there was a line in the film about how on earth these guys were marines, men of honor and country, here they're all mercenaries, company men, fighting for their paycheck. IIRC it was when Jake first landed at Hell's Gate.

[Darth Tedious]

I thought there was a line in the film about how on earth these guys were marines, men of honor and country, here they're all mercenaries, company men, fighting for their paycheck. IIRC it was when Jake first landed at Hell's Gate.

When Jake and Quaritch first meet.

Quaritch mentions having done tours of Venezuela and Nigeria with 1st Recon (a RL Marine unit). Even if it wasn't a direct reference to the RL unit, it was obviously meant to show that these guys are the equivalent of Marines.

Then there's this:

QUARITCH: But we have a unique opportunity here, you and I. A recon Marine in an avatar body could get me the intel I need, on the ground, right in the hostiles' camp.

Though the line was different in the film:

However, it does present an opportunity, both timely and unique.
(shouts) CLEAR!
A Recon Gyrine* in an Avatar body. Huh. That's a potent mix. Gives me the goosebumps. Such a Marine could provide the intel I need, right on the ground.

It's quite clear that at least Jake and Quaritch were certainly Marines (or a direct futuristic equivalent). It was in the script, and Quaritch explicitly said 'Marine' in the film, even after saying some other Gyrine shit.
As to how many of the other SecOps troops were ex-Marines, who knows?
At the very least, the audience were clearly meant to identify the central military characters as US MAREENS HUT HUT HUT.

* This word is hard to make out. Gyrine? Jarine? Meh.

[Darth Wong]

Who cares if they're all US Marines, or whether some of them come from some other military service? They're obviously modern western-style military personnel of some sort, which makes them look like good guys if you worship at the altar of western militarism, which is what American conservatives do. That's the big problem with the movie for some people: they feel like they totally understand the things Quaritch is saying and doing, so they're angered at the way he's made out to be a bad guy.

[Ryan Thunder]

Who cares if they're all US Marines, or whether some of them come from some other military service? They're obviously modern western-style military personnel of some sort, which makes them look like good guys if you worship at the altar of western militarism, which is what American conservatives do. That's the big problem with the movie for some people: they feel like they totally understand the things Quaritch is saying and doing, so they're angered at the way he's made out to be a bad guy.

They're all mercenaries to me, which means its irrelevant what style military personnel they are; it should come as no surprise that they're bad guys. US MARINES HUT HUT HUT is about as asinine and out of place as making some silly comment about... whatever the Swedish equivalent is.