Avatar review thread

[Elfdart]

Big spoilers! Spoiler

One criticism that might be levelled at the film is that it's patronising to aboriginal cultures; consider that Sully is not only able to tame one of the largest flying beasts on Pandora, but also to call upon the planetary intelligence to give his side a hand in the final battle. He's a better native than the natives! However, I don't think either of these story elements are inappropriate. Consider that the last person to tame one of the giant flyers was a revered ancestor who managed to unite the Na'vi clans. The mythical status of this figure could well prevent any of the Na'vi who have grown up with the legend from trying to duplicate the feat. And as for calling on the planetary network thingy, Neytiri makes it clear that no Na'vi would have bothered, since it "doesn't take sides". She's presumably speaking from the memory of past conflicts which would obviously have been struggles against other Na'vi clans, which don't pose an existential threat to the whole Pandoran biosphere.

That's actually a common theme in most of these "going native" stories. It's like screenwriters don't realize just how effin' patronizing it is to have the hero effortlessly learn the ways of local people that usually take a lifetime to master for them (and they were fucking born in those conditions, while the hero was just plopped down). The explanation that no native would even try to tame the beastie doesn't really fly: the Na'Vi seem like a stereotypical Indian warrior society, so every once in a while you would inevitably get a young brave foolish enough to try, since success = great status and plenty of women to chose from, while failure means death, which they're rather used to. And they probably get recognition just for trying.

I haven't seen the movie yet, but I did watch the Making Of show on FMC and it looks like a mix-mash of Return of the Jedi, Dances With Wolves, Aliens -all set on one of the Technicolor planets from Revenge of the Sith. Am I right?

[GrayAnderson]

Gil:

1.) Yeah... they could've made the Na'vi look like Prawns. The Na'vi did look too human, but that's probably needed because James Cameron did want to make the Na'vi relate-able, lovable, and even sexy. Yes, he said that himself.

2.) That would've been a sad ending.

I kind of suggested something leik that in the original Avatar thread too. Yes, it would've made more sense and yeah, it would've been more "powerful". But I like my happy ending and the bad guy's gotta get what's coming to him, mang. I prefer Jake and Blue Chick living happily ever after and making lots a little blue babies, rather than Jake getting Mel Gibsoned/Bravehearted with his entrails hanging out and shouting "You might take our planet, but you'll never take our FREEDOM" as his last words.

If the humans had been acting as brazenly brutal as you described, my view on them would be substantially different. I think that's a given. And there's the upshot: The human side is doing their best to avoid mass murder and all sorts of other evils. We're doing our damnedest not to kick the dog if we can help it. If anything, Cameron's decision not to portray the humans like that is admirable...such a portrayal of either side in a conflict tends to turn me off to the film/book.

The point about 200 km is not a joke. We have a limited infrastructure net on the planet, and presumably limited fuel supplies for the vehicles. You have a limited amount of X with which to get as much Y as you can, Y being vital for keeping humanity working. You therefore use your X as efficiently as you can, particularly if you have to shepherd your X for a lengthy period of time.

Mining operations were already underway. It's not like they just got there and where going for the first big deposit they found, they were already mining. They just wanted more, faster, easier, and cheaper. That's why they had the whole Avatar project going on, which couldn't have been cheap either, to communicate with and negotiate with the aliens to hopefully move.

Yes, but I'll point back to oil extraction and mention that every well can only bring out a certain total amount of oil before the well runs dry. Likewise, those pits will inevitably run out of Unobtanium (or alternately become too deep to keep digging). It's not unreasonable to expect that a certain amount of Unobtanium is needed per day/week/month. As some mines run dry, you need to tap into others to keep a flow going. Even if you're only doing a shipment back once every month, or even once a year, you need a certain average outpit...and I would also note that the RDA can't simply send back every gram they can mine. The ships do have capacity limits sooner or later.

[Gil Hamilton]

This movie cost something like 300M-500M dollars. There is no way that the producers on this thing are going to actually want to challenge audiences by making the aliens completely inhuman. This has to play to broad audiences.

Compare it to District 9. Blomkamp got away with a lot because it cost a tenth of Avatar. It may not serve the story very well, but them's the breaks when you want to make a movie that cost a lot.

This makes the movie weaker. District 9 was EXCELLENT because the Prawns were utterly inhuman in value and character. In fact, their inhumaness HELPED the analogy, because "they are disgusting creatures that eat weird things and act like savage criminals" is exactly the sort of racist thing that allowed Europeans to treat native Africans like garbage and reinforced Apartheid in South Africa. Colonials ALWAYS dehumanize the natives to justify what they are doing; this was old news when Rudyard Kipling was writing and George Orwell wrote about his experiences as a soldier in India (I would recommend the short story "Shooting the Elephant" on this subject, by the way).

The Na'vi were just too damn pretty and wonderful. This hurt the movie by dumbing it down. District 9 managed to talk about colonial injustice without making the movie Fern Gully and was highly effective for it.

Gil:

1.) Yeah... they could've made the Na'vi look like Prawns. The Na'vi did look too human, but that's probably needed because James Cameron did want to make the Na'vi relate-able, lovable, and even sexy. Yes, he said that himself.

2.) That would've been a sad ending.

I kind of suggested something leik that in the original Avatar thread too. Yes, it would've made more sense and yeah, it would've been more "powerful". But I like my happy ending and the bad guy's gotta get what's coming to him, mang. I prefer Jake and Blue Chick living happily ever after and making lots a little blue babies, rather than Jake getting Mel Gibsoned/Bravehearted with his entrails hanging out and shouting "You might take our planet, but you'll never take our FREEDOM" as his last words.

Addressed their appearance above.

That's colonialism for you. It IS sad. It's damn unfair what happens when an advanced civilization moves in to a primitive civilization and decided that the natives have something worth killing over. If James Cameron wanted to drive home that what RDA was doing was well and truly shitty and that colonialism is something that should outrage people, having the world magically grant the noble, peaceloving primatives the win is not the way to go. That NEVER happens; the noble savage ALWAYS loses. That's the real tragedy and the one that should have been emphasized. The feel good end just doesn't fit the tone of the movie.

Besides, Braveheart did really really well, even with William Wallace ending up getting tortured to death by the English in the movie and his army being utterly defeated (yes, they had the addendum with Robert the Bruce, but things didn't exactly end so well for the Scots the first time and the movie held to that even if it wasn't the Feel Good End). There is no reason Jack Sully couldn't have been executed for treason and the Na'vi being scattered to the wind by the Federal Government and it still not being an excellent movie.

[neoolong]

The Na'vi were just too damn pretty and wonderful. This hurt the movie by dumbing it down. District 9 managed to talk about colonial injustice without making the movie Fern Gully and was highly effective for it.

Yes, the movie was weakened for it, but like I said, it's what you get when you get that type of budget.

[GrayAnderson]

This movie cost something like 300M-500M dollars. There is no way that the producers on this thing are going to actually want to challenge audiences by making the aliens completely inhuman. This has to play to broad audiences.

Compare it to District 9. Blomkamp got away with a lot because it cost a tenth of Avatar. It may not serve the story very well, but them's the breaks when you want to make a movie that cost a lot.

This makes the movie weaker. District 9 was EXCELLENT because the Prawns were utterly inhuman in value and character. In fact, their inhumaness HELPED the analogy, because "they are disgusting creatures that eat weird things and act like savage criminals" is exactly the sort of racist thing that allowed Europeans to treat native Africans like garbage and reinforced Apartheid in South Africa. Colonials ALWAYS dehumanize the natives to justify what they are doing; this was old news when Rudyard Kipling was writing and George Orwell wrote about his experiences as a soldier in India (I would recommend the short story "Shooting the Elephant" on this subject, by the way).

The Na'vi were just too damn pretty and wonderful. This hurt the movie by dumbing it down. District 9 managed to talk about colonial injustice without making the movie Fern Gully and was highly effective for it.

Gil:

1.) Yeah... they could've made the Na'vi look like Prawns. The Na'vi did look too human, but that's probably needed because James Cameron did want to make the Na'vi relate-able, lovable, and even sexy. Yes, he said that himself.

2.) That would've been a sad ending.

I kind of suggested something leik that in the original Avatar thread too. Yes, it would've made more sense and yeah, it would've been more "powerful". But I like my happy ending and the bad guy's gotta get what's coming to him, mang. I prefer Jake and Blue Chick living happily ever after and making lots a little blue babies, rather than Jake getting Mel Gibsoned/Bravehearted with his entrails hanging out and shouting "You might take our planet, but you'll never take our FREEDOM" as his last words.

Addressed their appearance above.

That's colonialism for you. It IS sad. It's damn unfair what happens when an advanced civilization moves in to a primitive civilization and decided that the natives have something worth killing over. If James Cameron wanted to drive home that what RDA was doing was well and truly shitty and that colonialism is something that should outrage people, having the world magically grant the noble, peaceloving primatives the win is not the way to go. That NEVER happens; the noble savage ALWAYS loses. That's the real tragedy and the one that should have been emphasized. The feel good end just doesn't fit the tone of the movie.

Besides, Braveheart did really really well, even with William Wallace ending up getting tortured to death by the English in the movie and his army being utterly defeated (yes, they had the addendum with Robert the Bruce, but things didn't exactly end so well for the Scots the first time and the movie held to that even if it wasn't the Feel Good End). There is no reason Jack Sully couldn't have been executed for treason and the Na'vi being scattered to the wind by the Federal Government and it still not being an excellent movie.

I actually think that (given my assumptions about the necessity of the Unobtanium, etc.) Sully should have been tried for treason. The Na'vi may have deserved a happy ending as much as humans deserved one, but Sully did not. He betrayed those he was supposed to be fighting along and caused the death of many humans.

This point is all the more valid given the intelligence that he gave the Colonel on things. Now, there's a side-point to be had about the best course of action for the RDA with respect to using the information on the Vortex as leverage that I think I discussed earlier, but the point is that I'm fairly certain he didn't pass that information along under the impression that it was for archival purposes only.

The Na'vi were just too damn pretty and wonderful. This hurt the movie by dumbing it down. District 9 managed to talk about colonial injustice without making the movie Fern Gully and was highly effective for it.

Yes, the movie was weakened for it, but like I said, it's what you get when you get that type of budget.

Well, even District 9 suffered versus the original short because of Hollywoodization. MNU (I think) was hyperbolized to the point of farce, for example, to make the film a more acceptable satire.

[Knife]

I haven't seen the movie yet, but I did watch the Making Of show on FMC and it looks like a mix-mash of Return of the Jedi, Dances With Wolves, Aliens -all set on one of the Technicolor planets from Revenge of the Sith. Am I right?

I'd go more with a Dances With Wolves and Last of the Mohicans for plot line.

Edit: with a healthy dose of Pocahontas.

[neoolong]

Dude, FernGully all the way.

[Knife]

Dude, FernGully all the way.

No funny bat.

But I see where people are making the analogy with the fairly critters and evil tree destroying machines bearing down on them.

[Shroom Man 777]

If the humans had been acting as brazenly brutal as you described, my view on them would be substantially different. I think that's a given. And there's the upshot: The human side is doing their best to avoid mass murder and all sorts of other evils. We're doing our damnedest not to kick the dog if we can help it. If anything, Cameron's decision not to portray the humans like that is admirable...such a portrayal of either side in a conflict tends to turn me off to the film/book.

Yeah, Cameron did well not to portray them as a bunch of Captain Planet villains, and from the perspective of the Marines it is sorta understandable that they hoped for the best but planned for the very worst. From their perspective. But from the POV of the Na'vi, and the POV of the people who knew the inner workings of the Na'vi and the planetary biosphere, things were much different. The fact that the antagonist humans didn't totally comprehend the ramifications of their actions on the other side (i.e. they didn't realize just how important the home-tree was, or the whole planetary Gaia neural net, etc.) is understandable, but not excusable.

Besides, when the Marines blew up the home-tree without really any regard if whether there were still people in the tree, or for any collateral damage (after they used gas, and the natives still threw spears at them, they basically went "fuck this, burn everything"), with the sole intention of shattering the native morale - it really did come off as callous and brutal.


Anyway, the movie could've asked more questions or juxtaposed the situation better by not portraying the Na'vi as beautiful beings, but as disgusting cockroach critters. It would've been less "dumbed down". But I myself personally didn't mind it all too much. But do all aliens have to be fuck ugly to convey this message? Sure, the Na'vi were too humanoid, but they could've also been sufficiently alien without being goddamn repulsive. There are lots of creatures that are distinctly non-human but are nonetheless not repulsive, but actually beautiful. If the Na'vi were colorful bird-like avianoids, or sleek alien otters (or space dolphins), or more like those other colorful and breathtaking bioluminescent creatures in the ecosystem... would this have also been detracting the movie's message?

Also, bleh. I guess I just like the fact that the native noble savages didn't get wiped out by smallpox or Conquistadores, even though that kinda stymied the moral message about colonialism.

[Knife]

Uhm, more than half the story was Sully 'going native' with a large portion of that being him falling in love with Pocha...er the Na'vi chick. How the hell is the audience going to go for that particular plot points with ugly blobs of goo, or space roaches? You guys are thinking about this too much, and/or picking only one part of the show and focusing on it.

[Shroom Man 777]

I didn't mind that at all, but some might say that having the human fall in love with a conveniently sexy alien space babe would be detracting or something. I was okay with them making sexy time, though. Not everything has to be sensible or "realistic", though I guess some people might not like it since that's not what they're looking for in their sci-fi with Space Pochahontas not being their cup of tea. Oh well.

[neoolong]

I wonder how the rest of the aliens are going to feel if Neytiri was knocked up and now there is human DNA floating around in their gene pool.

[adam_grif]

Uhm, more than half the story was Sully 'going native' with a large portion of that being him falling in love with Pocha...er the Na'vi chick. How the hell is the audience going to go for that particular plot points with ugly blobs of goo, or space roaches? You guys are thinking about this too much, and/or picking only one part of the show and focusing on it.

Ideally, he wouldn't have written the movie as Dances With Smurfs in the firstplace.

[Knife]

I wonder how the rest of the aliens are going to feel if Neytiri was knocked up and now there is human DNA floating around in their gene pool.

I would think that Sully being the Chosen One, or the new uber warrior chief dude that won the battle will probably make that ok, especially with him having gone through the basic training of a Na'vi warrior dude and was part of the tribe.

Ideally, he wouldn't have written the movie as Dances With Smurfs in the firstplace.

...and into what? The plot of Avatar was Dances with Wolves, so if you take that part out of it, what do you have? Another movie. What you're all talking about is akin to saying Star Wars was cool and all, but suffered too much from all those White Knight/Fallen Knight motiffs and would have been better without them.

[adam_grif]

Jeez, didn't you read this thread? Don't you know all we want is to see the natives get stomped by war machines for the glory of the fatherland?

Well, the eco theme could certainly have been kept in tact. He won't fall in love with a blob, but he can certainly come to befriend them and switch sides to prevent their extermination. You could salvage a great deal of what happened without needing to give your aliens space boobs.

[GrayAnderson]

If the humans had been acting as brazenly brutal as you described, my view on them would be substantially different. I think that's a given. And there's the upshot: The human side is doing their best to avoid mass murder and all sorts of other evils. We're doing our damnedest not to kick the dog if we can help it. If anything, Cameron's decision not to portray the humans like that is admirable...such a portrayal of either side in a conflict tends to turn me off to the film/book.

Yeah, Cameron did well not to portray them as a bunch of Captain Planet villains, and from the perspective of the Marines it is sorta understandable that they hoped for the best but planned for the very worst. From their perspective. But from the POV of the Na'vi, and the POV of the people who knew the inner workings of the Na'vi and the planetary biosphere, things were much different. The fact that the antagonist humans didn't totally comprehend the ramifications of their actions on the other side (i.e. they didn't realize just how important the home-tree was, or the whole planetary Gaia neural net, etc.) is understandable, but not excusable.

Part of the problem is that the science seems to have been coming online at the last minute. When Grace runs in and says such-and-such about the trees being a neural net, let's say that Parker Selfridge not seeing this statement, which to all appearances is coming out of the blue at a highly convenient time for any internal agenda that Grace is pushing, as credible is hardly unrealistic. Frankly, in his shoes I'd be inclined to raise my eyebrow and ask her who her dealer was, too. Skepticism at a radical claim at the last minute is usually merited. I say this as someone who found her to be about the most likable character in the film...doesn't change the credibility of her claims in light of the suddenness and timing of them.

Besides, when the Marines blew up the home-tree without really any regard if whether there were still people in the tree, or for any collateral damage (after they used gas, and the natives still threw spears at them, they basically went "fuck this, burn everything"), with the sole intention of shattering the native morale - it really did come off as callous and brutal.

Unfortunately, callous and brutal attacks can (and do) work. One can make an argument that through a "shock and awe" attack, the Colonel was trying to win the next fight or two before they began. Considering that sooner or later your enemy will adapt tactics that work, not offering him the chance for repeat efforts with minimal casualties has an unpleasant amount of utility.

This is not to say that an attack on a strictly civilian target is justified for those reasons, but the devastating destruction of a military facility with overwhelming force and with some collateral damage? Sure.

Now, all of that said, they did try to minimize casualties...but even if you have the capacity, are you going to put guys on the ground to check the place out and make sure that there's nobody in there once the aliens-that-can-knock-you-across-the-room-with-a-club start throwing spears? I'll agree that they should probably have given more time for an evacuation, but from their view it probably tallied as "So much for trying to get them all out first; next thing, their birds will be coming at us, and their spears already are. *sigh* Alright, let 'em have it. It'll take long enough for the place to come down, anyway." I don't know of many Marines who would verbalize that on the battlefield, but assuming that the Colonel is weighing Selfridge's desire to minimize casualties with his operational objectives, that seems like a reasonable conclusion for him to reach.

Anyway, while the movie could've asked more questions or juxtaposed the situation better by not portraying the Na'vi as beautiful beings, but as disgusting cockroach critters, it would've been less "dumbed down". But I myself personally didn't mind it all too much. But do all aliens have to be different to convey this message? Sure, the Na'vi were too humanoid, but they could've also been sufficiently alien without being goddamn repulsive. There are lots of creatures that are distinctly non-human but are nonetheless not repulsive, but actually beautiful. If the Na'vi were colorful bird-like avianoids, or sleek alien otters (or space dolphins), or more like those other colorful and breathtaking bioluminescent creatures in the ecosystem... would this have also been detracting the movie's message?

Also, bleh. I guess I just like the fact that the native noble savages didn't get wiped out by smallpox or Conquistadores, even though that kinda stymied the moral message about colonialism.

Well, the risk of portraying them as more 'beautiful animal' runs the risk of "Good grief, noble birds..." Or "space kittens! Agh!"

As to the lack of disease, I think there's probably a specific human effort not to bring diseases along that they can help bringing. We already do that with the space program anyway.

[Knife]

Well, the eco theme could certainly have been kept in tact. He won't fall in love with a blob, but he can certainly come to befriend them and switch sides to prevent their extermination. You could salvage a great deal of what happened without needing to give your aliens space boobs.

So you went to watch Enemy Mine and got Pocahontas and you're pissed. Gotcha. It is still fucking stupid, because it isn't that type of movie; it's a guy goes native because of the good looking woman movie, in space. You're not going to get people to watch that if your hero is smooching on a space roach.

[Shroom Man 777]

It's a movie about a guy falling in love with a blue alien space chick and her beautiful bunch of hippie alien space people. That's what it is. If you want a more analytical, less "cliche'd" depiction, go for District 9 or watch that Futurama episode where Fry makes out with that female crab alien and ends up dueling in the Thunderdome with Doctor Zoidberg.

GrayAnderson:

1.) Well, the scientists were just pretty much doing their own thing with minimal military/corporate supervision and the military/corporate guys probably didn't really care about what the scientists were discovering by studying the trees and the space shrooms. And the scientists really probably didn't see the urgent need to brief the military/corporate guys, since they didn't know that the military/corporate guys were hellbent on killfuck until it was too late.

2.) Yes, brutal attacks do work and if I was a military mang I too would've executed a large-scale bigass attack to decapitate the enemy and neutralize his capacity to pose a threat in the future. Like when Curtis LeMay wanted to do a strategic bombing campaign in the early stages of Vietnam, which was denied, until the later stages of Vietnam when strategic bombing ended up getting used anyway.

That doesn't change the fact that setting people on fire is a pretty asshole thing to do.

3.) I think the Pandoran ecosystem would be more than able to deal with the human disease, anyway. It's a wonder that the humans were the ones who didn't all keel over and die from space ebola.

[open_sketchbook]

Biochemical barriers would keep viruses away, and considering the differences between the composition of Pandorian and Earth life, most bacteria probably won't do great in the crossover either.

[GrayAnderson]

It's a movie about a guy falling in love with a blue alien space chick and her beautiful bunch of hippie alien space people. That's what it is. If you want a more analytical, less "cliche'd" depiction, go for District 9 or watch that Futurama episode where Fry makes out with that female crab alien and ends up dueling in the Thunderdome with Doctor Zoidberg.

GrayAnderson:

1.) Well, the scientists were just pretty much doing their own thing with minimal military/corporate supervision and the military/corporate guys probably didn't really care about what the scientists were discovering by studying the trees and the space shrooms. And the scientists really probably didn't see the urgent need to brief the military/corporate guys, since they didn't know that the military/corporate guys were hellbent on killfuck until it was too late.

2.) Yes, brutal attacks do work and if I was a military mang I too would've executed a large-scale bigass attack to decapitate the enemy and neutralize his capacity to pose a threat in the future. Like when Curtis LeMay wanted to do a strategic bombing campaign in the early stages of Vietnam, which was denied, until the later stages of Vietnam when strategic bombing ended up getting used anyway.

That doesn't change the fact that setting people on fire is a pretty asshole thing to do.

3.) I think the Pandoran ecosystem would be more than able to deal with the human disease, anyway. It's a wonder that the humans were the ones who didn't all keel over and die from space ebola.

1) I can see that, though I think the deadline (which seems, by the way, to have been preceded by several years of relatively fruitless efforts) made it fairly obvious that a shoe was going to drop one way or another. Still, the relationship was frosty enough between Selfridge and Augustine that office politics probably caused communication to be poor...though at the same time, one suspects that Sully could have put some things together in his head and guessed that a "big boom" was coming.
2) What is desirable and what is necessary don't always coincide. I've gotten to the point that pathos really doesn't work on me very well. Blame Hollywood overdoing this appeal too often while logos leads one to a different, if unpleasant, conclusion.

Pathos leads one to side with the Na'vi overwhelmingly. Logos depends on a lot of stuff that's off-screen and not talked about very much (and let me take this moment to restate that there was no genocide on the agenda in the movie and that genocide-related examples are therefore not valid comparisons to what was going on with Pandora...given some of the arguments on here [though not from you in particular, Shroom], I feel the need to restate this ad nauseam). It depends on a lot of "ifs" not discussed on-screen, largely for commercial and artistic reasons (make the enemy too unclear and the audience won't feel good when the hero wins).

The Colonel was inclined towards a LeMay-esque attitude, but as I said before I didn't find this to be the glaring flaw it was probably intended to be. This probably stems from him reminding me of too many men who I know/have known and respect/have respected. Sorry, I know Cameron apparently tried to invoke Col. Kilgore from Apocalypse Now, but other connections clicked harder and the pathos issue here wasn't just blocked out, it really wasn't even there to begin with.
3) Good point, and one that's often overlooked...especially as the aliens apparently can breathe either hydrogen sulfide or hydrogen cyanide (both fatal to humans, but I've seen sources disagree on which was in the air. I'm personally guessing the former because of degrees of lethality). The best explanation I can think of would be that alien bacteria just don't do well against humans for some reason...this happens, after all.
(As the post before me said...yay being beaten to the punch)

[Bounty]

Pathos leads one to side with the Na'vi overwhelmingly. Logos depends on a lot of stuff that's off-screen and not talked about very much

Both show the humans to be utterly in the wrong here. No matter how hard you may try to imply that some form of phantom argument exists which may justify unilaterally taking resources from the Na'vi, fact is that in the movie's actual universe, no such argument exists. It is explicitly spelled out that the only motivation to attack the Na'vi is convenience and the pursuit of a profit margin.

I'm not even sure why the giant red herring of 'necessity' is still being pushed. Are people really that desperate to concoct a scenario where butchering the natives makes a perverse sort of sense?

[adam_grif]

Well, the eco theme could certainly have been kept in tact. He won't fall in love with a blob, but he can certainly come to befriend them and switch sides to prevent their extermination. You could salvage a great deal of what happened without needing to give your aliens space boobs.

So you went to watch Enemy Mine and got Pocahontas and you're pissed. Gotcha. It is still fucking stupid, because it isn't that type of movie; it's a guy goes native because of the good looking woman movie, in space. You're not going to get people to watch that if your hero is smooching on a space roach.

More that I waited 12 years for the next James Cameron masterpiece and I got Pocahontas. It's hard to be pissed because this is exactly what I expected to happen since the first trailer came out.

[Shroom Man 777]

1) I can see that, though I think the deadline (which seems, by the way, to have been preceded by several years of relatively fruitless efforts) made it fairly obvious that a shoe was going to drop one way or another. Still, the relationship was frosty enough between Selfridge and Augustine that office politics probably caused communication to be poor...though at the same time, one suspects that Sully could have put some things together in his head and guessed that a "big boom" was coming.

Well, the military and corporate guys seemed very patronizing of the scientists who they saw as merely collecting tree samples, as if their prolonged contact with the natives themselves and unique scientific insight on the actual-factual ecosystem of the planet was worth nothing.

2) What is desirable and what is necessary don't always coincide. I've gotten to the point that pathos really doesn't work on me very well. Blame Hollywood overdoing this appeal too often while logos leads one to a different, if unpleasant, conclusion.

Pathos leads one to side with the Na'vi overwhelmingly. Logos depends on a lot of stuff that's off-screen and not talked about very much (and let me take this moment to restate that there was no genocide on the agenda in the movie and that genocide-related examples are therefore not valid comparisons to what was going on with Pandora...given some of the arguments on here [though not from you in particular, Shroom], I feel the need to restate this ad nauseam). It depends on a lot of "ifs" not discussed on-screen, largely for commercial and artistic reasons (make the enemy too unclear and the audience won't feel good when the hero wins).

The genocide-related examples stem from the fact that a whole lot of guys here are really keen on using stuff like orbital strikes, or throwing Tunguskas at them, and other massive military devastation because they apparently don't like the fact that the natives get to keep their own homes and saved their families and loved ones while the military gets to go home with its tail tucked.

The Colonel was inclined towards a LeMay-esque attitude, but as I said before I didn't find this to be the glaring flaw it was probably intended to be. This probably stems from him reminding me of too many men who I know/have known and respect/have respected. Sorry, I know Cameron apparently tried to invoke Col. Kilgore from Apocalypse Now, but other connections clicked harder and the pathos issue here wasn't just blocked out, it really wasn't even there to begin with.

Cameron depicted the Colonel as having legitimate military concerns, and as having a practical military solution to the "Na'vi problem". But the fact that we're dealing with indigenous people, in their own home planet, and that the humans are the outsiders and that what the humans want is just a mineral luxury for monetary gain (because, again, the "necessity" of unobtanium to the human race is NEVER MENTIONED in the movie aside from stock portfolios and dollar-per-kilos) means that any military action at all is really a moral failure for the human side.

The humans are the invaders here, and they're the ones who destroyed other people's homes, they're the ones who came in with no other purpose than to stripmine a planet. If the Na'vi actually shot arrows at planet Earth or something, military action might probably be justified, but the fact is that the humans were the ones who had malicious intent. Not the Na'vi.

Lebensraum or space uranium, there's no justification for killing other people and destroying their homes and injuring their living planet. It's like the morality of killing an elephant to obtain its tusk, to sell it for high prices in the market. The humans, in the movie, were poaching a living planet.

[dragon]

Only been able to see the first 20 min that was loaded to you tube before it was taken down. The first thing that stood out is the fact that the armored exoskeletons are in closed and not like the crap ones from the Matrix trilogy. But wondering they were in cryo sleep for 5 years so wonder how far they went.

As for the unobtanimum it's not the first film to use that name, they used it in the core as well. Could think of a few uses for levitating rock.

Do they flash back and show a little more of earth later in the film? It would be kind of interesting to see their vision of a future earth solar system.

Even though the Avatars are kind of interesting. I know several books had stuff like remotely pilot bodies but have there been movies where that premise been used?

[Shroom Man 777]

No Earth. Well, except for some view of Sam Worthington on some dock before he rides the ship or something - where he's being talked to by the company men. But no great panoramic view of Earth at all.

Surrogates was a recent movie that had people living their lives through robot bodies, controlled wirelessly from the safety of their own home while they lie down in control machines. Gamer, too, had people using vessels to live fantasy "game" lives (in Second Life analogues, or in bloody and violent and fatal FPS-analogues)... but these games used real people as vessels, real people who sell themselves to become vehicles for other people or convicts who get condemned to the violent FPS-games.