That Avatar seems like a shallow cliche ridden movie I will probably go see for the special effects?
I guess…
Did these people actually watch the film? This Pandora world is a deathtrap. Everywhere you turn, some giant glowing hexapod with a million 40-foot long teeth threatens to eat your skinny blue ass alive and crap it out on the luminescent moss of Eywa right before it gets eaten by something even unimaginably larger and flying and with even more teeth.
Typical Navi conversation:
“Where is Tuk’Tuk’Puke’Puke?”
“He is with the ancestors now.”
“What happened?”
“He was answering the…morning call of Eywa….when a Banshee’Gungan’Thantor-2000 bit off his dick!”
/winces
The religion already existed. Cameron is just monetizing it.
This Pandora world is a deathtrap. Everywhere you turn, some giant glowing hexapod with a million 40-foot long teeth threatens to eat your skinny blue ass alive and crap it out on the luminescent moss of Eywa right before it gets eaten by something even unimaginably larger and flying and with even more teeth.
What better religion for the suicidal? You get to run around in a fun place and when you die, which won’t be long, you get to be in the digestive system of interesting lifeforms.
My take, to push logical consistency into a work of fiction, is that Pandora is a retirement home/Disneyland for an ancient civilization. There’s certainly evidence sprinkled throughout the film that it is NOT a natural set-up even in the framework of the story.
Or, even more likely, a coventry for the radical treehugger-equivalent of that precursor race.
In any case, in the universe of Pandora there are two intelligent species within a parsec of each other. The likelihood of that greatly raises the odds of other intelligent races, some of whom will be starfaring.
Who is more likely to survive an encounter with Saberhagen-style berserkers or other similarly aggressive species? The humans, or the Na’vi?
I wouldn’t want to have blue skin in that scenario. . .
What would a technology-rooted alternative to Gaianism be like?
That Avatar seems like a shallow cliche ridden movie I will probably go see for the special effects?
Bill, did someone ask if you would go see it? Or do you just have a strange form of OCD that causes you to constantly post irrelevant statements?
Just wondering.
Myabe it’s just a fancy teen-horror-slasher pic, you know, Friday the 13th in Outer Space. Everyone knows only the good girl survives amid all the serious sadomasochism.
These things are popular with teenage girls, God knows why, and since, according to Victor David Hanson, we’re turning into a nation dominated by the ethics and point of view of teenage girls, maybe it makes sense.
You want art, rent The Thief and the Cobbler or Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
I too was made very sad by the movie. Sad that our population is so ready to leave all our advances and regress into a demon haunted world of superstition and magical thinking.
They’re not really going to commit suicide. These are the same people who wandered around, looking for books about arcane magic, after the first Harry Potter movie came out.
None of them tried to ACTUALLY become a wizard. They just liked the idea of fighting evil, with white magic and chocolate frogs.
I wonder how many people ran off to look for a Free French Garrison at Brazzaville, after seeing Casablanca? Or did they realize it was FICTION, in 1941, when they saw a movie?
After long seconds of thought, I realize that my parents and grandparents had bigger kettles of fish to fry in 1941, than trying to ‘BE’ Rick or Ilsa. Unlike these pampered, whiny @$$holes now.
“Did these people actually watch the film? This Pandora world is a deathtrap…”
Indeed. Even the main character almost didn’t make it through his first night alone. It’s what comes later that turns on the Pandora-worshipers that would rather martyr themselves than leave it.
The only other time I recall anything quite like this (and I’ve tried to find an on-line reference to back up my recollection, but haven’t yet) was an ElfQuest fan that committed suicide, also in the hope of being reborn in that universe. (And if you know ElfQuest at all, you know it’s not always a safe place, either.)
This is similar to my dissatisfaction with the end of the new Battlestar Galactica. Real, technology-accustomed people wouldn’t last a week in actual primitive conditions like this. At least the SCA folk always admit they’re doing the Middle Ages ‘not as it was, but as it should have been.’ (that is, minus the wars, bad sanitation, plague, etc.)
And yet, Avatar *can* draw you in, to the extent that you let it…
The parallel that nobody seems to have noted yet is between Avatar and South Park, specifically the episode “Smug Alert!” … You remember, the one in which the self-proclaimed environmentalists are so taken with themselves that they’re convinced that their own farts smell delightfully sweet. The Na’vi are humorless, self-righteous, and smug — they live so harmoniously with Nature, and are so sure that Earth has nothing to offer them. It would be fitting if the next expedition to Pandora discovered that the Na’vi have vanished, suffering the same fate as San Francisco in South Park: disappearing up their own assholes.
I will not pay to see a movie that portrays US Marines as evil. I will not rent the DVD or pay per view movie that portrays US Marines as evil. I will not watch on TV for free a movie that portrays US Marines as evil.
And for what it is worth James Cameron can kiss my a$$.
Just remember, Cecil, that Rupert Murdoch funded Cameron.
Just remember, Cecil, that Rupert Murdoch funded Cameron.
Ed, I think he does have an OCD that causes him to post irrelevant statements. I’m sure Bill thinks we all have some love for Rupert Murdoch, because:
“you know, he owns Fox News, and like, you know, Fox News is what all you conservatives watch, and you know, Avatar is just funded by Fox News, so all of you should like Avatar and fund your favorite capitalist Rupert Murdoch.”
But to rationale people, Bill comes across as idiotic and childish. Perhaps though, Bill, who we know posts on DailyKos occassionally, is probally used to people, who make decisions on what to do based on personalities involved. Which is interesting, because how many KosKoolaid drinkers are laying on the bucks to see Avatar, and not realize they are giving money to the finacier of Fox News?
If they want the Navi’s resources an the Navi do not cooperate, why not just grab a big rock from an asteroid belt and sterilize the biosphere?
Religion? It’s a dumb action movie… o.O
Pardon me while I pray to my giant space-tree and commune with nature through the use of the braid-like tendril I’ve just decided to grow from the back of my head….
Mike, if they did that, how would a paralyzed Jake Sully mate with a ten foot tall blue chick? Priorities, man, priorities.
Anyway, there is irony in the fact that James Cameron (a Canadian) and Rupert Murdoch (an Australian) are making huge profits from selling an anti-American fairy tale, to Americans.
Dances with Wolves sold big for similar reasons.
Anyway, sequels are coming and once Sully’s avatar makes babies with the Na’vi princess peace will come and the unobtanium will be mined and the Na’vi will be assimilated into the Federation.
I haven’t seen the film yet, but I’m getting some Lawrence of Arabia vibes. Without the sand. And without Lean, O’Toole, et al.
As far as I’m concerned, anyone capable of being driven to contemplating suicide because of a movie setting, ought to stop contemplating and do the gene pool a favor.
It takes a lot to disgust me, but that CNN article Jonah posted about achieved it in the first paragraph.
Yeah, to comment on the original linked article: One sick individual is not representative of the general population. How many kids became depressed when they realized their closets didn’t lead to Narnia? Nobody’s accusing that movie of being evil.
“I will not pay to see a movie that portrays US Marines as evil.”
You must miss out on a lot of good movies.
“and not realize they are giving money to the finacier of Fox News?”
Who cares. It’s a movie. It’s entertainment – much like FOX News.
“One sick individual is not representative of the general population”
Except, of course, when you would PREFER that the individual represented the society at large, in order for it to fit your own views.
I haven’t seen the film yet, but I’m getting some Lawrence of Arabia vibes. Without the sand. And without Lean, O’Toole, et al.
In a nutshell.
Further things I heard in the film (or thought I heard, in the same way that Maureen Dowd “heard” Joe Wilson shout “boy” in a crowded theater):
“On Pandora, it is jungle power!”
“Shock and awe!”
“Jakesully, we have Bansheesign the likes of which even Eywa has never seen!”
“Game over man, game over!”
“Kick their ass and steal their Unobtanium!”
“I say we nuke it from orbit — it’s the only way to be sure.”
Hey, Cameron invented nuking sites from orbit ☺
I’m okay with bad politics in good films, so long as they aren’t portrayed in a heavy-handed manner. Lawrence of Arabia is, to continue that example, a great film with some questionable political statements (and, of course, some rewriting of history, but that’s a given in Hollywood).
So, of course, the question is whether Avatar is a good film. I’m hearing competing voices that say it is and it isn’t, but there’s a little less holding back by its fans than, say, with the latest Star Trek film (which even fans seemed willing to admit had some stupid elements).
Obvious anybody who wants to suicide over a movie isn’t playing with a full deck. (Assuming they are serious and not just exaggerating for effect.)
As far as the movie being “anti-Marine,” the humans aren’t Marines. They are mercenaries, employed by a private company, and that fact is made very clear in the movie. Nor is it clear that they are Americans – I didn’t see any US flags displayed.
Interestingly, there is a libertarian defense of the plot. The gist of the defense is that, just like the homeowner in the Supreme Court’s Kelo case, why should the Na’vi have to move so some private company can make a profit?
As far as the movie being “anti-Marine,” the humans aren’t Marines. They are mercenaries, employed by a private company, and that fact is made very clear in the movie.
Many of which, including the principles, are Marines. That fact is also made very clear in the movie (e.g. “jarhead clan”).
Nor is it clear that they are Americans – I didn’t see any US flags displayed.
Implicit vs. explicit.
Interestingly, there is a libertarian defense of the plot.
Well, yeah, it’s called homesteading. I’m guessing most of the outrage (and it’s just a guess because I haven’t followed it) would be that the movie is (presumably) a straw man for thrashing US foreign policy.
Titus – ex-Marines. Former Marines. Marines not in the service of the United States. Also known as “mercenaries,” “contractors,” “private military forces.”
Once a marine, always a marine.
Either way, the Marines themselves aren’t too thrilled with this, either…
The miners lock and load like the redblooded redneck NRA supporters they are.
Don’t be shy, Mr. Cameron, tell us what you really think of them…
I love it when dumbfucks like Cameron, Stallone, Swartzenager and now Cameron mok the very people who made them popular.
Glorify gunplay and then mock your audience. Yep, nothing hypocritical about that.
I got news for you. If you build your career around action movies and then kiss up to worthless shills like Sarah Brady, don’t be suprised when your audience gags on your hypocracy.
For those who, in the face of religion, refuse to defer; who refuse to replace reason with faith; for those who refuse to choose to think independently, and who demand evidence; for those who reject the notion that their own happiness is a sin, and that their only reason for living is to sacrifice themselves; for all such people, religion resorts to technique number three: coercion.
Apparently Rupert Murdoch is following L. Ron Hubbard’s advice. After all, Murdoch is reaping most of the profit from Avatar.
Or, by funding both Avatar and FOX News maybe he’s just ratcheting up the fight, to enhance profits, from both sides.
I hear that given the box office success of Avatar, there will now be at least 2 sequels.
And no, I haven’t seen the Sci-fi version of Pocahontas yet
PS – Disney did the same plot before Cameron.
http://filmdrunk.uproxx.com/2010/01/james-camerons-avatar-disneys-pocahontas
Disney did the same plot before Cameron
So? What’s your point?
That Avatar seems like a shallow cliche ridden movie I will probably go see for the special effects?
I guess…
Did these people actually watch the film? This Pandora world is a deathtrap. Everywhere you turn, some giant glowing hexapod with a million 40-foot long teeth threatens to eat your skinny blue ass alive and crap it out on the luminescent moss of Eywa right before it gets eaten by something even unimaginably larger and flying and with even more teeth.
Typical Navi conversation:
“Where is Tuk’Tuk’Puke’Puke?”
“He is with the ancestors now.”
“What happened?”
“He was answering the…morning call of Eywa….when a Banshee’Gungan’Thantor-2000 bit off his dick!”
/winces
The religion already existed. Cameron is just monetizing it.
This Pandora world is a deathtrap. Everywhere you turn, some giant glowing hexapod with a million 40-foot long teeth threatens to eat your skinny blue ass alive and crap it out on the luminescent moss of Eywa right before it gets eaten by something even unimaginably larger and flying and with even more teeth.
What better religion for the suicidal? You get to run around in a fun place and when you die, which won’t be long, you get to be in the digestive system of interesting lifeforms.
My take, to push logical consistency into a work of fiction, is that Pandora is a retirement home/Disneyland for an ancient civilization. There’s certainly evidence sprinkled throughout the film that it is NOT a natural set-up even in the framework of the story.
Or, even more likely, a coventry for the radical treehugger-equivalent of that precursor race.
In any case, in the universe of Pandora there are two intelligent species within a parsec of each other. The likelihood of that greatly raises the odds of other intelligent races, some of whom will be starfaring.
Who is more likely to survive an encounter with Saberhagen-style berserkers or other similarly aggressive species? The humans, or the Na’vi?
I wouldn’t want to have blue skin in that scenario. . .
What would a technology-rooted alternative to Gaianism be like?
That Avatar seems like a shallow cliche ridden movie I will probably go see for the special effects?
Bill, did someone ask if you would go see it? Or do you just have a strange form of OCD that causes you to constantly post irrelevant statements?
Just wondering.
Myabe it’s just a fancy teen-horror-slasher pic, you know, Friday the 13th in Outer Space. Everyone knows only the good girl survives amid all the serious sadomasochism.
These things are popular with teenage girls, God knows why, and since, according to Victor David Hanson, we’re turning into a nation dominated by the ethics and point of view of teenage girls, maybe it makes sense.
You want art, rent The Thief and the Cobbler or Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
I too was made very sad by the movie. Sad that our population is so ready to leave all our advances and regress into a demon haunted world of superstition and magical thinking.
They’re not really going to commit suicide. These are the same people who wandered around, looking for books about arcane magic, after the first Harry Potter movie came out.
None of them tried to ACTUALLY become a wizard. They just liked the idea of fighting evil, with white magic and chocolate frogs.
I wonder how many people ran off to look for a Free French Garrison at Brazzaville, after seeing Casablanca? Or did they realize it was FICTION, in 1941, when they saw a movie?
After long seconds of thought, I realize that my parents and grandparents had bigger kettles of fish to fry in 1941, than trying to ‘BE’ Rick or Ilsa. Unlike these pampered, whiny @$$holes now.
“Did these people actually watch the film? This Pandora world is a deathtrap…”
Indeed. Even the main character almost didn’t make it through his first night alone. It’s what comes later that turns on the Pandora-worshipers that would rather martyr themselves than leave it.
The only other time I recall anything quite like this (and I’ve tried to find an on-line reference to back up my recollection, but haven’t yet) was an ElfQuest fan that committed suicide, also in the hope of being reborn in that universe. (And if you know ElfQuest at all, you know it’s not always a safe place, either.)
This is similar to my dissatisfaction with the end of the new Battlestar Galactica. Real, technology-accustomed people wouldn’t last a week in actual primitive conditions like this. At least the SCA folk always admit they’re doing the Middle Ages ‘not as it was, but as it should have been.’ (that is, minus the wars, bad sanitation, plague, etc.)
And yet, Avatar *can* draw you in, to the extent that you let it…
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/treder20100112/
The parallel that nobody seems to have noted yet is between Avatar and South Park, specifically the episode “Smug Alert!” … You remember, the one in which the self-proclaimed environmentalists are so taken with themselves that they’re convinced that their own farts smell delightfully sweet. The Na’vi are humorless, self-righteous, and smug — they live so harmoniously with Nature, and are so sure that Earth has nothing to offer them. It would be fitting if the next expedition to Pandora discovered that the Na’vi have vanished, suffering the same fate as San Francisco in South Park: disappearing up their own assholes.
I will not pay to see a movie that portrays US Marines as evil. I will not rent the DVD or pay per view movie that portrays US Marines as evil. I will not watch on TV for free a movie that portrays US Marines as evil.
And for what it is worth James Cameron can kiss my a$$.
Just remember, Cecil, that Rupert Murdoch funded Cameron.
Just remember, Cecil, that Rupert Murdoch funded Cameron.
Ed, I think he does have an OCD that causes him to post irrelevant statements. I’m sure Bill thinks we all have some love for Rupert Murdoch, because:
“you know, he owns Fox News, and like, you know, Fox News is what all you conservatives watch, and you know, Avatar is just funded by Fox News, so all of you should like Avatar and fund your favorite capitalist Rupert Murdoch.”
But to rationale people, Bill comes across as idiotic and childish. Perhaps though, Bill, who we know posts on DailyKos occassionally, is probally used to people, who make decisions on what to do based on personalities involved. Which is interesting, because how many KosKoolaid drinkers are laying on the bucks to see Avatar, and not realize they are giving money to the finacier of Fox News?
If they want the Navi’s resources an the Navi do not cooperate, why not just grab a big rock from an asteroid belt and sterilize the biosphere?
Religion? It’s a dumb action movie… o.O
Pardon me while I pray to my giant space-tree and commune with nature through the use of the braid-like tendril I’ve just decided to grow from the back of my head….
Mike, if they did that, how would a paralyzed Jake Sully mate with a ten foot tall blue chick? Priorities, man, priorities.
Anyway, there is irony in the fact that James Cameron (a Canadian) and Rupert Murdoch (an Australian) are making huge profits from selling an anti-American fairy tale, to Americans.
Dances with Wolves sold big for similar reasons.
Anyway, sequels are coming and once Sully’s avatar makes babies with the Na’vi princess peace will come and the unobtanium will be mined and the Na’vi will be assimilated into the Federation.
I haven’t seen the film yet, but I’m getting some Lawrence of Arabia vibes. Without the sand. And without Lean, O’Toole, et al.
As far as I’m concerned, anyone capable of being driven to contemplating suicide because of a movie setting, ought to stop contemplating and do the gene pool a favor.
It takes a lot to disgust me, but that CNN article Jonah posted about achieved it in the first paragraph.
Yeah, to comment on the original linked article: One sick individual is not representative of the general population. How many kids became depressed when they realized their closets didn’t lead to Narnia? Nobody’s accusing that movie of being evil.
“I will not pay to see a movie that portrays US Marines as evil.”
You must miss out on a lot of good movies.
“and not realize they are giving money to the finacier of Fox News?”
Who cares. It’s a movie. It’s entertainment – much like FOX News.
“One sick individual is not representative of the general population”
Except, of course, when you would PREFER that the individual represented the society at large, in order for it to fit your own views.
In a nutshell.
Further things I heard in the film (or thought I heard, in the same way that Maureen Dowd “heard” Joe Wilson shout “boy” in a crowded theater):
“On Pandora, it is jungle power!”
“Shock and awe!”
“Jakesully, we have Bansheesign the likes of which even Eywa has never seen!”
“Game over man, game over!”
“Kick their ass and steal their Unobtanium!”
“I say we nuke it from orbit — it’s the only way to be sure.”
Hey, Cameron invented nuking sites from orbit ☺
I’m okay with bad politics in good films, so long as they aren’t portrayed in a heavy-handed manner. Lawrence of Arabia is, to continue that example, a great film with some questionable political statements (and, of course, some rewriting of history, but that’s a given in Hollywood).
So, of course, the question is whether Avatar is a good film. I’m hearing competing voices that say it is and it isn’t, but there’s a little less holding back by its fans than, say, with the latest Star Trek film (which even fans seemed willing to admit had some stupid elements).
Obvious anybody who wants to suicide over a movie isn’t playing with a full deck. (Assuming they are serious and not just exaggerating for effect.)
As far as the movie being “anti-Marine,” the humans aren’t Marines. They are mercenaries, employed by a private company, and that fact is made very clear in the movie. Nor is it clear that they are Americans – I didn’t see any US flags displayed.
Interestingly, there is a libertarian defense of the plot. The gist of the defense is that, just like the homeowner in the Supreme Court’s Kelo case, why should the Na’vi have to move so some private company can make a profit?
Many of which, including the principles, are Marines. That fact is also made very clear in the movie (e.g. “jarhead clan”).
Implicit vs. explicit.
Well, yeah, it’s called homesteading. I’m guessing most of the outrage (and it’s just a guess because I haven’t followed it) would be that the movie is (presumably) a straw man for thrashing US foreign policy.
Titus – ex-Marines. Former Marines. Marines not in the service of the United States. Also known as “mercenaries,” “contractors,” “private military forces.”
Once a marine, always a marine.
Either way, the Marines themselves aren’t too thrilled with this, either…
http://www.dailytech.com/Avatar+May+Be+Global+Smash+but+USMC+Not+Amused/article17370.htm
Oh, this is lovely…
Don’t be shy, Mr. Cameron, tell us what you really think of them…
I love it when dumbfucks like Cameron, Stallone, Swartzenager and now Cameron mok the very people who made them popular.
Glorify gunplay and then mock your audience. Yep, nothing hypocritical about that.
I got news for you. If you build your career around action movies and then kiss up to worthless shills like Sarah Brady, don’t be suprised when your audience gags on your hypocracy.
For those who, in the face of religion, refuse to defer; who refuse to replace reason with faith; for those who refuse to choose to think independently, and who demand evidence; for those who reject the notion that their own happiness is a sin, and that their only reason for living is to sacrifice themselves; for all such people, religion resorts to technique number three: coercion.