That’s pretty much my feeling. I think aspects of it could be described as “liberal colonialism vs. conservative colonialism”; i.e., co-opting some of the locals works better than simple brutality, and “development” works better than simple resource extraction.
Just after the movie came out, I tended to react first to the conservative complaints about the movie, but even as I was watching it, the “white savior” BS in the second half of the movie was pretty blatant and disgusting. It simply didn’t make sense that anyone would trust Jake, or that nobody else had ever thought of capturing the big flying critter by dropping on it from above, or that, even after Jake won the Pandoran’s trust, there was any reason he should be leading the resistance.
I understand that a common trope in colonialist literature is that you have a (white) colonizer marrying a native woman and fathering a child who represents the new colonial nation – under colonizer hegemony, of course. So, prediction: Jake and Neytiri have a child, who mysteriously exhibits human traits, and becomes a leader who establishes a recognizable state, presented as a hybrid of the two cultures, that really amounts to selling off Pandora’s resources.
Of course you’re not. And I would have loved to have seen how some of the haters would have reacted to Star Wars when it was released in 1977, if the internet had been in common use then.
I recall my toddler-brother shitting himself with his wide mouth open during a particularly exciting episode of Captain Kangaroo, but I don’t see that as an endorsement.
I haven’t seen Avatar and I probably never will see it. It just doesn’t interest me. Honestly, though, this sort of thing doesn’t generally interest me.
Not that I have perfect taste in movies or anything. But I would fall asleep about half way through, I’m sure. I need more explosions and/or fart jokes.
Try the last third or so. The battle towards the end is fairly epic and you won’t need the first two thirds; “Pocahontas with Smurfs” sums what happened.
With modern polarized 3D glasses (not the old red/blue kind), you can at least watch the movie in 2D with one eye. You still have to wear the glasses, though, and sometimes pay extra for the privilege, so it’s a pain in the ass.
That’s kind of a crap critique from the writer of the piece. If all Thanos cared about was getting the Infinity Stones, why didn’t he grab the Tesseract via the Chitauri when he had the chance in Avengers? And, of course, the writer ignored the Marvel movies that weren’t about them, and it’s not even clear whether the Aether and Loki’s mind-controlling scepter from Avengers are stones (again, Thanos could have used one of his alien proxies to grab it then). Between this and the awful thing that one of their other writers wrote about the Bill Cosby scandal, The Wrap really hasn’t been covering themselves in glory lately.
If you’re going to use brand identity to distinguish between news sources, it would be best if you got the branding right. Now, the Atlantic may be anodyne, but frankly, somedays I could do without Slate’s snark, and the nytimes can’t cover everything. (And before you object, the Wire is basically the Atlantic, but with more frequent updates.)
Man, when I first heard of “Avatar” it was with zero context or description.
My first thought was “Finally, someone is making Ultima movies!” I thought that was a great idea so long as they skip Ultima 8 & did not fail to produce Ultima underground as well.
Man was I ever disappointed even tho I was certain Ultima movies would suck.
