Spoiler Alert
The human motivation is never explained beyond "Hurr we're evil" and of course every human apart from the science team is all gung-ho for killing the aliens. Not even just accepting orders or seeing it as a necessary evil, but whipping themselves into a bloodlust.
Not every human was gung-ho for killing the aliens. When it shows the people at command watching the destruction, a great amount of the people there were extremely saddened by the ordeal, and not just the science teams, but the people who worked at the head quarters, and even the Corporate head overseeing the operation looked like he felt wrong about the whole thing; And we did see a pilot outright refuse go with it. You also have to remember that that the military people that were gung-ho weren't Marines but Mercenaries. They came there to kill and profit from it. Realistically most or all of them would be embittered by the extremely harsh environment where everything was hostile and huge. The Na'vi are 10 foot giants, they would be extremely intimidated by them.
The "unobtainum" is never elaborated upon as to why they're so desperate to have it apart from "it sells for a lot of money" (really? More money than the cost of an entire interstellar expedition?) Again, even just a little bit of justification on their part would have been nice.
I'm glad that they didn't drone about details that weren't really important to the events going on, just as they didn't bother giving the Corporation a name. I read an article about the astrophysical plausibility of Avatar and it mentioned Unobtanium being some sort of room temperature superconductor for energy. I didn't catch this detail in the movie, however, so I'm not sure how we were supposed to derive that, perhaps by the fact that it was floating on that node at the guy's desk.
Of course, as bland and evil as they were, I was still sympathizing with the humans because at least they weren't the regurgitation of every Hollywood Native American cliche of the past fifty years. Yes, yes, we get it. Technology bad. Trees good. The white man is ignorant and greedy. It's like I've heard this message a thousand times before! Stop making white guilt movies, seriously. The Na'vi are so perfect and wonderful, every aspect of their civilization is superior to ours. Ironic, really, because the movie relies so heavily on the technology that it despises.
Agreed, but I didn't think it was that bad.
Noble savage cliches aside, we of course have the meathead white guy hero saving the day. Really? No one else thought to attack the giant dragon-thing from above before? Thank god you were here to help, Jake! Unite the tribes? Apparently the Na'Vi rely on the trees for their fucking brains too, because that seems like a pretty obvious idea. Of course the audience needs someone to relate to because gods forbid the main character isn't the traditional action movie star.
I think it is more likely that the Na'vi wouldn't even try to attack it. Simply because there was no great need to, and because it is so rare anyway. I agree it was a pretty cliche move, but I hardly think it is worth complaining over.
Then don't even get me started on the Na'vi princess (whatever her name was) falling in love with Jake, who A) was described as an "idiot" and a "child" by her in every scene, B) is another species, C) she was engaged or something to that other guy (but the white man always gets the girl) and D) Jake is her world's equivalent of Hitler, Judas and Benedict Arnold rolled into one. "Gee, I'm really sorry that I got half your civilization wiped out... let's go bang under the Tree of Souls!"
She only called him an idiot and child in the first couple scenes when they met. I actually think they did it well, showing her grow from resenting to being attracted to Jake. It was clear from the way she moved an interacted with him how she felt about him. I don't see where your points about Hitler, Judas and Benedict Arnold are coming from, either. He did not do anything to them.
He didn't wipe out half of her civilization, and the humans hadn't at that point either, when they 'banged under the tree of souls'. It is clear that they knew that not all humans were the same, that's how they learned English in the first place, from that Science girl's school.
First of all, what the hell is up with the human military? Seriously? You have mech/bomber cockpits that cannot withstand a bow and arrow?
They
did withstand arrows, as you can see them scratch the cock pit glass when they were being shot at from the ground as they hovered and destroyed the Home Tree. When, however, the force was compounded by the speed of the flying banshee things' decent they were able to break through the glass. You should also realize that these aren't just normal sized bows and arrows, but rather bows and arrows proportional to 10 foot Na'vi. In the end it is still some form of glass and with the acceleration of the fliers, I thought it was realistic.
What sort of environment were these things designed for? And how about that whole "let's convert the shuttle into a bomber" plan. Hey, I've got a better idea! How about you drop something from orbit?
yeah, lets hope some open payload will make it passed whatever protective atmosphere Pandora must have without igniting. I'm sure bringing the massive crates of explosives up into orbit wouldn't waste a bunch of time either.
(Even if you didn't, say, have a missile, you could just bring the shuttle up a couple miles above the target, kill the engines and let kinetic energy do your work for you) But no, instead we're going to escort the fragile shuttle directly over the target (with bombs we have to push by hand? You couldn't even put some wheels on the things?) and get our asses kicked by wild birds.
Launching a missile would be undermined by the Flux Vortex (corny name). Why destroy your shuttle by using it as your bullet when you could, say, not destroy your shuttle in the process. And why should they not push the crate by hand? When you make an improvisational plan it isn't going to be perfectly pretty. What purpose would wheels serve anyway, besides letting it roll out when you don't intend it to.
Then of course every animal on the planet has some sort of tentacle that you can merge minds with? Exactly what evolutionary purpose does that serve? You could argue that their planet-deity made them that way because it's oh-so-loving towards the Na'vi, but then again, every animal on the planet seems to want to kill on eat them, so I'm not sure I buy it. And even if you can explain the existence of these tentacle mind rapers, the humans understand enough about them to perfectly replicate their function? Especially ludicrous in light of the fact Sigourney Weaver seems shocked that the planet is some inter-connected database and she's the biggest Na'vi expert around. (The avatars aren't just cloned Na'vi, one of the scientists mentions that they're human-Na'vi hybrids or some such). Humanity can perfectly replicate the functions of a lifeform they don't understand, but making mech cockpits out of something other than safety glass eludes their grasp.
I agree that the evolutionary practically of the meld thing isn't great. However, I do think that it would be largely beneficial to each creature to have them, as they probably use it between eachother and other things, like the soul tree. And if creatures so extremely different can link with eachother, why not a human/na'vi hybrid? It isn't that the humans understand it (they obviously don't), it was just that Sam was able to utilize his biology and use it, after many months. He sucked at it too, at first, and if you notice none of the other Avatars used it. So yeah, it isn't so realistic, but it is good Science Fiction, especially over all the many Space Dramas. Things like that make it fun.
You've also got the fact that every living thing on the planet glows when touched (what kind of defense mechanism is that?). Especially hilarious to me were the spinning helicopter lizards which just sort of hover in place when startled.
Yeah, I can't imagine any reason they would do that.
Oh, also: floating mountains, wtf? Even if you can explain that one, how about the fact the floating mountains have waterfalls? How is the water replenished? Even if you want to claim that it rains enough to refill the constantly flowing waterfalls (even though the
entire planet seems to be a rainforest, we never see it rain...)
I thought the same thing. The assumption you are supposed to make, I believe, is that it has largely to do with the unobtanium we also saw floating. The waterfalls are there the same way any waterfall exists. And no, we don't know that they were pouring constantly, only for the duration in the movie we saw.
Yeah, so that's why I don't like it.
Most of your points just seem like attempts to nitpick over trivial things. It's like you are looking for a reason to dislike it. In any show or movie you watch you have to suspend some measure of disbelief. If everything was realistic, then nothing would be very exciting.
In all I enjoyed the movie, despite its flaws; it was interesting, and fun to watch. Despite it being pretty anti-industrial, it didn't portray technology in a very negative light. Everything about the humans was clean and shiny; typically movies with this motive show massive amounts of heavy black smoke coming from huge, dirty power plants. It was more about the motives behind the push. I thought it was too extreme behavior, when Jake called the humans aliens and talked about them killing their mother. I suppose spending all that time in an Avatar body could really distort reality for you; however, I felt his motivation should've been more about defending humanity in stopping their inhumanity. In this way he wasn't at all betraying his race, but saving it. Ah, well.
P.S. I didn't read Centreri's post before posting, if any points are similar.
Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 26 2009, 2:34 am by Kaias. Reason: Typo
None.