SylasGaunt wrote:A couple things, for one the Na'vi aren't as saintly as you seem to suggest the movie makes them out to be. For instance Tsu'tey was ready to slit Jake's throat at the drop of a hat for most of the movie, and we're introduced to Ney'tiri as she considers shooting a stranger in the back with a poisoned arrow the size of a ballista bolt. They look good because for the most part they're compared with the people who think it's okay to tear gas someone, set their house on fire, then blow it up.
Justifiable defense against a hostile RDA infiltrator. They know what Avatars are, they know they're not 'real'/demonic in nature, and it's pretty obvious that Jake is one of them.
Quaritch on the other hand I think has a bit more depth than you give credit for, but while we don't get a ton of background information we do get hints pointing out his motivations, and the fact that he make have started going round the bend.
Likewise we're allowed to see that Selfridge isn't some completely unfeeling corporate goon, however he doesn't have the guts to stand up to Quaritch or the board.
I don't recall seeing that at all. I remember him calling them monkies, savages, and not being able to understand a (reasonable) reason for Jake being pissed off. Namely, that your dozer pilot nearly squashed an irreplaceable, 'cost in excess of 300+ million dollars just to ship here, let alone grow' Avatar that's worth more that both dozer and pilot put together.
The problem with this approach is that it means the shuttle has to make the approach unprotected since the choppers can't follow to the kinds of speeds and altitudes it can, and doing so would also presumably make putting the MG nests on the back impractical. No matter how the shuttle approaches it's going to have to slow down and go into hover at the end of its run if it wants to have a chance in hell of hitting its target.
Agreed. I'm not talking about a high altitude bombing run. I'm talking about having the choppers and the shuttle fly above the mountains until they're over the Tree of Souls, and then coming down in a VTOL descent to bombing altitude, with the choppers fanned out a proper vectors to provide support.
There is also of course the arrogance factor when you consider Quaritch had a swarm of helicopters and the Dragon as escort which really left him with little to fear from the natives who's most sophisticated weapon is a bow that had previously proven ineffective against the canopy of his air assets. That and given that we saw a helicopter smack into the shuttle without so much as visibly shaking it, the ability of the Na'vi to do more than scratch the paint is questionable.
Which is why I don't take too much of an issue.
Part of it is the terrain which means they really didn't have much time to spot them coming in, and part of it is going to be the fact that the pilots in question aren't used to flying in an area where their instruments don't work properly are having to fly totally VFR, watch for an incoming ambush and make sure they don't fly into a rock.
They didn't even try to warn each other (the pilots or the impromptu pillboxes on the shuttle) until they'd already been hit. It took IIRC about 12 seconds to move from when they were first visible until they were hitting the choppers. I find it hard to believe that after being specifically ordered to keep looking around, that everyone apparently took that exact moment to make certain their flies were zipped.
That and I'd hardly call the Na'vi ambush 'successful'. They managed to take out a handful of choppers in the initial strike due to them figuring out a way to make those bows actually work, but after that they'd pretty much shot their load and had their aerial attack force systematically destroyed by Quaritch's overwhelming firepower.
I meant successful in its initial stages. The enemy has known air support capabilities that while biological rather than technological, still follow the earth pattern of 'air speed equals life and death from above is the standard approach.' From Jake's opening monlogue, we know the RDA has been on Pandora for years, if not decades. They've observed enough about the Na'Vi to know that they operate on these things and their hunting patterns. Someone, anyone, out of the hundred or so individuals present, should have been looking high, especially considering the bulk of the Hallelujah mountains were above them, rather than below, due to the jury rigged nature of their bombing payload.
Not as bad as some of the mistakes I see in sci-fi military, especially with Mega-Corp mercs, who have habitually been portrayed as moronic idiots in the medium, but still rather jarring.
"Impossible! Lasers can't even harm out deflector dish! Clearly these foes are masters of illusion!' 'But sir, my console says we-' 'MASTERS OF ILLUSION! - General Schatten
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- PeZook
