Poll: Avatar - Who did you root for

[twaddle]

the whole movie was remicent of when the europeans came to the america, mainly the spanish searching for gold. the movie is what should have happened but didn't in rela life

 

[The Amazing Tea Alligator]

While I wrote humans, I was actually routing for time. What a long and pretentious, yet stupid and insubstantial movie. Eugh.

The movie was about preservation of nature and the environment, about holding close what we care about and defending family and friends. It's deep, compalling, thoughtful.

So... How do you get Pretentious, stupid, and insubstantial?

It's hardly deep, compelling, or thoughtfull.
All of the characters are hilarious stereotypes, from General Grumpy McSneerFace who grumbles at the camera every time he gets, to the comically blank slate Jake Sully who seems to just be along for the ride, to Sigourney Weaver playing... Sigourney Weaver, to Tsu'tey (sp?) being the archtypical enemy of the protagonist only he suddenly is best buds after he rides a dragon...

So yeah, wasn't impressed with the characters.

As for the story. One of the arguments I get when I say the story is shit is "Well it's not what the story is, but how it's told. There are only X (where X is above ten but still pretty small) stories out there don't-ya-know". This confuses me. I don't care that the story is Dances with Wolves. What I care about is that there are two climaxes - both really boring, hilariously shit dialog (my favourite being "Take.... my.... bow...." I expect that from a direct-to-dvd Disney movie, not something that cost more than the western hemisphere to make.), impossibly underwhelming fight scenes (just a moment...), and as for the love interest - why the hell is what's-her-face even interested in Sully? He's like the most boring person imaginable. Just a plot-convinient slate with which James Cameron can scrawl whatever the fuck he wants. He doesn't really express emotions - just a vague sorta "Hey look at all these pretty lights - wow" aas if he wants the audience to say "wow" as well. Sorry Cameron, I've already seen Felucia before and I paid for a movie not a roller-coaster ride.

Any way, the impossible underwhelming battle scenes.
Compare the end scene. A group of humans is facing off against 20,000 blue things. Should be vaguely intriguing right? Nope. It's just a slaughter. But not an interesting one. Cameron seems to be trying at the heart strings here, but it's jsut not interesting. The blue things seem to be scientifically made for people to like them (which I rather suspect that they were), but it didn't work for me. They were too clean, I kept expecting some savage ritual or cultural artifact to rear it's ugly head, but to no avail.

Anyway, the slaughter. This is an interesting one. We liked the characters and OHGODTHEY'REALLDEAD.

Spoiler: Starts at about 4:50

Then compare that to Avatar's. We didn't know Avatar's characters very well, because they were all stereotypes of the most basic sort.

Anyway. The message is cliched, the movie is poorly presented, the characters dull, and the only good thing about it is "Oooooh shiny colours wow" which doesn't impress me. It's the sort of thing that's designed to be a product, not a movie.

Spoiler: This guy also sums it up nicely if you dont want to read what I wrote - I know I wouldnt.

Also, THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR USING THE PAPYRUS FONT. NO EXCUSE. EVER. EVEREVEREVEREVEREVER.

 

[Assassin Xaero]

Why did everyone root for the Na'vi?

Because the humans were imperialistic, greedy pricks. They wanted to destroy the Na'vi land and take whatever that thing was just to sell it for money. That is like watching District 9 and siding with the douche before he has his change of heart... err... grows a heart...

Obviously not wanting your world's economy to crash and forcing everyone to live in squalor is greed.

Ok, so going by what you are saying, if the American economy plummets due to lack of oil, it is perfectly ok for them to go off and kill everyone in another country and destroy their homes just to get that oil? Yes, putting your WANTS for something to sell over someone elses SURVIVAL is greed.

 

[Celtic_Kerr]

-Snip-

Pulling the heart strings. Um yeah. James Cameron flat out TOLD everyone that this movie was an environmental documentary wrapped up in an action movie. it's a green peace flick, it'a baout preserving nature and the environment. Yes, VERY stereotypical, and I can admit I spent 20 min before i knew it was poca-fuckin-hontas, but it was still a compelling movie to a degree

 

[The Amazing Tea Alligator]

-Snip-

Pulling the heart strings. Um yeah. James Cameron flat out TOLD everyone that this movie was an environmental documentary wrapped up in an action movie. it's a green peace flick, it'a baout preserving nature and the environment. Yes, VERY stereotypical, and I can admit I spent 20 min before i knew it was poca-fuckin-hontas, but it was still a compelling movie to a degree

I didn't find it at all compelling - hence my abbhorent wall of text. I suppose it's a per person thing...

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

Fuck those blue Na'vi hippie bastards.

Humans should've had them bent over a bin and severely raped (figuratively). Besides, surely if Cameron wanted it to be a powerful enviro-hippy film then he should've done just that and showed us humans fucking Pandora over completely.

 

[holographicman]

i voted humans (racism)

but the only reason they were on pandora was to drill the planet for oi.. "unobtanium"
if they had actually had a been terraforming/colonizing pandora because earth's resources had run dry (and they will someday) then they wouldnt have seemed so evil.

but they were only there for money


plus the humans will win in the long term when they come back with a full millitary force and burn everything with orbital lasers

 

[Lionsfan]

I still haven't seen Avatar. So.....uh yeah. But I would probably side with the humans, just cause I feel like being an odd ball out right now

 

[Juk3n]

lol at all the people (and there are alot of you dicks) saying "i know the humans were jerks, and obviously the bad guys, but id side with them out of species loyalty"

Where does that type of thinking stop? Shall we scale it down and see where we can apply it?

'i know the euro-americans were wrong to massacre millions of native americans, but id side with them out of skin colour loyalty'

I know slavery was wrong but id side with the white slave masters out of race loyalty..yay for the douchebag in you all?


Wrong is Wrong - the head human states "this _____ sells for..." implies that it's simply like diamonds here on earth. There was zero indication that they needed it to prevent the extinction of humanity. The human soldiers were goddamn mercinaries, a private military contracted by a company to buy unobtanium and sell it simply to get rich. Thescience team was a privatley funded organization funded by the same people funding the military branch. Who the hell could NOT side with the Na'vi?

 

[AnneSQF]

Jake Sully specifically was a jerk.

Indeed! Jake was a retard.
While watching the movie I didn't root for any of them. I was just like: wooooow 3Deeeeee! And the plot was nothing special so didn't think much about afterward. But now that you mention it:
(Note: I can't remember any of it so I might be wrong)
I guess I was rooting for the human scientist (because science is awesome).
The big badass mech-dudes just annoyed me, they were too flat. Almost WANTING to murder these... blue kittycats.
The Na'vi were cool because of the drakes and memory trees and all that stuff (and they were giant blue cats DAAW!). But again, only a pretty factor.

Truth is it's too long ago and I don't really care about it anymore. Beside the 3D it was nothing really. Didn't set any impact on me at all.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

I voted Glados because the question is culturally biased against Australians... because while to many people it reads as "who did you support/cheer for?" in Strine it reads as "who did you have sex for?".

 

[Jedoro]

The only reference I heard to them wanting it, was that it was crazy valuable. And we don't exactly invade other countries just to get diamonds, or other valuable resources, when the owners don't want to sell it. As for those Marines, it's blind obedience like that, that tends to fuck things up. They weren't out there for the government, they were out there as private security. They just did it for the paycheck, same as Jake at the start.

Yes my friend, sad as it may be, countries do indeed go to war over valuables. Have you ever heard of The Invasion of Kuwait? Blood for oil, a valuable resource that people will kill for. And how about when one country wants land, and the "owners don't want to sell it". Naploleon didn't pack up his bags when he found out that people didn't want to give their land, he conquered them.

I fail to see how "blind obedience" is fucking things up. You'll find that if you enlist in your countries military, it's a whole hell of a lot harder to be disobedient than you might think. You forget that the Marines fighting the Navi were also fighting to stay alive. Maybe in the fairy tale world of avatar, that crippled Marine was given an incredibley unlikely opportunity to go AWOL and it somehow worked. But like I said in real life there aren't any soldiers joining the Iraqis and Afghans and overthrowing America and the coalition. That shit doesn't happen. It can't happen.

It all goes back to the writing, in that the humans are evil and the mystical aliens are perfection. In real life, military organizations are all government controlled, so those men wouldn't have been mercenaries or whatever you say they are. And you'll find that the military doesn't pay you shit, nobody's doing it for the paycheck.

Haha all this over that stupid movie I didn't even like.

Okay, you've got a point on the resources thing, but nowadays we can at least come up with a bullshit reason for invading, like going to war against terrorism.

And I actually did enlist. I had a contract with a $40,000 bonus in the Infantry, and I had Airborne School and Ranger Indoctrination Program guaranteed. As in, I would've walked out of Infantry OSUT and stepped into Airborne School next door, no questions asked, and then gone straight into the Rangers right after. But, I didn't like the level of obedience required, so I got out before I finished OSUT. It's hard, but not impossible.

Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are hunting terrorists, not people who just want to be left alone. They're killing people who are actively trying to kill them and anyone else who doesn't believe what they do; quite different than a war for profit. Yeah, there's most likely some profit involved for the higher-ups, but at least the grunts have a legit reason to be there.

Ever heard of Blackwater? Yeah, government contracted, but not government controlled. Even today, there are private corporations that might as well be infantry units, but they're not under government control except for having to obey the law, like everyone else. If you get the right licenses, it's absolutely possible to have people that well-armed under private control.

No hard feelings, man, just debating our opinions.

 

[Redem]

I voted Glados because the question is culturally biased against Australians... because while to many people it reads as "who did you support/cheer for?" in Strine it reads as "who did you have sex for?".

I think that may apply to the avatar-verse

 

[Dexiro]

I don't get why anyone would root for the Humans. Even if you consider the Na'vi to be in the wrong for whatever reason you can't deny that they were the less of 2 evils.

If you were living in absolute paradise with no problems and a stable way of life, would you want some dickhead alien race invading your planet and stripping it bare? I think i'd be pretty pissed.

 

[Nemesis729]

OP Did you see the movie? lol I dont have a lot of time but lets say god was real, what the humans were doing was killing the god they loved and the planet they lived on, if they didnt fight back they would have died

 

[CRoone]

...You know, I'll be honest here. Avatar was an okay movie, for what it was. I didn't go in expecting a Magnum Opus, but I gave it enough benefit-of-the-doubt to not assume it would be a Polished Turd, either.

But come on. PEOPLE. Just because one military commander got gun-happy, all of Humanity must be damned as so irredeemably evil? Just because we're not as cute and free as the Blue Cat-People? Is our world - in Real Life - so dystopic that we must automatically side with the animals, superstitious primitives, and everybody else who isn't the representation of *us* in a film? Life on earth sucks, I get it! That doesn't mean we have to be evil just because of one man's actions, or because of our need to take the resources of others in order to survive.

Let me ask something of the Na'vi Supporters (this is a rhetorical and hypothetical question, by the way, so don't answer it):
If you could go back in time and meet the first caveman, and he had trapped a cute doe deer in a rocky corner between a crag and a cliff, would you kick the caveman off the cliff to save the cute little deer?
If so, then *you* wouldn't be here right now.
*None* of us would.
Think about that for a moment.

OFFICIALLY, my stance is Neutral. But unofficially...Hollywood and the rest of the hippies in the audience as a whole need to think on that scenario a bit. We're not evil just because we have to eat to survive, even if sometimes our dinner had a face thirty minutes prior.

 

[Life_Is_A_Mess]

None. It all looked too much like Space Pocahontas to me.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

I voted Glados because the question is culturally biased against Australians... because while to many people it reads as "who did you support/cheer for?" in Strine it reads as "who did you have sex for?".

I think that may apply to the avatar-verse

No, that would be "Who would you have sex with?"


Also, I am disappointed there is no I HOPE A XENOMORPH EATS JAMES CAMERON'S HEAD option in the pole.

 

[Valkyrie101]

Well it's a choice between civilized humans, or primitive aliens. Who's going to work out better in the long run? The humans can advance and progress, the blue things will simply stagnate. Therefore, the humans deserve the resources.

 

[rokkolpo]

I do find it funny though how the humans lose one battle and have to retreat home. You know, they've spent ages trying to get this Unobtainium or whatever it's ridiculously called, and after just one battle they return home...you know, despite this being the most valuable energy source EVER. I think there was a Cracked article on it somewhere....

i woudn't come back if a fucking dinosaur was flying around.