Like…Sully and Suderman claim to love District 9 but sneer at Avatar. I think this is why.
Avatar is a pure rejection of white evangelical xianity, and everyone knows that conservatism has devolved to a base of white evangelical christians.

This thread is probably stone dead, but I’ll just add anyhow, that this must be wrong, at least as far as Sully is concerned. There’s no one more dubious of what passes for white evangelical Christianity, or Christianism than he. I believe he invented the latter term.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....10538.html

-Eric

Cameron intended for the audience to fall in love with the planet

agree!
and …..yeah.
the tech of the old-skool world building is building 3D CG models.
those are built now.
I think the sequels will take us deeper into the model/paradigm of Pandora….more alien culture, more VR.
we are the explorers, and Jake is our avatar.

who would like to see the Ringworld and the Puppeteer Planet?
clap your hands!

They’re afraid that the popularity of Avatar proves that the Bush Doctrine is morally wrong. I don’t think we should discourage them.

Martin nails it.
heres a quote from the bourgie conservatives place…

well…in the review i linked Roy speculates about the second Avatar which is already in the works…..I agree with his take…the Na’vi are a warrior culture…who did they fight before the bush-iraq-war proxies came on the scene?
Unusually for this sort of planetary romance, especially in the movies, the Pandorans are not a monoculture, but a group of societies closely linked by the planet-wide network of plant intelligence. We don’t see much of any of the other groups because Jake spends his time with the Na’vi, but at least they exist—and are there to be shown in the sequels. Similarly, although what we see even of Na’avi society is limited, if Cameron has his way we can expect a far fuller picture. Avatar is a long film but there are limits to the number of narrative points it can address, particularly when its main purpose is to show us an unfallen world, not without its dangers and conflicts—if the Na’vi have warriors, presumably there are Pandoran wars—but preferable to the bleak future which faces us, and which is Jake’s present.
Nuke from space is not a believable storyline …..its kinda like the idea that ‘merica could have turned the arabian peninsula into a plain of black glass and slant drilled under it post 911. PR fail and destroys the resource, but im sure the plan had its advocates in the bush cabinet.
The 3D CG models and tech are reuseable, Spock, so the sequels will cost less.
Culture doesn’t shape people as much as people shape culture according their needs…the themes of Avatar…acculturation, balance of life, unity of existance, oneness of being, are emergent themes in modern science and politics both. SBR and climatology, for example.
There is quite a bit of xian mythos in Avatar…but the “avatars” of true xianity (like Grace Augustine and Trudy Machon)) all side with the Pandorans. And the non-xian mythos triumphs.
If Jake is a messiah figure like Roy postulates, he is also an avatar in the hindu sense….an incarnation of a deity in the form of a human, animal, or mythic figure.
And Quaritch, the avatar of contemporary white evangelical (neocon) xianity….becomes a wholly demonic figure.
So I was wrong…for conservatives, it isnt just race…..it is a rejection of the idea that any culture has the right, biblically authorized duty, or might-privilege to impose its values and needs on another…a pure rejection of white evangelical xianity as exemplified by “democracy promotion” and the Iraq War.

still…the main message is the balance of life.
To respect life, and honor it, without taking sides.
Moro: ‘The Forest Spirit gives life and takes life away. Life and death are his alone to give.’
Neytiri: “Our Great Mother does not take sides, Jake. She protects only the balance of life.”

Like…Sully and Suderman claim to love District 9 but sneer at Avatar. I think this is why.
Avatar is a pure rejection of white evangelical xianity, and everyone knows that conservatism has devolved to a base of white evangelical christians.

Sure, it’s popcorn but it isn’t cheese; and if you really think about it it couldn’t have been done any other way.

Cameron intended for the audience to fall in love with the planet. There’s your plot. And he succeeded in that beyond all prediction. To that end, he offered a straightforward plot and I am thankful that he did.

What was notable to me was the stuff that he didn’t do. I was waiting for that jealous scientist guy to double cross the team because Jake was getting the juice that he himself wanted. That didn’t happen and you know for damn sure that it would have in a more “nuanced” script treatment. Avatar was simply old-school world building without any of the wink-wink pretensions that we’ve become accustomed to.

That doesn’t work all of the time but for Avatar it was the only way to go and it was a glorious experience.

peace

So I hope they all foam at the mouth as loudly as they like and attract lots of attention. It’ll be really good for the country as a whole.

*Felt a little bad for him in “A History of Violence” as that cheesy one-note character only existed to get dusted.
And also Absolute Power as I thought they toned him down to a mensch.

The marines in avatar are not US soldiers, they are mercenaries working for some mega corporation. Its a similar idea to aliens franchise, also James Cameron alien and aliens, giant faceless mega conglomerate pulling all the strings and playing with the characters lives. Its similar to Blackwater and other mercenaries.

The Blackwater mercenaries are paid to replace US soldiers.

Amazing.

(also people complaining about the plot of a movie that haven’t seen is completely asinine. No one says you have to go see it, but you really can’t say anything about the plot of a movie you haven’t seen with any sort of authority)

Yes. I stopped reading at your comment. For those who haven’t seen it, don’t read another thing about it – the plot is simple, the score is completely forgettable, the characters are comic bookish, but SEE IT IN 3D! It’s amazing! It’s beautiful! A week after I saw it, it still gives me a hApPy! That’s what all the reichwing fucktards hate/fear about it – it’s sensuously beautiful and seductive, and it resonates within the heart and mind, and not the lower chakras. Read your Joseph Campbell, people!

The Abyss

A completely underrated and awesome movie. Way ahead of its time.
Great cast, great action. Spotty ending but really watchable and re-watchable, IMO.

Goddammit, you bitch! You never backed away from anything in your life! Now fight!