Orci/Bennett

[Lexx Shrapnel]

Avatar has a bunch of safe story beats and formula.

Avatar actually aroused quite a bit of ire from people who were uncomfortable with its allegory about American militarism, corporatism, racism and resource exploitation, still a constant undercurrent in responses to it (in, for example, attempts to claim its villains are "unrealistic" or "cartoonish"). It chose a palatable way of easing all of that down (which also earned it some criticism from other quarters, somewhat deserved, for recycling white saviour narratives), but calling its story beats "safe" is a bit of a stretch. We live in a world where corporatism and abuse of aboriginal peoples is very real and very touchy. The story it chose to treat is very far from safe, to the point where probably nobody with clout less than Cameron's could have gotten it greenlit and funded it in the form it happened.

It whacked you over the head with it and then sucked your brain out through a tube out it was that obvious. We had Elysium recently, corporations as villains are not that uncommon, there was also White House Down.

 

[The Doctor]

Avatar has a bunch of safe story beats and formula.

Avatar actually aroused quite a bit of ire from people who were uncomfortable with its allegory about American militarism, corporatism, racism and resource exploitation, still a constant undercurrent in responses to it (in, for example, attempts to claim its villains are "unrealistic" or "cartoonish"). It chose a palatable way of easing all of that down (which also earned it some criticism from other quarters, somewhat deserved, for recycling white saviour narratives), but calling its story beats "safe" is a bit of a stretch. We live in a world where corporatism and abuse of aboriginal peoples is very real and very touchy. The story it chose to treat is very far from safe, to the point where probably nobody with clout less than Cameron's could have gotten it greenlit and funded it in the form it happened.

Avatar is about as challenging as a stiff breeze and almost as substantial. The only thing about that film that made anyone uncomfortable was the excessive runtime and Cameron's super-weird obsession with his heroine's CGI nipples.

 

[BigJake]

Avatar has a bunch of safe story beats and formula.

Avatar actually aroused quite a bit of ire from people who were uncomfortable with its allegory about American militarism, corporatism, racism and resource exploitation, still a constant undercurrent in responses to it (in, for example, attempts to claim its villains are "unrealistic" or "cartoonish"). It chose a palatable way of easing all of that down (which also earned it some criticism from other quarters, somewhat deserved, for recycling white saviour narratives), but calling its story beats "safe" is a bit of a stretch. We live in a world where corporatism and abuse of aboriginal peoples is very real and very touchy. The story it chose to treat is very far from safe, to the point where probably nobody with clout less than Cameron's could have gotten it greenlit and funded it in the form it happened.

Avatar is about as challenging as a stiff breeze and almost as substantial.

Avatar should have been about as challenging as a stiff breeze to anyone with a basic awareness of history or culture. But remember we're also talking about an age where "anti-vaxxers" and "global warming skeptics" are a significant fraction of the audience.