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James Cameron Announces Four Sequels to 'Avatar' (egyptindependent.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In a surprise appearance at CinemaCon, James Cameron announced plans for "a truly massive cinematic process" -- four new sequels to his 2009 blockbuster Avatar, plus a Disney theme park. "It's going to be a true epic saga," Cameron told the audience, promising that Avatar 2 would be released in Christmas of 2018, followed by three additional sequels, for a total of five Avatar-themed movies. Cameron's original sci-fi blockbuster earned $2.8 billion, though at least one Slashdot user argued that its overall message was that technology is bad, "strange because the movie is among most technically sophisticated ever."
Well he engages in a kind-of noble savage fallacy + the obviously retarded "greed (business) is evil". Of course it's OK for James Cameron to hold these views since he has a private jet, 4 houses, a couple of yachts and his own helicopter. The rest of us, no, we're not allowed to cut down trees. My own personal opinion on this is we shouldn't, but that's not the point here. Anyway it's OK if James Cameron wants to build a 5th holiday home. It's just the usual tedious hypocrisy we get from people in the movies.
Never bet against Cameron on a 2nd film:
* Aliens
* Terminator 2
He's one of the few directors that has managed to follow up initial successes with gigantic second films that expand the universe & storyline and don't just milk the first film for extra dollars.
Avatar was a proof of concept.
I'm frankly excited to see what he does when he slows it down and goes deep for another three films.
This could indeed be epic.
The complete list is actually really short.
It's Pocahontas but with BLUE people.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
It's not a "Hate Whitey" plot so much as a "White Guy Comes In And Saves The Natives" plot, which IMHO is the more insulting of the two. They can't save themselves, but G.I. Joe here can come in, learn how they live, and then do "native stuff" better than them and save their whole tribe in the process, being received as their great savior and leader.
"Well, then fire it up and show me what this..." (sigh)
Sorry to have to point this out to you, but asians are just as vilified as white people these days by all of the fashionable reverse-racists.
No, just... no. The only sensible interpretation of the USB tails is that the Na'vi were a previously advanced race who genied themselves and their environment back to the stone age while giving themselves admin access to the high level flora and fauna. Seeing as Sully's Na'vi clone has the same ability even though his human brain wouldn't be able to translate the tail communications. Then there's the fact that it made ZERO sense for the humans to go after the largest deposit initially given the giant floating chunks lying around. A much more sensible plan for the corporation would have been to mine the floating islands, then with the market well and truly cornered gotten an actual military expedition sent out to wipe out the natives. Not to mention the weapon design was completely fucking awful.
Actually, I enjoyed the movie. Good popcorn flick. I got the DVD--with a whole batch of scenes that ended up on the cutting room floor. It was pretty interesting and I'm kind of sorry they didn't leave them in to make a 4 hour film.
That said, I have two complaints (SPOILER WARNING) ...
First, we see Norm get shot. We see him wake up in his pod. A little later, we see a resolute Norm march out into the jungle with his machine gun going...where? It was a good thing he left, because his empty pod gets trashed later on. But where was Norm going? Why did he leave? I don't normally catch holes like this while the movie is playing, but this one stuck in my craw.
That said, I watched the unedited version which sort of gives a bit more of a rationale. See, Norm and Trudy had a romance going (I have a hard time believing Trudy would be interested in Norm, but whatever). The last thing Norm may have heard over the comms was Trudy saying, "Rogue One is hit--going in. Sorry Jake." He then got shot and then we see the helicopter blown up. He may not know that helicopter was destroyed and he's going out to find her. Kinda ridiculous, but he's a man in love, so...
The other one, though, is the whole battle at the end. Let's be honest--if Eywa hadn't intervened, Jake would have ended up getting pretty much everyone killed and getting the Tree of Souls destroyed. Like, on the ground, the natives essentially decided on a calvary charge against machine guns. World War I taught us that doesn't work very well. Jake is a Force Recon Marine and this is the best battle plan he can come up with?
In the air, maybe he doesn't have the experience. But, again, his battle plan seemed to be "CHARGE!" Everyone drop out of the sky and pick an opponent. Nobody seemed to be supporting anyone else. Even without any air-to-air experience, I would think that between him and Trudy, they could have come up with something a little more effective.
Eywa, on the other hand, seemed to have a clue. On the ground, start off with the bullet-proof tanks in a brutal shock-and-awe attack and then send in the infantry to clean up whatever's left behind them. In the air, pair off and support your wingman. While one beastie attacks from one side, the other one comes in from the other side and wreaks havoc.
Part of the problem with the "white man saves the day" plot is that it's insulting to indiginous peoples, that they can't save themselves and need some white savior who simultaneously assauges "white guilt". But they didn't have to go this way. They could have merely taken an easy copout and not cast some G.I. Joe clone for the lead role, maybe someone asian or hispanic. Or they could just have fixed the plot and made it realistic: that it's not due to Sully's great skill and bravery that he becomes Toruk Makto and "saves the day" (the natives are surely far better at doing "native stuff" than him); that it's the will of Eywa.
I think you're not giving the white guy enough credit. Any time you're fighting an enemy, especially if that enemy is very different from you, any intelligence (inside information) you can get on that enemy is extremely valuable. The Na'vi aren't stupid, but they're also not a technological species (and arguably because they didn't need to be; they have a great lifestyle as they are as they haven't overpopulated and outgrown their food supply as we humans did before we invented agriculture; basically they live in paradise). They don't have the kind of experience with warfare and combat that we do, and they sure as hell don't have the weaponry we do. But they do have real skills and talents, and then got themselves the most valuable asset of all: a defector from their enemy. There's a big reason the US encouraged defection from the USSR during the cold war: there's no better source of information. And not only did the white guy defect and join their cause, he became like them so he could understand them and communicate with them, so he knew about both sides and was able to use that to the Na'vi's advantage.
The same applies to where the natives seem to care most about what happens to all of the white people rather than their own. Such as after the battle when large numbers are dead or wounded and clustered around the Tree of Souls, but the whole tribe stops everything to hold a big ceremony to try to save Dr. Augustine.
Here again, it's a pretty powerful thing when someone from your enemy's side crosses over to your side, and then sacrifices their life for your cause in battling their own people. Any intelligent tribal species would understand just how significant this is, and accord such a person great respect.
And release the blu ray versions of True Lies and The Abyss.
Part of the problem with the "white man saves the day" plot is that it's insulting to indiginous peoples, that they can't save themselves and need some white savior who simultaneously assauges "white guilt".
Hollywood has a problem where it can't cast non-white people in leading roles for a lot of films. Black actors have made some progress, but even that is limited. Take the up-coming Ghost in the Shell movie. A story set in Japan about Japanese people and Japanese culture, but having a Japanese person in any of the major roles is too much.
Until Hollywood gets past that we are going to keep having films like this where white people are portrayed as the bad guys, except for this one who is the saviour of the natives, because just having a strong native character who saves themselves is for some reason unacceptable. It's almost like they feel that a white person needs to do it to give it legitimacy, otherwise it's just native troublemakers, rebels and terrorists.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I must have missed the part about room-temperature superconductors in Pocahontas. I think I was also in the bathroom for the interstellar travel bit.
"Well, then fire it up and show me what this..." (sigh)