Why It’s OK for Conservatives to Enjoy Avatar
With more than a billion dollars in global ticket sales, Avatar can’t be ignored as a cultural chord that is resonating around the planet. And anytime a movie sells more than $350 million worth of domestic tickets, it seems safe to say that a lot of American conservatives are lining up to see it. Are we being tricked into paying to see an ecologically correct story about imperialism, military brutality, and corporate greed? Or should we just shut up and enjoy the film like everyone else? I say the latter, despite the movie’s overtly partisan politics.
Although some liberals deny that director James Cameron has loaded up the left side of the scale, all doubt is expunged when the evil Marine commander (Stephen Lang) commands his troops to “fight terror with terror” (the phrase “shock and awe” is used, too) by attacking the peaceful, innocent blue sweeties, the Na’vi, who ask only to continue living in the tree/goddess/apartment complex they call home. The Marines are tools of a heartless corporation dedicated to mining the invaluable resource under the tree, called “unobtainium.”
The jokey name of that mineral, though, should clue you in: the movie (unlike the much more deeply thought-out The Dark Knight, with its fiercely argued gloss on the Bush years) is not to be taken as an earnest parable for our times. As the Joker might put it to conservatives who don’t like Avatar: why so serious?
Cameron probably felt that he was landing a few swift jabs to the Bush presidency, military contractors, the oil companies, etc. But he has his priorities in order. All of those elements are background. The movie is a thrilling adventure and a fantastically vivid fantasia. Its politics essentially boil down to three cheers for the plucky little guy and a big fat raspberry to the all-powerful system.
There’s a reason why that theme works so well, in so many movies from the Charlie Chaplin era all the way up to Transformers, one of whose hero-bots is named “Bumblebee.” It’s universal and it has equal pull with left and right. Who doesn’t think of himself as a brave, resourceful soul up against daunting odds? From tea partiers fighting the government blob all the way to the head of that blob (President Obama, who during his health care campaign kept portraying himself as the little guy’s defender against evil insurers), everyone wants to be the underdog. Nobody wants to make or see movies about loving the overdog.
A very weak defence of Cameron’s b-rate flick. The idiot is simply applying a different script to shower the ignorant and infantile viewer with the senseless, irrational violence, exactly as he did in his previous movies; Terminator and Aliens.
It helps to make lots of money.
But so do NARCOTICS…
Appart from that, the script is not at all original and has been stolen from someone alse.
Some thirty (or more) years ago, I read a sci-fi short story depicting, almost exactly the same planet showed in Cameron’s garbage.
So he certainly HAS STOLEN some else’s intellectual property.
I also read that he had stolen the idea of the liquid robot we saw in the Terminator II.
In that case, he is a thief and a quasi artist; all those special effect have been done for him by other guys.
Maybe he is not a pacifist.
But the COMMUNO-FASCTSTS and their slightly more benevolent cousins, social-democrats have never been true pacifists either.
They play pacifists only when AMERICA is trying to help other people in their drive for FREEDOM.
Cameron and his SOVIET-WOODIAN companions are playing exactly the same EVIL play as their predecessor, Noni Riefenstahl – Hitler’s most prominent filmaker and a propagandist.
Come on people, it’s a good movie. Leave your POLITICAL garbage at the door. The scenery in the movie is almost breath taking. Consider the story line for just what it is; a story line in a movie. I wonder what people would be saying if Alice in Wonderland were to be released today. Well, the “new” version is but, I mean the old one, the good one. Maybe folks would be saying the same thing about Old Yeller. Get a life!!
As I told a friend years ago when he recommended I see “Rocky” because it was about an “underdog” who wins, “I’ve never been very underdoggie.” I’m still not so I guess I won’t be seeing “Avatar.” Course, I don’t much like dogs – period – especially not to eat. Some Sioux still eat dog. And old joke around the Res is that a Sioux seven-course meal is a dog and a six-pack.
But … politics are only the secondary reason I hate this film. The primary is that it’s just stupid.
Mein Kampf was popular as well.
As the Joker might put it to conservatives who don’t like Avatar: why so serious?
Exactly
The movie is a thrilling adventure and a fantastically vivid fantasia. Its politics essentially boil down to three cheers for the plucky little guy and a big fat raspberry to the all-powerful system.
Exactly
Signed,
~Loved Avatar and think Cameron is damn near a genius for making it
I went to see this movie yesterday. There were a lot of kids in the audience. This movie teaches them that the military is bad, the natives are stewards of the land, etc. These kids will absorb these messages as a basis for their worldview. The fact that the messages in this movie are completely at odds with fact will escape them completely. These messages are pounded relentlessly throughout the movie. In a word, it’s simplistic. And, like most simplistic plots, it makes for a bad movie. How likely is it in the future that people would adopt 19th century thinking about other cultures? And, if they did, wouldn’t they just “nuke it from orbit” and send in the mining machines? The military in this movie, despite having overwhelming force at their command, does the following: They use Vietnam era machine guns, they use rotor driven aircraft (because the Na’vi can’t fly against jets of course), they bunch their forces, they have no top air cover, etc, etc. I mean really! Anyone in the military would see this movie as a comedy. About all you can say is the animation is great and the 3D gives you a headache. Or maybe it was just Cameron’s relentless pounding of his politics on the heads of the audience.
in the previews the thng looks like bad cgi married to a simple and annoyng plot.
Since it’s a fantasy movie, if you can’t suspend disbelief you’re probably not going to love it. On the other hand, since it’s a fantasy movie, there’s really not a whole lot of lessons you can take from it and apply to the real world.
If you can sit back, let go, and relax, it’s really a fantastic (fantasy) movie.
I enjoyed the special effects. I would of liked it better in a planetarium with some good music and good weed.
It is a common theme in liberal movies to distort the paradigm of good vs. evil. I left the movie with that same old Rachel Maddow sarcastic tongue lashing “ohhh ok….wow…you are so stupid..hmmm…typical Republican”
I can ignore it when it is subtle, but when it is a constant overtly barating lesson from the left, it is nausiating. It is very difficult to enjoy a movie that is insulting America.
I would not recommend this film to anyone. Just wait til the technology reaches a better story.
Come on…the movie is successful because of the amazing optics. I saw it with my wife the other week, while i enjoyed the spectacular optics, i think the story could have been written by any 13-year old who saw Pocahontas. My wife actually fell asleep after half an hour.
I love this . .. “Why it’s OK for conservatives to enjoy Avatar.”
We all know the talking points are handed down to you from the Limbaugh/Ailes/Rove godhead. But really, do you need permission to watch and enjoy a movie? Next up, “A Tea Bagger’s Guide to Ham Sandwiches: When, Where and How Much.”
I think you folks need to develop a spine and start thinking for yourselves.
If they ever made any movie, no matter how technically impressive, with a proper pro-American, or pro-free market, or in any way anti-leftwing message, you can be damn sure that the libs wouldn’t be sitting around, stroking their chins, pronouncing such fatuities as “hey, c’mon, guys, lighten up — enjoy the special effects, it’s just a fantasy, anyway — why does everything always have to be taken so politically?!”
Damn right, they wouldn’t. So why the hell are we expected to?
But of course, such movies never get made in the first place, so the question is, sadly, moot.
But meanwhile, we don’t have to swallow this stuff, and pretend the message “means nothing”, and smile. Bullcrap to that.
So I say stay away from this movie. And rent “Hamburger Hill” instead.
The movie was pretty, but also pretty boring. I sooo wanted this to be great, it wasn’t. Predictable, long, slow, it had its moments but they really were moments. There were very few surprises for the viewer, except maybe for a very young child who hasn’t seen many movies.
In terms of conservatyives, the story line is not the problem. I can enjoy a film about ecology, corporate greed and evil soldiers. On top of being boring, it’s the direct negative references to “shock and awe” and “fighting terror with terror”. Neither statement by the way fit the movie they were just inserted.
Liberals keep saying Avatar is just fiction and we should enjoy it for that, but it is interesting we never see movies where an evil government that controls all aspects of its own society seeks to conquer an idyllic people and impose its way of life on them by seizing all private property, suppressing freedom of speech, and forcing the citizens onto collective farms or engage in slave labor in government owned factories. That is far closer to what has actually happened in the past than the Avatar fantasy.
Are we being tricked into paying to see an ecologically correct story about imperialism, military brutality, and corporate greed? Or should we just shut up and enjoy the film like everyone else? I say the latter, despite the movie’s overtly partisan politics.
You’d have to be one dumb monkey to think that people are “tricking” you into seeing movies. Whoa. That’s like no cortex dumb.
“[A]s close as any movie of the decade to holding a place in the popular imagination akin to the one Star Wars held for children of the 1970s.” What? Did Mr. Boot miss the “Lord of the Rings” movies which, together, grossed about $3 billion and which–together with the Tolkien books and lengendarium–comprise a fiction and fantasy world that far surpasses not only “Star Wars” but anything that any Cameron movie, no matter how lucrative, can hope to accomplish?
“As I told a friend years ago when he recommended I see “Rocky” because it was about an “underdog” who wins…”
Ah, but that’s the best part of Rocky – it’s about an underdog who LOSES. For some reason most people who have seen the movie don’t seem to remember that.
I didn’t dislike Avatar because of the message, I disliked it because it had cardboard characters and a shallow plot that the admittedly pretty impressive visual effects couldn’t hide. I don’t have to agree with a movie’s message to like it; Kelly’s Heroes is probably my favorite movie of all time.
I think this illustrates the differences in a liberal and a conservative mind. As a conservative, I found it tedious to follow the formula script that has been written over and over. Are we to believe that we wouldn’t send more marines if a company couldn’t beat a bunch of primatives? A battle over one tree doesn’t make a war. We have defeated primitives for centuries and tried to drag them kicking and screaming into the 21st century and they end up on skid row with a bottle of Thunderbird. Why wouldn’t any thinking person take the money and go snorkling with your blue kids in the Bahama’s instead of fighting a war with arrows?
OTOH, a liberal watches the movie and says,” Hey, it could happen. This is why we have a Health bill that adds 47 million( yes, that’s right, illegals will get it), and saves money. They live in a fantasy world and get beat up on the play ground. These rediculous people are fighting battles that don’t even exist. If we just close Gitmo, we could all just get along.
“You’d have to be one dumb monkey to think that people are “tricking” you into seeing movies.”
The whole point of advertising is to trick you into seeing movies, or trick you into buying fast food, or whatever they’re attempting to sell.
You’re one gullible monkey if you don’t get that.
To Stevemmm:
Oliver Stone is working on making Hitler/Mao/Stalin and others be put “in context”. If it wern’t so serious, maybe it could be a comedy. How I murdered 20 million people, but it was for their own good.
MMD: “Leave your POLITICAL garbage at the door.”
It would be a better movie if Cameron took your advise.
gordo: You are bringing back memories of how horribly Hollywood mangled “Starship Troopers.” In terms of weapons and tactics it may be the worst movie ever made. And it warped every point Heinlein made, giving a liberal skew to a Libertarian story.
#17
I agree. The Lord of the Rings trilogy was far more interesting, complex, and the special effects were on par. The story of good vs. evil is very clear, while Cameron’s story is a liberal blur.
Biggest difference between LOTR and wanna-be competitors like Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean and Avatar is that the story has a well-developed WORLD behind it, as well as well-devised and deep characters, courtesy of a certain professor of Anglo-Saxon’s genius. Star Wars, PofC and Avatar are just supercharged movie scripts, by contrast.
Aw, geez, I expect liberals to blab to me that it’s only a movie, but I thought conservatives believed Richard Weaver when he warned us that ideas have consequences. We are, as that book title warns us, entertaining ourselves to death.
@ 23. Old Soldier: HollyWarped novels
See also the Lynching of Dune, which
deliberately mocked the novel’s theme:
Mankind improved by mastering technology.
Which, amusingly enough considering the
comments above by the SF challenged, is
one theme of Avatar: The Na’Vi are much
more advanced than the Terrans; They
lofted the floating mountains long ago,
at the end of their hard tech era, just
before they mastered the coincidence
control which enabled them to bring in
a Loser from Terra, and transform him
into a Hero who saves the day.
Frodo Baggins saves the world, again.
@ 19. Chuck: Conservative(?) Colonialists Rule !
Yeah, right; If the Na’Vi World Mind
had not seen a way to send the Terrans
home, She would have sent a plague
to Terra; Game over.
In real life: Cameron used Shakespeare’s strategy;
Layer the play, so there is something for everyone.
There is nothing wrong with just not going to see hollywood liberal productions until they stop putting their leftist, communist pro homo anything straight white and male is evil crap into it.
Needless to say, the last time I gave them any money, it was $2.50 for a ticket. I care less about them than they do about me. The bottom line, they need me, I don’t need them. Care to guess who wins that?
Keep your cash. Then you’ll see just how far the bullshit goes.
dh
I do not understand why it is so important to the lefty liberals that I spend my hard earned money to see this movie. In fact I can not remember a movie that these people were so “insistant” that I go see. I have no desire to see this movie-the story line is not appealing to me and the “special effects” have never been a selling point of a movie to me. Quite frankly this movie has a low entertainemnt value and an high aggrivation from having to sit through hours of lefty liberal propaganda factor for it to be worth spending my money and time to do so.
I would rather buy the DVD’s of season 11 and 12 of “Top Gear” then spend that money on seeing this piece of propaganda.
American society has truly jumped the shark if we need lectures on how it’s okay to see a blockbuster everyone knows – or should know – is pure fantasy. I mean, really. Aren’t there more important things to put energy into… like fixing public education so that when kids see stuff like this they actually have to suspend disbelief because they can see it doesn’t represent reality or anything close to it? That’d be a good use of Applied Phlebotinum.
I have to agree with Moho and, to an extent, Boot on this one. I haven’t seen Avatar, but Aliens is still my favorite movie of all time DESPITE the fact that Cameron makes the elite Colonial Marines out to be a bunch of bumbling fools in that film. As gordo notes, anyone with military experience sees that sort of thing as comedy. I suspect I’ll enjoy Avatar too… as long as the Na’Vi species is less annoying than Jar-Jar Binks.
Thanks, but we didn’t need your permission to enjoy an unenjoyable movie.
You saying it’s OK does not make those of us who hated the movie say “Really?? We can?? *phew!”
It’s tired, boring, redundant, and has an insipid premise problem as to how we should look at certain groups of people. Couldn’t stand it before you said it was “ok to like”… still can’t stand it now.
I saw the movie yesterday with my wife and sons who are 20 and 18 years old. They are at the prime age for liberal socialist indoctrination.
So, how were they able to see the brilliant fantasy (weak story aside), mind-expanding computer graphics (no weed necessary)as well as the overt spiritual message without leaving the cinema as an angry liberal, collectivist, socialist, marxist etc.?
Easy, they have well rounded PARENTS that have talked to them about ALL aspects of human nature (good, bad & ugly) and now, as young adults, they aren’t easily swayed by propoganda from either side of the philosophical debate.
Our family is deeply spiritual (not religious, there’s a difference), lifelong ecologists (who hunt, fish, hike and camp), generational American Patriots and I am a sworn defender of the U.S. Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic. We enjoyed the movie and as they say, “We ate the fish and spit out the bones.”
One thing I despise about movies is the arrogant conceit that the film maker is going to tell me whom I should see as the good guy & whom I should see as the bad guy. I’m SUPPOSED to be happy that the main character turns on his military.
I sit there & think, who do these people think they are?!
THEY’RE going to deteremine my reaction on account of a lousy script, sad emotional glances & stringy music? Suddenly THAT’S going to make me decide who has the moral high ground?
It’s insulting.
This movie appeals to the easily amused. Of course, it’s visually stunning. But aside from being absurdly unoriginal, the story is long-winded, boring, & simply not very fun.
If you compare it to Star Wars, you couldn’t help but jump out of your seat at the defeat of the Empire.
This movie had no such moments at all. It’s actual INTENTION was not to elicit such a reaction, but rather to somehow make you feel bad or make you feel guilty.
Since I don’t suffer from guilt, this movie does not work on me.
It has nothing to do with some obstinate refusal to let go of political baggage & enjoy a movie.
You can’t FORCE someone to enjoy the unenjoyable.
This movie is made by & appeals to people with self-righteousness issues. They want to tell us that they see flaws in ourselves & in our established systems/beliefs that we are unable to see. There is an appeal to such a mindset. Where one tells oneself “I am greater for being able to see what most are blind to”. These are such who wish to establish moral superiority. We should change according to their self-aggrandized prophetic word & social observance into something that James Cameron would find more morally appropriate.
This is not the recipe for an ENJOYABLE movie. It’s a sermon. And I’ll take my sermons from those more morally qualified than a Hollywood filmmaker.
Nope. Not gonna do it. Global Warming liberal fascist propaganda that no amount of 32D graphics can rescue. Let the sanctimonious phony liberals have their semi-literate masturbatory festivals. eye-candy. Environmentalism is fraud.
Given where America is today, I find it bizarre that some still think that propaganda films films like Avatar are harmless.
We are looking at the culmination of a couple of generations of this “harmlessness” and we have just about lost the country over it.
If we really wnat change, no conservative should give people like Cameron 1 cent of their money.
I loved this movie. Saw it three times already, will see it more times.
As for my political inclinations, they’re rather simple. On foreign policy I’d maintain strict neutrality and free trade. If any nation gave us any trouble we should blast them to dust with nukes, plasma bombs, lasers, nanobots, whatever it takes. And on the domestic front if the Federal government so much as looks at our liberties or property crossways I’d do the same to them.
Now I could point out just as many conservative morals in this film as there are liberal plot points, but what’s the point? As if anybody is going to see or not see this movie based on that? I do respect the opinions both pro and con of the people who’ve seen it already and have judged for themselves. I wonder about the people haven’t seen it and seem to passionately attach all manner of emotions to the film. It’s a movie, but a lot of people are determined to turn it into a 3-D Rorschach test.
What’s to enjoy about it? It sucked. It’s literally one of the worst movies ever made. The special effects were especially terrible. Failatar and Battlefield Earth are the only two movies I’ve ever wanted to walk out of half way through. If I wanted to watch Danced with Wolves in Space I’d… well no, I don’t.
Show some backbone — don’t you know that the Progressive High Command has forbidden all of its members from watching any movie with John Wayne, Charlton Heston, Jimmy Stewart, or Mel Gibson?
Being in a distant-cousin field to Boot here, I had to go see it. Put on your 3D glasses and dumb yourself down for a few hours and enjoy the show. Don’t pay too close attention; if you do the whole thing collapses from its built-in idiocy. At points I failed to follow this advice and started laughing, which got a prompt elbow in my side from my wife.
Two words, Susan Sarandon. Enough said.
Yeah, sure, Cameron uses every movie cliché ever invented, but this is nothing new. Clichés are movie making shorthand. Avatar is visually stunning and very entertaining. Pay the extra $$ and see it in 3D.
I went to see it. I thought the political stuff was as subtle as a chainsaw, but the really lame political crap only lasted a few moments, so whatever.
The real problem is that the plot was feeble and lame, and too much of a slave to its allegory. i mean let me ask a simple question: why didn’t they just nuke the aliens from orbit? I’m not saying Cameron couldn’t have cooked up an answer, but i wanted to hear it. So why not?
By comparison i just saw District 9. Its funny how the themes are kind of similar, without a bunch of sappy silliness. and indeed, the politics is not quite as one sided. i am sure the average liberal cringes a little when they set the aliens’ eggs on fire and they jokingly call it “abortions.” And moreover, the movie just isn’t a slave to its metaphor. i mean there is alot that goes on that really doesn’t line up with any any racial metaphor.
So on balance, District 9 presents a version of the world that is both weird and really plausible at the same time. By comparison the audiences in Avatar can see how stacked the decks is and i think it suffers because of that.
But at the same time, there is genuine wonder in avatar. it’s not a bad movie, its just that it is alot of big “boom boom” and a few scenes of genuine alien wonder, but in a plot whose every turn you see coming like 3 miles away.
I mean come on James, mix it up a little. We can deal with special effects and an interesting plot. we proved it with the abyss, aliens, and T2.
First, the whole theme of the movie is anti-American, anti-military, pro-Islamic jihadi and pro-pagan.
Even the Marines have called it out on its anti-military attitude. http://marinecorpstimes.com/news/2010/01/marine_avatar_010810w/
No conservative should patronize such propoganda.
As one man so eloquently put it somewhere else; Avatar is a beautiful piece of sh*t.
For comic relief, Skeeziks (#12), tells us to “develop a spine and start thinking for yourselves”. You mean like Liberals? I guess no one should publish any opinion about anything then.
I agree that the LOTR trilogy is far superior. Tolkien created a fantasy world that is rich in detail and, once you accept the basic premise of Middle Earth, the story elements and characters are entirely plausible.
All fantasy stories require some suspension of disbelief, but the number of times you must summon this up has to be reasonably limited. I think there is a tipping point for everyone where you say – enough. For example I cannot get more than two or three scenes into a Harry Potter movie without thinking that I am listening to the fantasy ramblings of an 8 year old.
.
“Cheering on the upstarts of Na’vi shouldn’t be any more troubling to you than cheering on Luke and Han.”
Er, no, actually it is troubling. Think, think, think. Luke and Han are HUMAN GOOD GUYS. Avatars only has HUMAN BAD GUYS. Oh, except for the doppleganger, who learns to hate his own race as evil. Gee, somehow I didn’t get that message watching Star Wars.
“Hate yourself and your race”, Hollywood’s new trend in sci-fi movies. I skipped “Battle for Terra” for the same reason. This simplistic mind rot is just more wacko environmentalist propaganda, written by losers with no respect for the military or facts.
Thanks, but I’ll watch the original Planet of the Apes again, instead.
The movie is PC BS squared. Don’t waste your money.
This is quite possibly one of the worst defenses of Avatar that I have ever read. We should like it because we stick up for the little guy? What if the little guy is wrong? Aren’t the blue skins just as guilty of being warmongers to go after the Marines without trying to come to a peaceful resolution? Or is the Left hypocrites when it comes to war: it’s okay to kill a bunch of American soldiers because they are fighting for “freedom”?
Avatar is another classic example of the Left telling others to hate themselves and loathe capitalism and Christianity and trade these in for the Left’s preferred intellectual ideas. Of course, they won’t give you these ideas for free and you are expected to pay them. So why do Americans feel the need to constantly view movies in which they are viewed with contempt?
Avatar has done fine without me watching it. It will continue to do so as well.
Great job, guys. I hear that the boycott of Avatar has been really effective. Keep up the good work.
Hey, #32 Cal Patriot. Good for you and yours, but don’t dislocate your shoulder, patting yourself on the back.
#49, Dwight, you’ll have to remind me where there was a request for people to boycott Avatar. I just see some people exercising their right to take their money elsewhere. Isn’t that what capitalism is about (among many things)?
If other people liked the movie, fine. I choose not to support those movies where the plotline always has America and corporations as the bad guy.
Any one with a functioning brain should hate Avatar. What story there is is vapid, the characters are uninteresting, and the CGI is boring with nothing for it to tell. Even when this movie wasn’t pissing me off with its jabs at America, corporations, soldiers etc (I’m used to it by now) it was putting me to sleep. Not one character is interesting and nothing they do isn’t either telegraphed or arbitrary.
What happened in this movie? Nothing happens that changes anything, and the sequel plea is as pathetic as everything else.
The only way to watch this movie is stoned so you don’t notice the time, the emptiness of the plot, the pat dialogue, and just watch the colors drifting by.
Its an aquarium movie, and frankly I’ve even seen better of those.
Think, pink, think. Think Na’vi are documentable case of inbreeding. Genetic link to single tree and mind/body transplantation of human may confirm this theory. Where to get funding for research…
No comparison with Star Wars. That movie was pure escapism – something people desired after living through Vietnam, Watergate, the inglorious and violent end of the 60s, and of course suffering from the famous “malaise.” It offered a simple, fairy-tale formula of good vs. evil – it didn’t target anyone or anything identifiable as Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, at least not without a considerable stretch of the imagination.
Avatar, on the other hand, is very pointed in its criticism. The enemy is not some evil, yet very fictional, star empire. The enemy is US – human beings doing things that James Cameron disapproves of.
Sorry, dude – I get enough guilt from my mother. I don’t need Nana Cameron telling me what else is wrong with me. Or my country. Or my civilization. Or my species. I’ll leave him and his millions of acolytes to wallow in their collective guilt without me.
46. Finieous: Only one human good guy
Unable to count on your fingers, or sexist you are ?
I still say that was Cameron’s second waste
of a perfectly good Latina Warrior-woman, and
Sigourney Weaver channeling Dian Fossey was
worth watching.
Original is good: Rollerball is so -PC,
it is a miracle it got made; Individual
wins out over group; Excuse me ?
I’m confused, am I supposed to like Avatar or not. I need some counsel. Please advise. I don’t want to do anything that would compromise our moral standing.
Avatar was such a perfect “green” movie that even the plot was recycled (rim shot).
It was also absolutely beautiful, like walking into a Maxfield Parrish painting with a little rush of Orange Sunshine to make everything vibrate. So I lose the conservative purist contest here. Some of y’all OTOH are starting to sound like a bunch of jihadis. Relax. Remember to breathe. . .
I enjoyed the film but I must point out: In addition to the standard Hollywood cliches, Avatar perpetuates the myth of “noble savages” living peacefully in harmony with nature and each other. Truth is, there never was any such thing. The history of indigenous tribes around the world was constant warfare and unspeakable savagery. Tribes not fierce enough to repel invaders were wiped out. The lucky ones were those killed in battle. Survivors were enslaved, tortured and/or killed.
I had some fun by making up two stories and telling them to two very liberal friends. It was apparent they saw the movie and enjoyed its green message. Its interesting how they took this fantasy and applied the plot to what they think is happening here and now. I told them I was very surprised at that since the (MADE UP SUBTITLED DIALOGIUE BY ME) by the Na’vi showed their desire to deny the miners “unobtainium,” a mineral that when brought back to the universe could end world hunger and disease. I told the other person that “unobtainium” would provide fuel that would solve the climate issues in our world.
They believed me when they thought they missed the subtitled lines. Needless to say their attitude toward the movie changed when confronting that dilemma.
It was a fun movie to watch but way to much stereotype PC.
the movie was entertaining and visually impressive. but that is all.
the story is old and really not tied together in any semblance of reality. ..it had great potential and sorely failed to meet it’s potential.
as with other movies that have a left wing bent to them this one espouses the greatness of nature and community and the downtrodden victims.
that said the real heroes are the individuals and the honest brokers.
this duplicity of thought and action don’t seem to bother the left wing/socialists/marxists. They are the same old tired lies of Lenin and Stalin.
to a critical thinker the movie is entertainment and nothing more, to the susceptible, to the youth it is pure propaganda. (I have no idea if it is intentional or just a reflection of the duplicitous world view of the director and writers).
#49 Dwight – “Great job, guys. I hear that the boycott of Avatar has been really effective. Keep up the good work.”
Hey, #32 Cal Patriot. Good for you and yours, but don’t dislocate your shoulder, patting yourself on the back.
Did I hurt your socialist feelings Dwight? Your sarcasm concerning the “boycott” was clever. Your weak (liberal, socialist) attempt to diminish proper parenting is just pathetic.
This illustrates, quite possibly, the most glaring character flaw of liberals like yourself… your love of self above all else (as witnessed in Cameron’s Avatar).
So Dwight, when it’s all said and done, your just a small minded person who obviously had parents that failed in your instruction. How else can you explain your disconnect from sincerity?
P.S. Don’t try to explain yourself, we are sick of witnessing your blather at every level of government and liberal media in this great country of ours.
My wife and I saw the movie, ’cause we had free tickets. Visually, it is incredible; in terms of plot, all I could think of was the military professionals I have known over the years, and how they would react to seeing themselves portrayed as homocidial lunatics. Then I got to thinking about the mindset that sees portraying American military professionals as homocidial lunatics as High Art…
“Avatar” does look great, but otherwise is a big steaming pile of unorginal progressive garbage.
First point: In name of what a bunch of half learned, drug using, promiscuous, teenage raping actors and directors (cf how they closed ranks around Polanski) most of them heavy dinkers thinks they are so intelligent, learned and moral they have the right to enlighten us about good and evil alongside with indoctrinating us in their values?
Second point: In name what, we, the people, those who commute, go to work and know the price of things in addition of having degrees in engineering, programming or hard science, should we accept a bunch of halfwits indoctrinating us and what is worse having indoctrinating our children in ideas who are contrary to our own and who in a few years will translate in votes for the left? In the name of what should we accept the voice of some people just because they hold positions in the MSM and entertainment industry, being more potent than a million of our own despite those people being neither elected nor worthy of respect?
Third point: When an adult indoctrinates children and teenagers in addition doing it covertly instead of through meetings or similar shouldn’t we consider this as political pedophilia and look at it with disgust?
Isn’t it high time we rebel against the Michael Moores, Dan Rathers, Oliver Stones, James Camerons who through lies and propaganda pretend to tell us what to think?