Those films are weird in that I enjoy them while I’m sitting there, but the moment it finishes I couldn’t name or describe a single one of the characters in it or any details of the plot.
It’s because they messed up a fundamental principle of character design - we can tell real human faces apart because our brains are highly tuned to it, but with cartoons and CGI faces you need to really exaggerate differences to get them to stick in the mind. The Avatar team tried to go for some notion of realism instead, and tripped over their own feet with a lineup who are virtually indistinguishable from each other.
Don’t threaten me with a good time
If he doesn’t make a movie people want to watch, what makes him think he can write a book people will want to read?
Because it will be written in Papyrus font.
Doesn’t make enough money could still be hundreds of millions in profits.
Books don’t require budgets that exceed those of cities.
I wish other shows would do this TBH. I was really getting into The OA and it seemed like the show had a lot more to say when it was canceled before the final sseason. I’d take a book to wrap up the story line.
Hire George RR Martin to finish it.
He says, as if he’s not responsible for three out of four of the top grossing movies of all time…
The movies may be bland as all fuck, but the man knows how to put arses on cinema seats.
Not mine. The Avatar crap was too boring to even watch at home.
You can’t even watch it at home as intended. You’d need 3D (which is dead) and high frame rates for certain scenes (which aren’t supported).
I really really don’t see what it adds. I saw it with all the bells and whistles and was bored out of my tits after the first 10 minutes
Now and then I’ll be watching some older movie, and there will be these weird directorial choices of auto parts flying at the screen, and I’ll realize that I’m seeing a 3-D scene. It not only ages badly, it gives the film a bit of a cringe factor, like you realize that back when it was made, it was trying too hard to be liked.
As an Indigenous Canadian, I think the whole Avatar series is sickening
An invading colonizing force of foreign people invading a native people … but the natives are incapable of helping themselves so they need a white saviour to lead them in the fight against their oppressors
It’s basically cultural appropriation masked as a space opera
The worst part of it is how wealthy European people are still able in the most imaginative ways possible are able to monetize the misery and memory of oppressed people. Not only did they destroy entire cultures, they spend a good part of their time making money off of that memory and history.
The only thing I enjoy about the films is the AI, CGI and special effects … beyond that, the writing is just another continuation of white people fantasizing about what it would be like to be a heroic Indigenous person who wins over colonizers … a fantasy that has never been allowed to exist in reality.
There’s a reason it’s commonly known as “dances with smurfs”
He thinks he’s worldbuilding. It’s fucking Propaganda
As opposed to the other Avatar, which explicitly features Inuit and mesoamerican cultures resisting literal fascist, genocidal regimes. And deconstructs the “chosen one” trope while they’re at it. And (as of now) uses culturally appropriate VAs.
Which avatar? The only one I can think of is the last air bender but I don’t know how they deconstruct the chosen one trope
I would say one of the key points is that Aang gets constant support from everyone around him. Like any individual, he’s nearly powerless without that support. Most other “chosen one” stories I’ve seen, the character is saving everyone else.
Sort of. Per TVTropes:
He deconstructs the Kid Hero. Each Avatar is supposed to learn of their identity at the age of sixteen, which is the age of maturity in the World of Avatar. However, when the leaders of the Air Nomads sensed that a war was brewing, they made the decision to reveal Aang as the Avatar four years early so he could finish mastering his airbending and start mastering the other three elements to nip the threat in the bud. This decision might have made things even worse for everybody involved at the time because it forced a huge responsibility onto Aang that the 12-year-old wasn’t ready for, and alienated him from his pre-series friends who were themselves too young to know how to treat him post-revelation. After overhearing he was to be separated from Gyatso, his guardian and the only one left who treated Aang as the kid he was and as an actual person, he ran away, and then got trapped in a storm that forced the Avatar State to freeze Aang and Appa inside an iceberg for a hundred years in order to save both of their lives. He subsequently blamed himself for the genocide of his people and the subsequent century of war because he wasn’t there, even after he’s told he would’ve been too inexperienced to make a difference back then and that his running away then is probably the only reason there’s hope for the surviving world now. His childish personality and cheerfulness is sometimes an act to try avoiding the burdens placed on him which proves to be a problem several times when he has to face a problem head on to solve it (like learning Earth-bending or spending almost the whole series avoiding the problem his morals might conflict with what he’ll have to do to actually defeat the Big Bad).
They were going somewhere with the pacifism too, though ran out of time.
Korra straight up deconstructs it, which is more what I meant. She was born to fight, she basically never got to be a child/regular human, but being a ‘Chosen One’ doesn’t fix anything. She’s targeted and hated by the antagonists for being such a singular figure of authority, and beat up to a pulp over it.
I strongly recommend you watch it. It’s very good.
I completely agree with you. Cameron always gets so triggered whenever he’s faced with this criticism as well, like all rich white American liberals. He doesn’t even try to hide these views because he’s so incredibly clueless:
In an interview with The Guardian in 2010, Cameron said the Lakota Sioux Nation was a “hopeless” and “dead-end society”.
The interview was prompted by Cameron’s visit to the Xingu tribe, located in the Amazon, who were fighting against the development of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam.
During his time there he witnessed cultural ceremonies.
“I felt like I was 130 years back in time, watching what the Lakota Sioux might have been saying at a point when they were being pushed and they were being killed and they were being asked to displace,” he said.
He noted that ‘this was the driving force’ in creating Avatar.
“I couldn’t help but think that if [the Lakota Sioux] had had a time-window and they could see the future… and they could see their kids committing suicide at the highest suicide rate in the nation… because they were hopeless and they were a dead-end society – which is what is happening now – they would have fought a lot harder.” Source
Wow, that is a disgusting thing to say about ANY culture, especially one that you admit is facing its own issues. Also, comparing a tribe from the Amazon to one from the Great Plains is kinda like saying ‘Wow, those people suffering in Estonia really reminds me of the people suffering in Ethiopia’. Not my best analogy but you get my point
My favorite movie about an Indigenous person taking on an invading and/or colonizing force is Prey. No white savior there.
It’s kind of messed up how many pieces of media share that title. The 2006 video game is also about an indigenous person fighting aliens, but otherwise completely unrelated…
Prey was fucking awesome
Good shit there for sure.
oh yes
It’s a white saviour rehash. Classic movie trope in the USA and yes it is incredibly insulting.
If the natives are outgunned and technologically outclassed, how are they to prevail without help from “the inside”? Otherwise it’s just a depressing plot about the natives getting overrun.
the natives are incapable of helping themselves
I’m having trouble thinking of a time when the natives were able to help themselves against colonizers. OTOH, guerilla warfare has worked pretty damned well in the last century.
Why is “it’s realistic” the line your drawing on a space colonization movie?
Your entire premise of “the natives are out gunned” is dripping with white colonization. Why are they always out gunned? Why not show them capable and holding their own and are helped out by “insiders”.
Its a fantasy story, and there’s tons of ways to do it without relying on the racist “natives are primitives” narrative.
Logically, any colonizer will only proceed if they out gun the natives. Otherwise it’s not colonization, but war. And even then in war, the attacker usually figures they have a significant advantage, or else they wouldn’t attack.
As if colonisers are in possession of perfect knowledge and logic.
Plenty of stories of wannabe colonisers eating shit because they underestimated natives, if the " historical realism" for some reason is important in a story about blue space aliens, draw inspiration from that why don’t youIsn’t that pretty much how all fiction stories of these type actually play out? Much more than in reality, sadly.
Its fantasy, what does logic have to do anything with it?
Like it really comes across as “we can suspend reality, but so long as it’s still racist like us”
Well sure. But even fantasy needs to have internal logic to some degree of it gets stupid. If some colonizer attempt came and attacked, and the natives just wiped them out with superior tech, not only would it be unbelievable, but it would be a boring story. We can have the natives eventually victorious and avoid the ‘white guy saviour’ trope which certainly sucks. But for a good storey, they have to be the underdogs.
If you can’t tell a story without basing it off of racist stereotypes, maybe it’s a story that doesn’t need to be told…
Does it have to be racist? Societies progress in different directions, and when they collide it magnifies this. In the trope where white guys come is with bigger fire power, usually the natives win in the end based on spiritual superiority. Not a bad message really. And in fantasy, the ‘races’ are arbitrary. In avatar, if the corporation was all black people and the aliens looked very white, would it change the story?
Why is “it’s realistic” the line your drawing on a space colonization movie?
There have to be some kind of rules or else there’s no tension. It must be realistic within the rules of the story.
I’m having trouble thinking of a time when the natives were able to help themselves against colonizers.
Well, there’s Ethiopia, and uh… it’s a pretty short list.
(I’d also give an honorable mention to Haiti, although the oppressed people in that case were imported African slaves, not natives. By the time of the Haitian Revolution, the indigenous Taíno had long since been pretty much wiped out.)
Isn’t any territorial war won by the attacked party an example? Like, the aggressors never start being successful colonizers because they don’t win, but they would have colonized the land if they’d won.
It reinforces the idea that the only way we can understand meeting any new culture or group is through conflict … that one or the other has to overpower one another and win … that everything is automatically a contest of winners and losers.
We can’t imagine a world where we actually cooperate with one another and live in some kind of harmony. Partly because we as a species have seldom been like that and the other being that we find that story kind of boring. We prefer a world of constant conflict and fighting.
We also enjoy cheering for the underdog and listening to fanciful stories of them winning over the oppressor … the classic David and Goliath story … where the little guy gets to win. Only problem is, all throughout our actual human history, the big guy, the strongest and most wealthy always wins and destroys the little guy. It’s a fantasy we like to perpetuate to make ourselves feel good about the terrible reality we actually we live in.
The tech trees are a lot more balanced recently
Wasn’t it supposed to be only 3 from start?
These movies have threads?
The first doesn’t really (and the thread they “re-opened” to connect the sequel is pretty bad), but the second one does leave a couple things open.
In general, the second one does improve a bit on the criticisms of the first movie. Not enough to make it great or special IMO, but at least it’s a bit better.
Yeah the story isn’t that great, I had many questions that weren’t answered. It was worth to watch it at the theater for the visuals, but the story was mediocre at best
Lol seriously! Found out today that someone I’m loosely related to’s husband was a big fan boy of this “universe(?)”, right after I made a captain planet joke about them. I didn’t say anything, but I was just thinking “there’s been two movies and some mediocre games¿” Just like tilting my head sideways, mouth agape and all.
To close open threads you’d first need a plot, James.
no on cares about the plot of avatar, and we’re still surprised people bother seeing it.
People watch Avatar because of the bleeding edge CG. It’s not a unique story. It never has been. It’s Pocahontas. It’s Dances with Wolves. It’s Fern Gully. It’s A Man Called Horse.
Theyre all similar stories. Foreign heroes saving the “savage” local population that can’t defend themselves from the technology, while learning about them along the way.
The story isn’t why people go to watch Avatar.
honestly idk why Cameron even bothers with a plot. he could just make a faux nature documentary. that seems to be the part he’s interested in, and the best-executed and most interesting parts of the movies, but he seems to think nobody will watch it unless he shoves that all into the background and slaps a dumb action flick you’ve already seen a hundred times on top of it. and maybe he’s right, idk
It’s the movie equivalent of a roller coaster ride, so people see it because it’s fun
people use that statement as a criticism of modern cinema.
tbf, when I actually watched movies I never cared about the plot before hand anyways. I’m there to experience it while it’s playing, not learn about it beforehand, see trailers, hear what the movie is about then go watch it. it just ruins the movies
now since I can’t get away from the world spoiling movies constantly, even in commericals about them… and corporations just remaking stuff and having zero creativity, I completely stopped watching all movies/tv shows.
haven’t seen a movie since like 2020 I’d say. no plans to even see another. nothing is interesting.
I agree with you about the standard Hollywood trailer giving away the plot but…
haven’t seen a movie since like 2020 I’d say. no plans to even see another. nothing is interesting.
This is the same ignorance as saying “they don’t make good music nowadays” because you exclusively listen to top 40 radio while commuting.
Tons of great and interesting movies have come out since 2020. You can absolutely choose not to watch any of them but change “nothing is interesting” to “I am not informed”
This is the same ignorance
I agree. I honestly don’t know the channels or where to find “bclass” movies. music, I do. I’d gladly watching visual media outside of low viewer YouTubers if I knew where these movies are.
I listen to people making music, not company’s telling people to talk/sing over background songs.
Same way as music - follow artists (directors, cinematographers, etc) you like and critics/reviewers with similar tastes and see what they’re talking about
These marketing campaigns are getting a bit extreme (and simultaneously really whiney)
movie trailer voice "See Avatar: Fire and Ash in theaters now, or else! "
" …or else James Cameron is gonna be really sad, you guys, and he’s gonna quit and just make a book, you guys. You guys!"
Oh, perfect. Bye.
Don’t threaten me with a good time.
Why does he have to keep making sequels to it? Like, I know Avatar was the highest grossing box office movie at the time it came out, but at the same time it’s hardly spoken of. Nobody’s quoting it. I haven’t seen memes of it since around its release. What even happened to get it those ticket sales? It doesn’t seem to actually be a popular film and yet… It is?
James Cameron has had a plan to make a bunch of sequels since the first movie. I remember it from the advertising around the original.
Eh, I don’t mind if they make a couple more. I can take or leave the story, but the environments are well-produced and happen to result in interesting papers on rendering them. It’s cool to have some much work and effort put into a natural alien environment. I can’t really remember another movie in the last decades that goes this far.
Thinking about it, I’d really prefer if they made fictional documentaries instead…
I’m always far more interested by the making-of content. I wish they’d make hours of that, even release it on the big screen
First well made 3D movie(as in the one that required a special glass to see) i guess? I too can’t figure out the popularity of it.
Edit: now i remember a bit more, it’s basically that. it released at the time when 3d cinema is still a fresh, exciting new thing, and Avatar came out and did the 3d justice, so everyone is excited to experience this and every recommendation is basically “best experience it in 3d”. I remember when it released in bluray, people basically said it lost the charm because it isn’t in 3d. But i guess it’s still a competently made movie because the second one made as much money as the first one.
