Perhaps it would've been a bit more interesting if, when Sully interfaced with the trees, we saw a massive visual download of mind-blowing, game-changing information that would better explain the motivations of Sully and the Na'vi. As it was, the motivation was more like, "Hey, don't hurt the Smurfs, you stinkin' meanies!"
Avatar is stupid
- Thread starter Deimos Anomaly
- Start date
How is it not narcissicism to hang out with the Na'vi, enjoying the use of a fully functional body and planning to betray them? Granted, as you point out, the movie tries to have it both ways - Jake is "doing recon" for the Mwahaha villain, but his oh, so tender heart cannot truly betray these beautiful, unspoiled people. Meanwhile he doesn't do anything for anyone but plays both sides - and why? So he can enjoy his Avatar body. This is not an admirable person.
The issue isn't that they had Jake take over the Avatar, which is justified well enough with the whole twin business - it's that they apparently did so without investing even five minutes worth of training about it for him - which is so nonsensical that it breaks suspension of disbelief.
Why would Eywa give a shit about a human in a human/ Na'vi hybrid body? It is never explained in the story why this living planet would suddenly be so interested in an alien when She has never embraced a Na'vi in the way she is shown sponsoring Jake. This lack of explanation again breaks suspension of disbelief - Eywa "chooses" Jake because the story says so and that's it. That's amateurish writing.
And Jake does indeed act differently than everyone else - because everyone else has been trained. There's nothing admirable about Jake hopping up and running off with his body - again, he does so only because he enjoys the feeling of a fully functional body. Now this is a sympathetic action - anyone could understand how a soldier who has lost his legs would revel in such an action. But to have him do it as if he were an undisciplined five year old removes the larger portion of sympathy for the character. He appears immature and irresponsible. This is, however, a turn on for a lot of the audience which enjoys an escapist wish fulfillment fantasy that they too could behave in a foolhardy way and be seen as cool. This is the appeal of characters such as Tom Cruise's Maverick in Top Gun. Which is fine for those who enjoy that. I find it tedious and sophomoric, especially when such a character is then hailed througout the story as heroic.
Ignoring a belief is not the same thing as not mastering a skill. He does master the Na'vi skill of choosing/ being chosen by a mount when he flies with his first superkewl dragon thingy. He then supercedes it and masters the Turok - which is absolutely the Mighty Whitey trope in action, as is the Chief's Daughter falling in love with him for no reason at all.
He's a great guy because he puts up with condescension? Wouldn't you put up with it in order to get control of a 9-foot tall super athletic body? His motivation is selfish. He puts up with the ridicule of Neytiti because he is doing recon for the Mwahaha villain who has promised him legs at the end of the mission - his motivation is again selfish and involves the plan of betrayal. He asks permission to speak at the funeral gathering? Even being a selfish, duplicitous prick doesn't mean you wouldn't be polite in front of a mourning population. I mean, for all his flaws, Jake is never shown to be rude.
But where are his noble, self-sacrificing actions?
I'd agree that a defining characteristic of Jake is his tendency to rush about in a foolhardy manner. But I don't see where any of his actions are heroic except in the Third Act where he, without any reasonable progression of character development, suddenly becomes able to master the Turok and join the Na'vi in battle.
No, my post did not complain that Jake was weak as in an ineffectual character - quite the opposite. While Jake's actions are clearly selfish, petty, immoral and weak-willed (in that he is easily recruited to spy on the Na'vi and then easily recruited by the Na'vi to turn on the humans), he is presented constantly throughout the film as if he were heroic. But the film is thematically confused and the story beats trumpeting his heroism are not backed up by the character's actual actions. And there are elements of the Mighty Whitey trope active as noted above, but, as I said before, thematic confusion, so those bits of the trope float about in the midst of a bunch of other tropes. Avatar's writing is the very definition of hackneyed - it throws around bits and pieces of numerous tropes like veggies in a mixed salad.
I get how seductive Avatar is because it is certainly a beautifully rendered movie. I even get how much fun it is for a lot of people and I've got nothing against escapist wish fulfillment stories. But they are generally not good writing - and neither is this. Avatar is beautiful and fun and exciting, but it is also stupid.
I think you are using some words without actually understanding their true meaning.
Anti-capitalism literally means pro-socialism or a philosophy that supports planned economy instead of a free market (market economy).
The movie is not anti-capitalist, it's anti-war and anti-imperialistic. Sully did not protect the Na'vi because he's a fan of Karl Marx, but because he believed that a war for natural resources is always wrong and it doesn't matter what the current political system is.
Totally agree!
Somewhat playing devil's advocate, since I, too, have several questions and misgivings about the substance of the film, I don't think this is as nonsensical as you make it out to be. If there were time constraints to when the ship had to leave to reach Pandora, they might not have had time to train Jake, only to identify him as a potential candidate. It was up to the folks on Pandora to train him, at that point, so you pretty much have to blame Grace for this one.
Again, perhaps it was an inherent curiosity, or recognition that the unique biology and psychology of the hybrid was something to be protected at least long enough to determine whether it was an infection or a positive addition to the planetary diversity. Who knows with a collective mind like Eywa? I wouldn't necessarily dismiss it offhand as unbelievable; we either ask/insist that aliens believe and behave in ways alien to us, and thus possibly incalculably, or we ask they act exactly as humans would and have for millennia, and then complain about it
.I thought the film was incredibly shy on good story development, and I take real issue with the voiceover, since it does too much to explain the story instead of simply providing background for the story itself to develop. "Unobtainium" was a senseless McGuffin, when it could've been used to better effect to explain to Sully (and thus to us) its real value and importance (not the least of which may be the explanation for the counter-intuitive physics of Pandora). but these other complaints? I don't think they really are as valid as one may try to make them out to be.
In the end, it's a great-looking film with a good enough story to make it re-watchable. If it's Dances With Wolves, who cares? When that movie came out, people thought it was great story, so retelling it in another venue doesn't automatically make it a bad story; after all, most stories in any medium are retellings of only a very few basic plots. Could it have been better? Sure! But it wasn't as bad as some seem to make it out to be.
I blame the screenwriter. No matter who internally is at "fault" it stretches believeability to the breaking point that they would thrust this guy into the situation with no training.
Again, perhaps it was an inherent curiosity, or recognition that the unique biology and psychology of the hybrid was something to be protected at least long enough to determine whether it was an infection or a positive addition to the planetary diversity. Who knows with a collective mind like Eywa? I wouldn't necessarily dismiss it offhand as unbelievable; we either ask/insist that aliens believe and behave in ways alien to us, and thus possibly incalculably, or we ask they act exactly as humans would and have for millennia, and then complain about it
I don't know how convincing a defense of story illogic it is to chalk it up to an alien intelligence acting alien. It's a story and therefore must have some level of internal consistency. If Eywa's interest in Jake has to do with investigating the Avatars, hand't Grace been there in an Avatar body, interacting with the Na'vi for 20 twenty years? Hadn't she set up a school and taught them and formed bonds with them? Why would Eywa be more interested in Jake than in Grace? It's plenty easy to write up believeable reasons - but these folks didn't bother. Eywa digs Jake but none of the other Avatars because... well, no reason, he's just an arbitrary protagonist.
Fair enough - I'm not really trying to convince anyone since the people who enjoy the movie are going to enjoy I regardless of whether I did or not. I'm merely describing why I was not able to be swept up in the narrative. It seemed a plain case of your basic childish writing in which the main character is great because the story says so, not because he was actually developed in a way that convinces the audience that he has grown, matured and found his own nobility.
Dances with Wolves comparisons are surface at best. Yes, both are stories about someone Going Native, but that's a relatively old story trope: A Man Called Horse, The Last Samurai, Lawrence of Arabia - just to name a few besides Dances With Wolves. Lawrence is a fantastic example of storytelling in this vein. The Last Samurai is crap. The trope is immaterial - it's all in how it's handled. Avatar did it with escapist wish fulfillment. Most of the audience sympathizes with Jake because he's as personality-less an Avatar for them as his Na'vi body is for him. Who wouldn't want a new body in a glowy, glowy rainforest world where you get to ride dragons to prove your manhood? The story is exactly as complex as that. Which just isn't compelling for me. When it comes to riding dragons, give me How to Train Your Dragon - a far superior story of real character evolution.
But you forget one explicit story point: Jake was the first warrior in an avatar; that alone was pretty much what saved his life with the leader of the tribe. So he wasn't just another average hybrid - he was more akin to The People, of whom we saw very few 'scientists,' if any (maybe the Tsahik could be considered one of the intellectual elite, but the others of whom we had any more than superficial knowledge were also warriors to one degree or another, even Neytiri).
With a network that pretty well covers the surface of Pandora, maybe Eywa could pick up his 'vibe' even before he 'plugged in' and, even if Eywa isn't sentient, acted to preserve him instinctively. Honestly, there wasn't enough in the story to really know how proactive or even aware Eywa was, but I don't think we saw anything that negated the possibility, so that's something, at least.
I don't see an inconsistency in this, at least. Now, floating rocks that start falling in the background when the vines are sundered - yeah, I have a problem with that 
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I had quite a few issues with the story, most of which have already cropped up in the thread but what really drew me out of the film wasnt the floating rocks or the unsubtle message of the film, but the fact they appeared to have lifted several animal sounds straight from Jurassic Park.
Did Cameron over-spend on making the smurfs just the right shade of blue that he had to re-use Velociraptor and T-Rex sound effects rather than get his own? Thanks to the Blue-Ray having bugger all special features, i'm genuinely curious as to why they used those particular effects rather than create new ones. I know it sounds extremely pedantic, but every time i heard them it bugged the heck out of me.
Did Cameron over-spend on making the smurfs just the right shade of blue that he had to re-use Velociraptor and T-Rex sound effects rather than get his own? Thanks to the Blue-Ray having bugger all special features, i'm genuinely curious as to why they used those particular effects rather than create new ones. I know it sounds extremely pedantic, but every time i heard them it bugged the heck out of me.
But you forget one explicit story point: Jake was the first warrior in an avatar; that alone was pretty much what saved his life with the leader of the tribe. So he wasn't just another average hybrid - he was more akin to The People, of whom we saw very few 'scientists,' if any (maybe the Tsahik could be considered one of the intellectual elite, but the others of whom we had any more than superficial knowledge were also warriors to one degree or another, even Neytiri).
With a network that pretty well covers the surface of Pandora, maybe Eywa could pick up his 'vibe' even before he 'plugged in' and, even if Eywa isn't sentient, acted to preserve him instinctively. Honestly, there wasn't enough in the story to really know how proactive or even aware Eywa was, but I don't think we saw anything that negated the possibility, so that's something, at least.
That's a lot of ifs and maybes for me, and I'm not really willing to give the story the benefit of the doubt when it repeatedly held Jake up as special and heroic without demonstrating any character traits that justified him being treated that way by the other characters, including Eywa. And even if you go with that rationale, it still begs the question of why they recruited Jake in the first place. This is a scientist gig, why are they putting a grunt soldier in and doing so with no training and no job other than to act as bodyguard - on a planet where they've been studying for a generation without needing an Avatar bodyguard? To say the Na'vi and Eywa's interest hinges on his warrior status just puts focus on the highly contrived and fairly illogical way in which Jake is brought into the Avatar program to begin with (which is about where the movie lost me, with subsequent points such as his irresponsible behavior merely serving to make me find him an increasingly ridiculous character). As for how sentient and aware Eywa was - She was just as sentient and aware as the story needed Her to be when it needed Her to be without bothering with any consistent world building. To me it's all just bad writing.
Don't forget that to anyone with half a brain, having an untrained Avatar interacting with the natives is probably far, far more counterproductive than having one less Avatar, especially considering that the wildly hostile nature of the planet undoubtedly means they continuously lose a few Avatars during the normal course of operations.
And as a nitpick, shouldn't they be called "waldos" instead of "avatars"?
And as a nitpick, shouldn't they be called "waldos" instead of "avatars"?
Why did you think that 2012 was trash? I happened to really enjoy the movie..but it did scare the living crap out of me when I watched it and I had to turn it off during the middle of the film and watch something else. Can you give specific examples as to why this movie was trash? I'm just curious.
I haven't seen "Avatar" yet. My Aunt says i should watch it and doesn't get why I haven't seen it yet. She can barely sit for two hours just to watch TV, let alone a movie so I don't understand what the big fuss is about that! I don't know..I may netflix it and give it a try.
Three reasons I can think of:
- Sloppy science
- The whole 2012 thing is bullshit anyway (no end of the world; Mayans never even predicted one)
- Roland Fucking Emmerich
The movie doesn't bother me nearly as much as that over aggressive pop up ad for the movie.
You know, it's funny, but the more we debate this, the more I feel that Jake isn't the contrived character that you think he is - I still think a lot of the story is contrived, but not necessarily Jake himself, at least not to the same extent that you seem to.
We're clear that the avatars are a scientific, sociological tool - not necessarily a logical one, but okay, I can give them that having a physiology that can blend in harmoniously with the natives, rather than a 'tiny' human body that must constantly be insulated from the environment, could be a very big advantage in understanding not only the Na'vi, but Pandora itself. The illogic comes from the idea that a for-profit company whose primary effort is to mine the planet/moon would even bother with this, unless there were some hugedacious PR benefits to come out of it, and I just don't see that they would.
I don't see why there is any question about why they 'recruited' Jake - they wanted some sort of return on their investment in the avatar, and someone may have been smart enough to realize that having a soldier in there could be useful, especially since it was made clear from the start that Pandora was a hostile environment, and their efforts there were engendering hostility from the natives (tires full of arrows, anyone? The Na'vi were already resisting). Maybe the avatar-based research program wouldn't be a very sound investment for PR purposes, but if news got back that they were shooting down the natives with choppers and powersuits, that would surely cause some protests back home, so since they already had a body in progress, why not see if they could get some security a little closer to the action that wouldn't totally screw them politically? I can buy that, and it doesn't need to be specifically stated just to make sense. I don't think the unique nature of this one avatar makes the Na'vi or Eywa's interest seem contrived - if anything, it gives it more of a basis for plausibility. We just didn't realize he was unique when the jellyfish seeds descended upon him - but apparently, the world-mind did. Even though she wanted to kill him at first, even Neytiri admitted that he was different from the other sky-people and avatars - she'd never have expected Grace to tackle the creatures of the night, and warriors often look down on 'helpless' intellectuals the same way intellectuals look down upon soldiers. She could see that Jake, despite being an outworlder, had something in common with her people - he was a fighter. A childish moron of a fighter, but at least he wasn't a childish moron of an intellectual
. No matter how much the Omaticaya might like Grace and the others, they were still not warriors like The People.I honestly never saw Jake 'held up' as heroic, either by the story or by the other characters. Of his own people, the only respect he earned was for sticking with life even after he lost his legs. Among the Na'vi, he was as much a burden as anything, until he finally learned how their customs worked and how to carry his own weight - hardly a "heroic" depiction. He was just barely accepted, certainly not admired, and the only way he ever managed to finally impress them was to saddle Toruk, using, as others have noted, a decidedly non-Na'vi approach, one they didn't know about. He cheated, but it was in the cheating that he finally did become worthy of respect: he did it because his eyes had been opened, he was looking beyond his own needs, and he knew that the only way to help them was to get them to help him, by becoming one of their legends reborn. Sure, he tricked them, but he tricked them for very good reasons, and whether they found out or not, he accomplished what he had to do: help the Na'vi save themselves. Some call that "Mighty Whitey," but to me, that says something about bringing an outside perspective to a problem. Jake didn't save the planet - he saved himself by becoming part of something bigger, by providing a focus that allowed the planet and its people to accomplish what they might otherwise not have attempted, because it wasn't part of their nature to do so. He wasn't the lever - he was the fulcrum.
Sweet Zombie Jesus, I couldn't sit through 2012!
Aside from the horrible writing & acting (especially with the Russian characters), all those hair-breadth escapes just had me shouting,"NO! Uh-uh! Callin' major bullshit on that!"
I suddenly had a new appreciation of Michael Bay's fine work.
Thing that pissed me off most about Emmerich was when he was actually gloating about how he intentionally wrecked all these religious landmarks in the film. In one scene an entire cathedral full of worshippers is killed! What kind of sick fuck takes pleasure from that? 
And he was too much of a CHICKENSHIT to destroy Mecca in the film, because he was - big surprise - afraid of the Muslims throwing down a fatwa on his ass. linky
And he was too much of a CHICKENSHIT to destroy Mecca in the film, because he was - big surprise - afraid of the Muslims throwing down a fatwa on his ass. linky
The word narcissism implies a pathological condition. Given Jake's situation there is nothing pathological about it. It's a pejorative charge conveniently absent real content. In any event, since Jake chooses the Na'vi side, the assertion he plays both sides falsifies a major part of the plot. The whole rigmarole about a separate, semiportable lab is to let Jake and the scientists continue to use the avatars despite picking a side. That was some awkward and contrived plotting! Playing the corporate role lets him use his avatar. Your conclusion that playing both sides somehow lets him continue to enjoy his avatar is bullshit.
I could understand Avatar causing insuperable problems with willing suspension of disbelief. But that's the fictional science, which is not the source of the animus against the movie. The lack of training really doesn't seem to be a deal breaker by comparison to the whole mixing DNA thing, because not only did the time frame make training unlikely, it's not at all clear what skills or behaviors such training would impart.
Eywa may not be a human intelligence but the idea that an intelligence of any sort would not be interested in aliens (from her/its perspective) is astonishing. I don't think the idea that no Na'vi has ever been embraced like Jake is supported by the movie. And the movie explains why Jake is chosen, because he has a good heart. "Heart," especially in scenes conscious of language barriers, has a certain ambiguity.
The character is not hailed throughout the story as heroic by other characters, nor is he presented so by the movie. Saying so doesn't make it so, and it takes inept viewing to imagine it. For instance, despite the others' alarm when Jake first wakens, he doesn't actually cause serious problems.
Jake's acquisition of his first mount is played for comic effect, which makes a complaint about him mastering Na'vi skill suspect. This makes his determination to tackle the turok, in order to regain credibility with the Na'vi remember, desperate and heroic. Losing credibility in the first place isn't mighty. The announcement that five other Na'vi have mastered the turok alone also means he isn't better than the Na'vi, which really is an indispensable part of the Whitey Mighty trope. This is the only evidence for that nonsense.
Neytiri falls in love with Jake over the course of time, not instantly. Mighty Whitey gets the girls as a matter of course. In the end, the fact that Jake doesn't save the Na'vi kicks that silly idea of Mighty Whitey in the head. It's a silly idea, always was, and the only reason I can figure for carrying on about it is to minimize the real objection to the white guilt.
You can't just make stuff up. Jake doesn't have to be cheerful with people treating him like crap to get control of the avatar. His motivation for being nice to people who aren't nice to him is he wants to be nice. He knows Neytiri was ordered to train him, and he has that leverage. So he doesn't have to be so patient even with her. As for the funeral oration, I probably should have been more specific: Jake not only asked but needed to ask. And the movie clearly meant that it was strictly by sufferance Jake was allowed to speak. This too shows up the Mighty Whitey horseshit, since the lesser breeds want guidance from Mighty Whitey.
Sacrificing his medical treatment. Daring the turok when he barely managed the first one. Ignoring main points of the plot is bad criticism.
What frigging epiphany in his "character progression" is possibly relevant? Every scene when Jake leaps into seemingly foolhardy action was shown to be a success, ungainly and hardwon, but still a success. There isn't the slightest implausibility in his succeeding again. His character progression is falling in love with Neytiri and choosing the Na'vi, despite the sacrifice.
Yes, you are complaining Jake was an ineffectual character. "Weak-willed" is pretty much a synonym for ineffectual. However, the movie does not thrust Jake's unsupported heroism on us in the way your lunatic insistence on "Mighty Whitey" requires. In fact, you ignore the ways in which the movie supports Jake as genuinely heroic. Obviously if you hate Jake, you'll dislike the movie. The reasons you've given for your outrage at Jake Sully are unbelievable.
The parts that really are kind of stupid are not the parts you criticize.
Turning the Navi from the native americans into the arabs.
And it would probably would be easy for the news media to depict the Navi as the ones in the wrong, after all Col. Quaritch was trying to save "a dying world," and billions of people, the Navi were trying to a save an oversized tree where several hundred people slept in hammocks.
If tearing down my apartment building was going to save billions of lives and I killed the police who came to evict me, do you think the news media would paint me the hero?
