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Old 2009.12.20, 08:30 PM   #11
kuro_neko
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Originally Posted by HEDOfloe View Post
i haven't seen avatar, but from seeing the trailer in the theater, i thought it was going to be lame because the blue people seemed completely uninspired and the story somehow seemed familiar in a way i didn't bother looking into. i ran across this article and they have another problem i would have never thought of. i don't care for the whole race thing, but it showed me another way the story seemed uninspired and it's that it's kind of already been told before.
the movie isn't unspired. just go watch it. I guarantee you won't feel the same kind of awe or emotion watching any other movie nowadays than you will find if you just got your butt into the theatre. And why does it work? Simple, because it is a parable which appeals to a deepseated and long standing racial history of greed and gluttony. this isn't an issue of white guilt, it is an issue of colonization, I mean you could see the movie as Pocahontas in space in a way. That is precisely why the movie works. I personally think that is an oustanding thing, it bears a message of importance (racial tolerance and reverence for nature, respect for life) and does so in a breathtaking and exhilarating way. These people who are so conserved with being original or being edgy just make me laugh, because stories like Pocahontas and these "white-guilt" archetype fables are passed down through centuries for a reason. They are important and Cameron is dutifully handing the message to the next generation while simultaneously making leaps and bounds in technology that are unprecedented. he should be applauded, not dissected for being uninspired or unoriginal. I mean, how can someone who has designed the first motion picture technology which enables photo realistic artificial lifeforms the ability to grace the screen stupid enough to just steal other people's stories and pass them off as his own? People say District 9 is just as impressive and I disagree, because you look at those aliens and see giant bugs, it is much harder to take a bi-pedal humanoid shape and truly transmit human emotions. You don't feel the same emotion. You don't understand the bugs, you just feel guilt or pity for their situation. In Avatar the Na'vi might as well be human as the way the audience relates is much more complex and multi-faceted. District 9 is a movie which should be written off as white guilt driven, Avatar is something completely different. of course people are divided over it, but you should just go see it and make up your mind for yourself, because when it boils down to it people just dislike James Cameron to begin with, so the higher the bar to knock him down off of really.

edit: about the blue people, he picked humanoids because he needed the actors to perform the roles and use their actual faces to capture emotions and transmit that digitally. when you watch the Na'vi in the movie you are watching actual human performances digitally rendered, the emotions and muscles you see are real, which is why it resonates with a human audience. When you watch them fly, they were flying, when you watch them run, they were running, and when you watch them laugh and cry, they were laughing and crying. no dead eyes to be found. as for the feline shape, he went with it because it was easy for people to relate to cats. it works to enhance empathy. he could have gone more alien but it would have made the link between human emotion and reaction much further, audiences wouldn't relate and since the entire movie works by appealing to the human condition, it would have failed.

Last edited by kuro_neko : 2009.12.20 at 08:37 PM.
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