Avatar is stupid
- Thread starter Deimos Anomaly
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^^ gturner, I think you're confusing "heroism" with "sacrifice." Regardless of what form he did it in, Jake tried to do something to save The People, to think about someone's needs other than his own, and to do the right thing, not the expedient one. We don't automatically question Superman's heroism just because he's invulnerable - his actions are what define it.
No, Jake did the expedient thing. To stay in his sweetie's good graces, he interfaced to the brain of the entire planet and fed it his knowledge about all the spanking cool human weapons, wars, warfighting tactics, technology, and logistics. He irreversibly contaminated not just a tribe or a species, but an entire global intelligence and ecosystem for his own benefit. Even 'The Company' wasn't that short-sighted, crass, evil, and self-centered.
ProtoAvatar
Fleet Captain
Avatar's story is simplistic, with one-dimensional characters; it's a FAIRY-TALE.
The characters are good/evil/heroic because that's the place they occupy within the story.
A case can be made that prince-charming is a narcissist (doing everything for the kingdom and the girl) who gets off on killing sentient beings (ogres, for example). But he's the good guy because that's his position in the story;
Sleeping-beauty always falls in love with prince charming in a second - because that's her position in the story;
The bad guy is always unabiguously, one-dimensionally bad; etc.
These kind of movies proved very successful:
Star Wars, for example, was a fairy tale with the latest in special effects - and made G Lucas rich beyond his wildest dreams.
Now, Cameron copied this recepy with fidelity - fairy tale + special effects - and ended up with a money-printing machine.
The characters are good/evil/heroic because that's the place they occupy within the story.
A case can be made that prince-charming is a narcissist (doing everything for the kingdom and the girl) who gets off on killing sentient beings (ogres, for example). But he's the good guy because that's his position in the story;
Sleeping-beauty always falls in love with prince charming in a second - because that's her position in the story;
The bad guy is always unabiguously, one-dimensionally bad; etc.
These kind of movies proved very successful:
Star Wars, for example, was a fairy tale with the latest in special effects - and made G Lucas rich beyond his wildest dreams.
Now, Cameron copied this recepy with fidelity - fairy tale + special effects - and ended up with a money-printing machine.
This. Avatar was decent enough, but it didn't amaze me largely because it lacks nuance and complexity. It's straightforward, paint-by-number and safe.
Right. Cameron wanted to use a simple, age-old story to make the film evocative of the pulp planetary romances from his childhood.
Again, fair enough. I didn't like Jake at all - as I've said repeatedly I found him a lackluster protagonist not worthy of being the center of the story.
I honestly don't remember who exactly funded the Avatar program and I think its relationship to the rest of the operation is ambiguous at best. This is one of the reasons the story struck me as unconvincing - though not nearly as big a reason as placing someone untrained in one of those bodies.
My big objection to this is why make that story choice as a writer? It would have been just as easy to either have Jake be a member of the project team from early on, or to mention some training, or some reason why they felt they needed a soldier at this point. Alternatively, if you wanted to keep the benefits of the ignorant protagonist (that is, so that characters could explain the world in story to him and thus to the audience - something I find lazy but it can be okay if handled right) the issue of Eywa choosing him as special among the Avatars would have been so much more convincing if it had hinged on his innocence - the very fact that he didn't have training so he wasn't coming to the Na'vi experience with a bunch of preconceived notions. In this way, Jake's character construction would have been integrated in a convincing way - as it was he feels to me like a pastiche of tropes. Solider (for badassery), wounded (for sympathy), Chosen One (to justify him as protagonist), ignorant (to function in the story as a focal point for explanations) - yet none of these things were woven together to make an integrated, convincing whole.
The choices they make are mismatched and don't bother to answer the questions that naturally arise from their choices. Add solider - why, we don't know. Don't train soldier - why, we don't know. Soldier does stupid stuff but is still chosen by the planet in order to justify decision to make solider your pointman in negotiations - why soldier does stupid stuff (any soldier, I would assume, knows better than to run around recklessly with expensive equipment), and why planet chooses soldier - we don't know, except inasmuch as it serves to place said soldier as the protagonist of the story.
Your rationalization is fine, but given that I didn't find the story compelling, I have no interest in figuring out why it has the gaps in logic that it has. I was not able to suspend disbelief and no amount of imaginative filling in the backstory on the internet is going to make Jake any more a compelling protagonist for me.
Someone said above that Avatar is a fairy tale and that's why the stock characters behave like stock characters. I agree with this. And for those who it worked for, I'm glad you got such a fun movie-going experience. But I didn't care about Jake. I even actively disliked him. I sat through the whole movie wondering why the character who actually seemed compelling and admirable - Neytiri - was a side character, especially when the story was about the Na'vi's struggle against invaders. I still don't understand why anyone would write the story with Jake at the center - he was not a compelling character.
No, it doesn't. Narcissism means self-love and vanity. Nacissistic Personality Disorder (only recently acknowledged as a psychological condition by the American Psychiatric Association) is the pathological condition in which such self-love becomes dangerously excessive.
As usual discussing anything with you devolves quickly into wading through hyperbolisitc strawmen which is tiresome. You liked the movie - I didn't. I hope you enjoy your DVD for the next ten years. I'll be watching something else.
Neytiri's blue boobs really weren't large enough for a lead role.
So far I posit that:
1) We wouldn't have to mine a planet with a poison atmosphere when any ore it contained should also be present throughout much of its solar system.
2) We would never send just a handful of scientists to study a planet full of alien life, especially one with intelligent alien life.
3) We would never try to win the trust of the natives by showing them how we could inhabit their bodies.
4) We would never put an untrained person in contact with the natives, much less as a crucial contact.
5) The hero shouldn't casually sell out the scientists, then sell out the military, then sell out the culture purity of the natives by downloading all the evils in his brain to them, finally forcing Ewya to take sides.
6) A spacefaring military should be able to launch an air strike that at least would meet WW-II tactical standards.
And on a side note, in the script, Sully kills Neytiri's brother because his hair/penis gets severed, and Neytiri gets pregnant with Sully's baby.
a) Wouldn't a spacefaring society that can grow genetically modified Na'vi clones and regrow human legs be able to do something about severed penis/hair, other that ritual execution?
b) Will the baby be born without a functioning brain, ready for a human baby to use it as an Avatar?
I agree
And if he loses his avatar, he just gets to enjoy being a paraplegic. That really is overlooking something crucial. All criticisms of Avatar for weak or cliche story have failed miserably. Like this one, they all involve ignoring huge parts of the movie or just plain making stuff up.
Speaking of making stuff up, Jake does not get to keep his avatar by playing both sides. He gets to keep his avatar by, first, Trudy airlifting the portable lab, and second, the intercession of Eywa. Otherwise, choosing to help the Na'vi would have lost him his avatar. Given that means going back to being a full time paraplegic, his choice is motivated by more than vanity and self love. Trying to turn his choice into vanity and self love is a perversion of logic. It is either stupid or dishonest, not an enviable position to be in.
Jake doesn't begin as so selfless a person, of course. But the insistence that Jake start as noble and finish, what, even nobler? That really would be inferior storytelling. The implications of Avatar for the contemporary world can always be evaded by just saying its just scifi, or the old standby, just a movie. But those implications are part of the movie. Jake's journey is part of the audience's journey to a new perspective, which makes him a suitable viewpoint character. Jake is not a compelling character like Quarritch or Neytiri because he has to also be Everyman, albeit an Everyman who becomes heroic, to be the audience viewpoint character. Not liking the destination and refusing to go along does not change that at all. You could criticize the movie for offering us cheap self vindication as heroic people like Jake, Trudy, Grace and company. That is not the criticism being made and never has been. Draw the conclusion, folks.
And, as ever, ignoring the the fact that Jake doesn't succeed in saving himself, much less the Na'vi, minimizes the overall plotline leading to Na'vi victory. The Na'vi victory is a huge emotional high point in the film. Neytiri has to be someone Jake (and we) could love, and be a personal stake in the action, but she has nothing to do with the victory. Part of the objection to Jake is that he isn't the Mighty Whitey who wins the day. Given the Na'vi path to victory is a major part of the movie, Jake isn't quite as central as claimed, but Grace is not just someone to ignore.
Last and least, narcissism in everyday language does imply pathological, just as I said. Implying I defined narcissism is itself an example of a strawman. And dragging in the APA is pretty hyperbolic.
You could argue that the turok did choose Jake as it tries to kill him later on when him and Blue Chick are flying their dragon-raptor things. So he did follow that "belief", he just did so after he had already ear-probed a flying dragon-raptor thing.
He gets two enjoy being in a wheelchair for what, a year before the company would grow him new legs? He only had Avatar legs for the very brief span of the story. When I get killed in Halo I have to go back to being a non-enhanced non-Spartan. Is that an excuse for treason?
In the script (which is online), he kills Quarritch rather than let him go through life without his hair/penis. Was that equally heroic?
I seem to recall the Turok that attacks them as having the same "firery livery" that the Turok Jake latter ear-fucks has. It's also make a bit of narrative sense for it to be the same one. Just specualtion, however, on my part that when it attacked Jake and Uhura'vi that it was "selecting" Jake to get an ear-probing.
Well, I'm not going to freeze-frame the BD to see if the patterns match, but I'll have to say that, of all the things in this thread that are claimed to stretch plausibility and storytelling construction, that the attack of the turok is actually a 'mating ritual' would have to be one of the farthest stretches I've seen 
. Nope, not gonna buy that one.
. Nope, not gonna buy that one.
Just saying, that we're told that the animal tries to pick its "rider" by trying to kill him. The turok tries to kill Jake. The next step isn't too much more a leap.
It's a huge leap! You've got vastly different circumstances - not to mention different species - you can't assume the turok and the ikran behave the same way just because they fly; bats and birds don't - hell, different species of birds don't even behave the same way! You can't assume that every killing attack is a mating dance 
.
No, sorry - there is absolutely no logic in that argument.
.No, sorry - there is absolutely no logic in that argument.
You misunderstand. In the script Quarritch survived the battle at the end, but had his hair/penis severed. So he asks Sully to kill him because he can never again use his hair/penis. Sully, instead of acting like a concerned person working a suicide hotline, takes a knife out and kills Quarritch. Go Sully!
