"This was a driving force for me in the writing of 'Avatar' — I couldn't help but think that if they [the Lakota Sioux] had had a time-window and they could see the future … and they could see their kids committing suicide at the highest suicide rates in the nation … because they were hopeless and they were a dead-end society — which is what is happening now — they would have fought a lot harder."

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/james-camerons-old-comments-prompt-221001604.html

The fact that James Cameron got all that fucking money to make a movie about indigenous resistance and didn't even bother to learn the first thing about the history of indigenous resistance to colonialism is insulting to the extreme.

The wording of that, declaring an indigenous tribe a dead-end because it is surviving a genocide should insult you no matter where you live in the world and whatever your ethnicity is. It is an act of violence against humanity.

To think the Lakota Sioux and countless other indigenous tribes in the US didn't know what was coming and didn't fight as hard as they could is extremely patronizing in a racist way and ultimately it is just lazy. I expect people to try harder when making their historically inspired fantasy worlds, especially when they are given unlimited money...

Try harder James Cameron.

[–] fonix232@fedia.io 11 points 1 month ago

It's so weird that the guy who literally built his own submarine to go check out the Titanic so his movie can properly represent it... couldn't be bothered to Google a little bit about a topic he's based THREE movies on.

Also, uhm... why are you calling him David? David Cameron is a British politician...

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 10 points 1 month ago

The first one was cool because the CGI was good for the time now I can't help but notice how rigid the blue people are

[–] etherphon@piefed.world 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah, I don't like the character design at all so I never even watched it, they just look bad. I can't believe how much money is poured into this.

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Honestly I think the movie would have been far better as a "nature documentary" type film about all the creatures and ecosystems of this alien planet, if they spent most of the movie actually focused on the artistry of the concept artists, CGI artists and animators instead of focusing on a lame overdone plot with paperthin characters and tropes then I think it could have been something wonderous.

Instead you get a work of art that assassinates a beautiful wild periphery of concept artists and CGI artists with a crushingly boring plot that insists on tearing down what drew people into the story in the first place, a raw expansive visual creativity that pre-existed before the imposed, lame hero's journey..

[–] etherphon@piefed.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Humm well now I feel like I'm missing out a bit and should probably watch it for the eye candy at least and put the story and main characters in the back of my mind. I would watch something like that, like Planet Earth with Attenborough except on an alien planet, it would be fun.

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Yeah I would love a version of Discovery Channel's Alien Planet but with much better science writing and that focused on explaining interesting reoccurring patterns in ecosystems in evolution on earth through the lens of a fictionalized yet scientifically sound vision of a somewhat plausible alien ecosystems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Planet

I even loved the idea of the cute robot that serves as a sort of simple plot about what happens to it as it explores. Does it avoid danger or get ensared in it?

The plot would not be the focus though, I am thinking Tarkovsky's Stalker levels of visual and elemental expansiveness but in a genuinely entirely scifi context.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film)

Something like Scavenger's Reign but less obsessed with human violence and more just focused on the experience of a vibrantly portrayed alien ecosystem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scavengers_Reign

I guess I want a sciencey Over The Garden Wall but without any easy plot explainer at the end.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over_The_Garden_Wall

Like Mad Max: Fury Road but with cool animals instead of cool post apocalyptic cars and motorcyles... ok maybe I am stretching the metaphor too far here.

[–] etherphon@piefed.world 2 points 1 month ago

Oh dang I didn't know that was an actual show, thanks for the heads up I'll check it out, I haven't really paid attention to cable TV in a while. I like the sound of what you're cooking up there though haha, Stalker is a great film, I hadn't heard of Over The Garden Wall either, looks interesting.

Along those lines. it would be cool if Star Wars did a series that was centered around the cantina and all the weird characters and goings on there. They could even have musical numbers, I'm thinking the Muppets band but with way more synthesizers lol.

[–] CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago

I think James Cameron's a big nerd who just uses movies and their massive budgets to develop technology that he's interested in, whether it be a submarine for Titanic or new kinds of CGI for Terminator and the Avatar movies.

[–] Bob_Robertson_IX@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

*James

James Cameron is an incredible film making technologist. His accomplishments in film will not be remembered for the stories but will be remembered for the technology that he developed and how he pushed the envelope. I wouldn't go so far as saying that he doesn't care about the story and getting the details all right... but I will say that creating the best looking version of his vision is his #1 priority.

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 month ago

Apparently in my head David = James?

Thank you for pointing that out, ughh my bad.

[–] unmagical@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 month ago (2 children)

"Avatar 3: The blue people play with fire" was an identical story to "Avatar 2: The blue people play with water."

It had the same:

Protagonist
Antagonist
Setting
Plot
MacGuffin

Literally the only thing that changed was the Antagonist talked to the fire nation and convinced them to fight in the same final battle.

I can't possibly imagine why that would sow doubts about the future prospect of "Avatar 4: The blue people play with earth."

[–] DeathsEmbrace@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago

But when the blue people played with air he vanished

[–] phdepressed@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago

The third one already came out? Lol.

[–] IWW4@lemmy.zip 15 points 1 month ago

HEHE

The last paragraph is all you need to read in that article.

The movies made 6.5 billion. The fourth one is going to get made. There is no way it won’t get made.

Will it get the 500 million dollar budget that the last one did? Yes.

You have to factor in what it does for Disney World. For a long time Disney’s challenge with Animal Kingdom is it had no night time attraction. Seeing animals at night is a challenge.

Pandora: The World of Avatar gave Animal Kingdom a hugely popular attraction that you can visit at night. That attraction took Animal Kingdom from the least viewed area of Disney World to the most visited area. It raised the total visiting numbers for the entire park. Disney is not going to ignore that.

[–] neuracnu@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 month ago

We're three movies into this franchise. You can look at the first film as a ridiculously expensive pilot, testing out the characters and environment and seeing if the whole thing had legs. As it turns out, it did. There's even a bunch of hyper-fans who are seeing the movie 100 times and fantasizing about living on Pandora. Neat-o. Cameron gets to make this a franchise.

But what's it going to be about?

Michael Bay turned Transformers into incomprehensible VFX noise with zero interest in overarching themes, but I don't expect much more from him or a series based on toy robots. Cameron is a solid filmmaker and idea guy, so he can definity do better than this.

It wasn't until the success of the first film that he started planning the sequels. That's when I presume he started settling into the main ideas of the project. Anyone who saw the director's cut of the The Abyss should find this familiar: humanity bad, but can be saved with good guidance from not-humans.

That's where I see the Avatar films heading. Humans are a pile of shit, but they can turn themselves around if they just STFU and listen to the Na'vi on how to not be shit. That works for me.

But WTF is going on with these new films? The hero's journey of the first film was Jake realizing that humanity had life all twisted and that the Na'vi had things more figured out, so he was going to live within that culture. As the sequels kick off, Jake and Neytiri have built a family, but it's entirely based on the dynamics of a US military family: stern dad doing drills, kids calling each other 'bro' constantly. There's nothing non-human there; it's terrible. I don't understand how the Neytiri character put up with it. That relationship would NOT have worked out.

But getting into this last film, we get introduced to a traveling tribe of traders, so commerce via a trading economy is a thing now. And there's raiding parties attacking the traders for no explained reason. To steal stuff? To just kill people? Never explained.

The Na'vi are being cooked up less like a utoptian society and more just-like-us-but-blue.

So what's this all about? Spider.

Cameron and the producers saw those superfans who wanted to live on Pandora and created Spider as their self-insert surrogate. He's the product of the worst of humanity, but he gets to live on the planet. He gets adopted into a native family.

spoiler

He gets to breathe the air, grow a psychic ponytail penis and commune with the planet.

The entire throughline of the franchise is about indulging Spider and, thereby, indulging the franchise's superfans and their escapist fantasies.

And if that's the case, we can forcast the suitability of the Avatar franchise by monitoring the activity of those superfans. Are they digging in or are they moving on?

[–] Phil_in_here@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 month ago

God, James Cameron must be fucking insufferable for studios to say "only a billion dollars? I don't know..."

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 1 points 1 month ago

wait avatar is part of the trumping disney trump.

[–] HonoraryMancunian@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Pay wall

[–] sentient_loom@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Ah so THAT'S how they'll pay for Avatar 4!

[–] Slovene85@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What?! They're gonna make 21 more of this shit?!

[–] sentient_loom@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago

I actually hope so. I like Avatar 2 and Avatar 3.

[–] TheImpressiveX@piefed.social 3 points 1 month ago

Non-paywalled link.