ChainsawAsh said:
I really don't understand why the political agenda of a film like Avatar prevents people from liking it. I love The Dark Knight, and that film had very conservative undertones. The way I see it, it's there if you want to take it in, but you can ignore it and enjoy the ride if you like.
I also don't understand how environmentalism is "liberal." It's an issue that affects everyone, and guess what? If we keep going the way we're going, we ARE going to seriously fuck up our planet. Just because you don't like that idea doesn't mean you should dislike a movie that says, "Hey, we should probably think a little bit before we do this shit next time.
And I don't see the "This is what humans do!" line as a Bush commentary at all. That is what humans do. Look at what we did to the Native Americans, or Alexander's conquests, or the Nazis, or any other part of human history.
By the way, I'm not trying to attack you personally in any way. I'm just throwing my two cents in the pile.
Weeell, I think it is all in the execution of the politics.
In THE DARK KNIGHT, generic conservatism (or how Hollywood/Liberals tend to perceive conservatives as) isn't exactly trumpeted as the status quo 100% solution; in fact, when Batman starts to beat the Joker up in the police station, the Joker laughs at his attempts to get him to talk; Batman realizes he can't beat the answers out of him. When the Joker DOES answer him (the locations of Harvey and Rachel), he twists the answers knowing/suspecting Batman would go after the woman. In order to defeat the Joker, Batman has to think on his feet and not play by the book (which we learned from DIE HARD a decade earlier).
AVATAR is quite a bit different: NONE of the pro-liberals are depicted as capable of being wrong or shown having to change their tack to solve an issue/problem, while the conservative villians are depicted as equally shoe-horned and cornered into a stereotype, without any ability to think outside of their own playbook.
Even from a logical point of view (outside of politics), AVATAR is extremely stupid:
(1) why doesn't Michelle Rodriguez' character get put into jail as soon as she landed back at the base after blatantly disobeying a direct order from Quattrich (especially considering one of the chief henchmen was in the chopper with her)? Considering that she is the one who busts out Jake and the rest out of jail means that if she was imprisoned BEFORE them, there would be no rescue and no third act.
(2) if the macguffinite is in the floating mountains, why drill under the Na'vi when they could lift the already floating unobtainium mountains into orbit and get what they (the humans) wanted without bothering the Na'vi?
(3) if the Avatar brain waves could penetrate the distortion from the unobtainium, why didn't the humans use similarly designed machines using the same frequency/wavelength as radars and targeting systems? For that matter, why design and spend the money on Avatars when they could have created machines to control/disrupt the Na'vi and other animals by influencing their minds by sending out signals along the same brainwave patterns? I'm sure the humans did plenty of DISTRICT 9ish experiments (and thus would know about the organic USB ports) and would exploit the results appropriate to their simplistic, moustache-twirling characters.
(4) if the humans have "close to lightspeed" travel (as it takes 5 years to travel 5 light years), why are humans 300 years into the future still use bullets and missiles? More so, why do the humans create a makeshift bomb when it's already established that the military/blackwater mercs have professional munitions already? Even so, if the unobtainium is as powerful as suggested, why wasn't the unobtainium used in the bomb?
(5) where are the colonists? Where are the other countries other than the USA? Where is the professional military from multiple countries? If the entirety of the Earth's environment was wrecked to the degree that the entire human race was on the verge of extinction, wouldn't one think that there would be a full-fledged migration to Pandora, with oxygen being spewed out of terra-forming plants, as opposed to black smoke?
To me, for any movie to hold my attention, you have to take your own story seriously enough that at the least you do not violate the rules you set up in your own story. Once characters start to act stupid for the sake of progressing a plot point or a political/philosophical point of view, I give up on the film as either propaganda or pap. You cannot be "taken seriously with a serious message" and still be a popcorn "check your brain at the door and just enjoy it" movie at the same time (SHOOT 'EM UP, I'm looking at you!).
Either you are GLORY, 2012 or (once in a blue moon) DIE HARD, which you can just enjoy as a typical action movie OR find some really interesting and intelligent social commentary.