Jaime_Wolf said:
Let me see if I understand you - you want the humans to come back to get revenge for their casualties that occured when they decided that the native people's lives didn't matter and it was completely acceptable to firebomb their entire city-state?
I will never understand the people who are angry that the humans lost. Not only was it plausable (as people said, they were PMCs, they didn't have nukes), it was morally satisfying. The humans showed up on a planet they had no claim to, adopted a militant stance from the very beginning, told the people already there that they didn't really matter, were largely left alone even then, and then decided that that wasn't enough and they needed to get at a particular spot under the dwelling place of an entire city-state. Then, after the natives said that they weren't interested in leaving, their solution was to go all Dresden on the place. But I digress, clearly the humans didn't deserve to lose.
I don't think you get it, the details get lost and light-years away all America sees is "mining operation attacked and driven away by hostile aliens", there is the matter of principal. They gotta send the Marines in.
I'm not saying I agree with it, I'm just saying it should happen to make a decent story. If James Cameron is using Avatar as a metaphor for America indigenous Indians, he's only told half the story. The truth is after the battle of Little Big-Horn where US forces were so roundly defeated that lead a massive military campaign that utterly crushed any further Indian Military strength.
The Na'vi don't deserve a happy ending, at least no better than the Native Americans did. It's cheap and just way too neat.
See my problem is the humans did exactly what James Cameron told them to do and showed what he wanted. It was pretty cheap how underhandedly to used every hackneyed trick in the book to make it a moral victory. Really the victory is hollow because the villains were just unbelievable and contrived. Compare and contrast to District 9 which covers almost the EXACT SAME subject matter and themes yet is SUBTLE and clever about it rather than using every cliche in the book.
What should have happened at the end of Avatar is when the Na'vi got into the human compound they massacre every human there. As BULL-FUCKING-SHIT do all the meanest warriors of a species risk their lives, have their heritage almost completely destroyed and lose so many of their comrades... and THEN take prisoners? And THEN release them with just some empty warning never to come back? No! They never took prisoners before, and Mr New Blue couldn't stop them continue killing after egging them on before. These aren't highly disciplined soldiers. Humans have REGULARLY committed genocide for far less than that only to the Na'vi it wouldn't even be genocide, it would be just a cull of highly destructive pests.
But the breakthrough happens off screen, and Cameron contrives a moral victory that is more one sided than a freaking GI Joe episode, only is so freaking sanctimonious about it.
So contrived.
And the "largest source of unobtanium right under their City tree"
WHAT DA FAAAAACK!
That's is utterly contrived writing to have an excuse to make the humans look bad. All throughout the movie it is full of bullshit you can see the god-like director pulling strings to stack EVERYTHING towards siding with the Na'vi and against the human miners. Really, Star Wars' Galactic Empire were shown in a better light
I'll tell you who is to blame for blowing up that tree: James Cameron. Because he said it was RIGHT THERE under that tree, the odds are RIDICULOUS, he (like a god) put it there. The humans here are a liberal's straw man.
I'd have accepted just racist style species-ism better than that. A case of "they attacked us, lets attack them" escalation and explore the universal relevance of conflict arising from a spiral of violence. But no. They got to be as blunt as blowing up their fucking tree, give no moral ambiguity AT ALL!
