James Cameron's "Avatar" (grading and discussion)

[Brit]

Well isn't that pretty much Avatar's story? Sully is presented as a moron who wouldn't even be there except that his brighter brother had been killed.

Considering the fact that Jake and Tom Sully were identical twins (Jake couldn't have operated Tom's avatar otherwise), it's highly unlikely that Jake was a moron if Tom wasn't. What is likely is that Tom had more education. Then one wonders why Tom was educated and not Jake.

Could it be that education was rationed on Earth, if it was as overpopulated as we are led to believe, could it be that only one child was allowed an education, only the oldest child.

Just maybe Jake's problem was that he was born five minutes too late.

Brit

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Or Jake simply was interested in other things. He may have been in rebellion against other folks' expectations. Yeah, the odds are that his native intelligence was similar to his brother's.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

But that doesn't mean more people went to see Avatar than any other film. And that's important, too. And it's not purely an "academic" argument, either. It's fact.

Yes, it is a fact, and it also is the one meaningful measurement by which other films can be said to be more successful than Avatar - it's absolute..

To show you the absurdity of your argument, I'm going to say this: Not too long ago, in some parts of the world, you'd be regarded as a black person if there was any traces of black ancestry in you family tree, despite the fact you'd look as white as can be. Common sense, though, would have made you a white person.

There's nothing absurd about my assertions at all. What you just posted, however, is bizarrely irrelevant to...almost anything, and certainly to this discussion.

Aiding him should be a girl who turns her back on us, such as Ensign Ro Laren.

So Barkley goes native and he and Ro blow up the Enterprise and kill most of the crew, taking the rest prisoner and shipping them to Romulus. The audience cheers and the movie makes more than any four Star Trek movies combined.

Here's the real gist of your complaint, plainly revealed: you identify with the villains in this movie.

Well and good, just stop pretending that your critique is more substantive than that or has anything to do with red herrings like "Sully's intelligence" or the like.

The movie was number one for a seventh weekend as of yesterday, setting more records. By Wednesday it will probably become the highest grossing domestic release of all time.

 

[Kegg]

Trekker4747 - Not quite.

As the film istelf says, 'The strong prey upon the weak, and nobody does a thing.' The only reason the Na'vi win is because they have help - help from Jake, the marine girl, but most importantly, help from Eywa itself. Had that not happened they would have been stomped all over by the humans, because our guns are bigger and our weapons are tougher and we do have the technological edge.

As for Ferngully? The belief that a minor children's animated movie exhausted the movie going public's familiarity with the story is crazy.

It's the internet. I've noted there's a disproportionate knowledge, importance and/or respect given towards animated features online, for whatever reason.

But really I had forgotten (repressed?) memory of Ferngully until hearing about it online, so I doubt it makes much impact on anything. I think it gets particular traction simply because it was very bad; a sort of excess of bludgeoning, unsubtle 1990s environmentalism.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

As for Ferngully? The belief that a minor children's animated movie exhausted the movie going public's familiarity with the story is crazy.

It's the internet. I've noted there's a disproportionate knowledge, importance and/or respect given towards animated features online, for whatever reason.

And also, because of the average age, a disproportionate importance attached to 80s/early 90s popular culture.

 

[Ensign_Redshirt]

Gturner lost me at the Sully/Barclay comparison.

First of all, Barclay is not a moron, he's just socially inept. He's quite intelligent, but also suffering from Asperger syndrome or something like that.

Sully isn't a moron either. He's just not what you would call a bookworm. In the beginning, the scientists treat him like they do because Sully is military and Dr. Augustine & Co. don't seem to be very fond of the military.

In any case, Gturner managed to compare a war veteran with an engineer with Asperger. Well, Sully and Barcly have indeed something in common: Both are suffering from disabilites. Sully has a physical one (he's paralyzed), and Barclay a social/emotional one. But this also means that Sully and LaForge have more in common than Sully and Barclay.

 

[galleywest]

It's really tiresome to see people repeating the exact same "criticisms" of the movie referencing the exact same previous movies.

I mean, really, if you're going to post something that's going to be read by other people can't you at least try to be original?

Everything on forums like this now is just imitation - posters just recycle and recycle the same complaints over and over. It's impossible to tell if most have ever seen a movie, since instead of saying anything new they just say what's been said before and often in the exact same words.

It's one thing to reuse complaints, it's another to feel like you're reading the exact same post.

It's really tiresome to see directors repeating the exact same "plots" referencing the exact same stories in previous movies.

I mean, really, if they're going to produce something that's going to be watched by other people can't they at least try to be original?

Everything in theaters now is just imitation - directors just recycle and recycle the same plots over and over. It's impossible to tell if most have ever written a story, instead of writing anything new they just produce what's been produced before and often with the exact same plot.

It's one thing to reuse plots, it's another to feel like you're watching the exact same movie.

I'm sorry, but this is really funny. Thumbs up.

 

[T'Baio]

Yet someone else who just didn't get it.

 

[stj]

I love it how everybody's assuming "Dances with Wolves" was some kind of original masterpiece. Similar movies that came before it:

The Searchers
Little Big Man
A Man Called Horse
Jeremiah Johnson

There is no perceptible way The Searchers resembles Avatar. Little Big Man shares an anti-invader perspective but is an extremely different kind of movie in every other kind of way. Jeremiah Johnson I don't recall clearly but didn't the lead to the opposite, namely, triumph over the Indians? A Man Called Horse has a white guy going native one better and then going back, which again is the opposite of Avatar.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Yet someone else who just didn't get it.

I think that's saying something about the perspective in question itself...

 

[gturner]

Well isn't that pretty much Avatar's story? Sully is presented as a moron who wouldn't even be there except that his brighter brother had been killed.

Considering the fact that Jake and Tom Sully were identical twins (Jake couldn't have operated Tom's avatar otherwise), it's highly unlikely that Jake was a moron if Tom wasn't. What is likely is that Tom had more education. Then one wonders why Tom was educated and not Jake.

Could it be that education was rationed on Earth, if it was as overpopulated as we are led to believe, could it be that only one child was allowed an education, only the oldest child.

Just maybe Jake's problem was that he was born five minutes too late.

Brit

No. It's pretty obvious that Jake was dropped on his head as a baby, suffering permanent brain damage and subsequent learning disabilities.

One of the problems with the movie is the lack of background development for the characters. We never learn anything significant about their past or get a feel about who they were back on Earth. Essentially, they're all Jar Jar Binks without the accent. They just show up and play there role in the script without much explanation.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

One of the problems with the movie is the lack of background development for the characters. We never learn anything significant about their past or get a feel about who they were back on Earth.

That's not a problem at all. Building character through backstory is one of the lamer, time-wasting ways to do it in a movie. The behavior of most of these people is enough to define them very well as people, which is as it should be - we spend our lives dealing mainly with people about whom we know little other than how they present themselves and interact with us and others in their current roles (and if you think otherwise you're simply unobservant).

Someone may have been dropped on their head, but it wouldn't be Jake Sully.

 

[gturner]

One of the problems with the movie is the lack of background development for the characters. We never learn anything significant about their past or get a feel about who they were back on Earth.

That's not a problem at all. Building character through backstory is one of the lamer, time-wasting ways to do it in a movie. The behavior of most of these people is enough to define them very well as people, which is as it should be - we spend our lives dealing mainly with people about whom we know little other than how they present themselves and interact with us and others in their current roles (and if you think otherwise you're simply unobservant).

Someone may have been dropped on their head, but it wouldn't be Jake Sully.

But building a character through backstory is certainly required if you don't build them during the present, which wasn't done in Avatar.

What was the colonel's motivation, a life-sucking space-alien wrapped around his spine? Did he just live to kill innocent women and children or something? Movies give more depth to Nazis than he got.

What was Grace's motivation? She's supposedly a botanist, so what the heck is she doing trying to interact with the natives? She supposedly invented the Avatar program, so why was her specialty studying plants? It makes no sense. If she was opposed to what the corporation was doing, pushing Na'vi off their land, why was she working for the corporation? The first hint we get that she's upset is when she founds out they'd set her up with a lame excuse for an infiltrator - Sully.

What was the company's motivation? Profit? But if they wanted profit they'd have spent time examining whether it was simply coincidence that the home tree was atop the largest deposit of unobtanium. Even a half-wit would wonder if the trees are acting as biological concentrators, as often happens with Earth plants (many plants are used to clean toxins from the soil or concentrate rare elements).

As for Sully's motivation, did he have any? As Lloyd George said about Lord Derby, he's "like a cushion who always bore the impress of the last man who sat on him." When the colonel was the last man who sat on him, Sully did the colonel's bidding. When Grace was the last to sit on him, he did Grace's bidding. When Neytiri was the last to sit, he did the Na'vi's bidding. Instead of being CGI, Sully was a character made of Play-Do.

 

[trevanian]

Yeah, the Indians won The Battle of Little Bighorn but in the grand scheme of things lost the overall war. And look at the Indians now, there's hardly any! We utter defeated them. We (the white people) marched onto their land, kicked their asses, and have raped their land. Go us. Sorry, we're in the "wrong" in this situation. Now, at the same time what happened here was just a simple case of us being better equiped. What happened was evolution at play. The stronger beating the weaker.

But Avatar's situation is completely different. The Natives and Colonists were both part of the same planet, what happened was one members of the planet being better able to conquer than the others. That all changes when you cross interstellar distances and start kicking around natives. We had no right to Pandora in any evolutionary sense.
.

So for you, evolution (or perhaps manifest destiny would be better word use) ends at the boundary of a star system, or a planet's gravity well? God, that might be more offensive than bailey's 'count-how-much-it-made to justify the flick' blather.

You're trying to legitimize North American action by US at the same time you're defending what passes for some as turncoat action in a movie.

That kind of thinking -- I'm being generous even using that word -- comes out of thinking that sounds inspired by TREK, like the prime directive has any tangible realworld application, and that is pretty pathetic.

If you're going to say the stronger force deserves to win because it is stronger, that is a political statement. To invoke it positively to favor your own country and then repeal it because a situation takes place outside YOUR borders of thinking ... that's not complex thinking, that's just 2d hypocrisy.

 

[T'Baio]

gturner, Grace was an exobiologist, not a botanist.

Quaritch's motivation for being an asshat was that he was a hardened soldier who had beaten every environment he had ever been in. He came to Pandora, and on his first day, it beat him. It made him angry. It broke the bedrock of his confidence. He was pissed, and he was gonna' make sure the planet got some back.

His character is the one that's often spoken of being the most one dimensional...I loved him. I thought the character was great. I also think there's more depth there than people realize.

 

[Kegg]

What was the colonel's motivation, a life-sucking space-alien wrapped around his spine? Did he just live to kill innocent women and children or something?

Why not?

What the hell was Darth Vader's motivation in Star Wars? He killed all the Jedi and turned to evil. He wanted power. He tortured people, slaughtered his own mentor, and was obsessed about destroying the rebel base.

Right, the subsequent films gave him a tortured backstory, but in just that movie, he's a bad guy because, well, he's a bad guy. For that movie to work we needed to know nothing else.

Quaritch, same difference. We actually learn a lot about him in his early scenes; he's a gung-ho marine for which Pandora is the ultimate bit of bush, complete with killer natives. He wants to get the job done and if the job includes application of lethal force, (which it must when it becomes clear the Na'vi will not move) well, he sure as hell will bring that stuff to bear. What makes a man choose to kill people for a living? Who knows, but he likes his job. Sensible work ethic, I guess, and by far the most easy to understand character in the movie.

What was Grace's motivation? She's supposedly a botanist, so what the heck is she doing trying to interact with the natives? She supposedly invented the Avatar program, so why was her specialty studying plants? It makes no sense.

The science, probably, I don't know, but her motivation is sound enough if we just accept she's 'a scientist' as vaguely defined (was she called a botanist? She literally wrote the book on the Na'vi, I thought she was an anthropologist.)

As an anthro... botanist... whatever, she wants to do science, and as a human being with a conscience, she wants the Na'vi to be treated fairly and get good stuff. I can roll with that. Whatever her 'science' roll entails she seems to be the only person on hand to do the anthropological and non-lethal force interaction with the Na'vi also, so she picks up that mantle for whatever reason... right I'm getting a little weak here, but eh.

Quaritch makes perfect sense though.

What was the company's motivation? Profit? But if they wanted profit they'd have spent time examining whether it was simply coincidence that the home tree was atop the largest deposit of unobtanium.

Would they? Maybe they'd just send stuff in and grab the unobtanium. Look, if you know where it is and can locate it with your science, why not just focus all your efforts towards taking it? And if your science finds a way to make more of it, then listen to your science.

As for Sully's motivation, did he have any?

It evolved. Hero's journey; white guy whose scales drop from his eyes so he can support natives and bang one too. Changing motives aren't the same thing as an absence of motives.

 

[Brit]

One of the problems with the movie is the lack of background development for the characters. We never learn anything significant about their past or get a feel about who they were back on Earth.

That's not a problem at all. Building character through backstory is one of the lamer, time-wasting ways to do it in a movie. The behavior of most of these people is enough to define them very well as people, which is as it should be - we spend our lives dealing mainly with people about whom we know little other than how they present themselves and interact with us and others in their current roles (and if you think otherwise you're simply unobservant).

Someone may have been dropped on their head, but it wouldn't be Jake Sully.

But building a character through backstory is certainly required if you don't build them during the present, which wasn't done in Avatar.

What was the colonel's motivation, a life-sucking space-alien wrapped around his spine? Did he just live to kill innocent women and children or something? Movies give more depth to Nazis than he got.

What was Grace's motivation? She's supposedly a botanist, so what the heck is she doing trying to interact with the natives? She supposedly invented the Avatar program, so why was her specialty studying plants? It makes no sense. If she was opposed to what the corporation was doing, pushing Na'vi off their land, why was she working for the corporation? The first hint we get that she's upset is when she founds out they'd set her up with a lame excuse for an infiltrator - Sully.

What was the company's motivation? Profit? But if they wanted profit they'd have spent time examining whether it was simply coincidence that the home tree was atop the largest deposit of unobtanium. Even a half-wit would wonder if the trees are acting as biological concentrators, as often happens with Earth plants (many plants are used to clean toxins from the soil or concentrate rare elements).

As for Sully's motivation, did he have any? As Lloyd George said about Lord Derby, he's "like a cushion who always bore the impress of the last man who sat on him." When the colonel was the last man who sat on him, Sully did the colonel's bidding. When Grace was the last to sit on him, he did Grace's bidding. When Neytiri was the last to sit, he did the Na'vi's bidding. Instead of being CGI, Sully was a character made of Play-Do.

There is back story, quite a lot of it too. It's published in a book called Avatar: A Confidential Report on the Biological and Social History of Pandora

http://www.amazon.com/Avatar-Confid...=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265067303&sr=1-3

So there is a lot of back story.

In writing there is a kind of unspoken rule, the reader (or in this case the viewer) doesn't get to know everything the writer knows. In fact the general rule of thumb is that if the fact doesn't advance the story, the reader doesn't need to know the fact at all.

And in case you don't want to purchase a book, there are now a couple of Avatar Wikis that are full of back story.

Brit

 

[Trekker4747]

That kind of thinking -- I'm being generous even using that word -- comes out of thinking that sounds inspired by TREK, like the prime directive has any tangible realworld application, and that is pretty pathetic.

If you're going to say the stronger force deserves to win because it is stronger, that is a political statement. To invoke it positively to favor your own country and then repeal it because a situation takes place outside YOUR borders of thinking ... that's not complex thinking, that's just 2d hypocrisy.

Yeah, I'm not thinking because I actualy got the message from 40-years of Trek.

From an evolutionary stance we're restricted to this planet. Evolution has no sense of technology effecting or changing its course. Hell, the vast distances between star systems, the narrow likelyhood of stumbling upon a planet with life in it, and the sheer difficulty involved in simply getting there in anything less than an epoch all suggests that evolution -on a universal scale- out-right prohibits the lifeforms on other planets from interfering with one another.

The Indians lost this land -as wrong as the whites were- because they were ill-prepared to protect it from others on the same planet.

In Pandora, humans pushed the very limits of physics, traveled 100-trillion miles and marched around on a completely foreign planet and an entirely foreign ecosystem and had to use equipment to simply breathe and acted like they owned the place. Sorry, that's not the same thing as whites conquering the Indians.

The humans in Avatar couldn't be more in the wrong to simply stomp around on an alien world like it was their own.

 

[gturner]

What was the colonel's motivation, a life-sucking space-alien wrapped around his spine? Did he just live to kill innocent women and children or something?

Why not?

What the hell was Darth Vader's motivation in Star Wars?

One problem is that unlike a far-out science fiction character like Vader, the villain in Avatar is a regular Marine. Even in Iraq they spend more time building schools and hospitals and winning over the locals than they did killing people. Among their core knowledge (for well over a century and a half) is that the most effective way to cope with insurgents or rebellion is to protect the local populace from pressure by the rebel forces, keeping the local populace happy, and getting them to turn on the insurgents. The disconnect between the reality of Marines and the way they appear in the movie causes many people to go "WTF?"

He killed all the Jedi and turned to evil. He wanted power. He tortured people, slaughtered his own mentor, and was obsessed about destroying the rebel base.

But the villain in the film is just a colonel. He has lots of paperwork to fill out and meetings to attend with his superior officers. He wouldn't be calling the shots. That would be a general, probably a two or three star.

As for Grace, we discovered intelligent life on a nearby planet several decades ago and sent only one descent scientist?!

That doesn't make sense on any level. We'd have sent about ten-thousand scientists.

It evolved. Hero's journey; white guy whose scales drop from his eyes so he can support natives and bang one too. Changing motives aren't the same thing as an absence of motives.

It's the "mighty whitey" trope, which is a large part of the problem.

The core of my disappointment is that the movie had incredible visuals, and monster box-office, but doesn't present a coherent fictional universe that you can build on. In terms of production values (script aside) Avatar was infinitely better than Stargate, but Stargate easily gave us SG-1, SGA, and SGU because the universe had depth and legs.

Avatar was better than Trek and certainly better than the Star Wars prequels, but because of the script, how would you continue with it? Would Earth keep shipping in people who rebel? Why wouldn't human civilians get pretty pissed off about the way the corporation is acting? Scully's actions have certainly put an end to the Avatar program, so how could a writer follow up with more Avatars? Pursued to the end, how can it generate a storyline that isn't just more conflict where humans are the bad guys?

With just a little more care these elements could've been easily rectified. As it is, it's hard to move from the eye-candy to a deeper level without ignoring major holes.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

I also think there's more depth there than people realize.

To be a very annoying broken record (sorry..), that goes for the entire film, in my estimation.