Avatar Military Wankers Read This First

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Avatar Military Wankers Read This First

Post by NecronLord »

Reference Thread for common assertions regarding James Cameron’s Avatar.

Topics Covered:
  1. Orbital Bombardment
  2. Earth Needs Unobtanium
  3. Na'vi aggression forced human hands.
  4. Jake Sully should have negotiated a peaceful settlement.
  5. Jake Sully is a traitor.
  6. The RDA's Gear was stupidly designed
  7. The bow and arrow guys beat the army guys
  8. The Na'vi don't declare their borders thus they don't have any property claims
  9. Humans need the Unobtanium, to regenerate Earth.
I'm open to covering other topics here if PMed suggestions, or see any that need to be added.

Avatar Human-Wank Argument #1: Nuke the Site From Orbit, It’s the Only Way to be Sure

Why can’t The Military nuke the Na’vi from orbit?

Firstly, yes, of course you can blow them up from orbit. There are many ways to do so.

But… there is no human military involved in Avatar – yes, there are people with military experience there, but they are there as the private security forces of the Resources Development Administration, an international company, not a government.

It’s hard to believe people can watch the film without quite parsing what this means. Although it is given monopolistic rights on developments and is rich, and powerful, but in the end, it is not a sovereign entity. It is fully subject to real nations’ laws, at least in theory.

And the treaty that grants it this access?
Pandorapedia wrote:More powerful than most Earth governments. The Resources Development Administration (RDA) has monopoly rights to all products shipped, derived or developed from Pandora and any other off-Earth location. These rights were granted to RDA in perpetuity by the Interplanetary Commerce Administration (ICA), with the stipulation that they abide by a treaty that prohibits weapons of mass destruction and limits military power in space.
More powerful than most, one may object, but most is not all. Given the prominence of Americans in the film, one can safely assume that the United States of America remains a dominant nation on Earth in this fictional setting, at least, and its military power Furthermore, without substantial military power in space, they cannot win a fight against such a government; for the same logic as this argument itself uses – space is the ultimate high ground. And it does not belong to the RDA, but to the USA.

Use of weapons of mass destruction of any type on the Na’vi would nullify the RDA’s treaty, and presumably render its personnel subject to arrest, trial, imprisonment and quite possibly execution. Unless they want to be given the lethal injection when they get home, the RDA personnel would never try and drop antimatter on the Na’vi or anything similar.

If one rejects the Pandorapedia, then the RDA is still just a company, and not even one that can be said to rival Earth governments, it is even more subject to international law.

But people on Earth don’t care about the Na’vi. So no one would consider it murder.

What made you think that? It’s enormously expensive to ship people out there, but Pandora is at least famous, “The Legendary Floating Mountains of Pandora”and there is no inkling that they’re unpopular on Earth in the film.

The Pandorapedia elaborates considerably.
The existence of the Na’vi was the most surprising discovery on Pandora. For theoretical reasons, intelligent life was not expected to be found here. Given the known age of the galaxy and the relatively brief period since the evolution of man, it was assumed that any alien intelligence would be far older and more sophisticated than us, would have an advanced technological civilization and probably not be humanoid. Thus the discovery of jungle-dwelling neolithic humanoids was not anticipated.

Under strong pressure from the UN, scientists and the general public, the RDA agreed to set up a program to enhance communications between humans and Na’vi. At first this consisted solely of an Indigenous Terrain program to study Na’vi culture and language and to attempt to establish communication between man and Na’vi.
Strong pressure from the UN and general public just to communicate with them! Imagine what the response would be to just plain nuking them. (Frankly, even gunning them down in droves would provoke a shitstorm, though Quarich at least pretended to be aiming for minimal casualties, rather than simply nuking them.)
Many religious leaders have used the Na’vi similarity to humans as a demonstration of “intelligent design” but this of course has triggered its own controversy as to whether Na’vi should be considered “human” and if they have an immortal soul, and should therefore be accorded the protection and recognition of the church. That debate is outside the scope of this introductory document.
If that’s to be believed, it even implies at least some of the dreaded religious conservatives like them. Large scale murder of the Na’vi would doubtless turn this debate into an epic shitstorm.

The RDA wouldn’t have to tell them.

It’s set in Alpha Centauri. It is almost certain that there are real and radio telescopes pointed at Pandora all the time; as soon as the electromagnetic radiation arrives at Earth, they’ll know about any large scale explosions, or movements of asteroids etc.

There is no stealth in space, there is also no setting off large explosions or diverting asteroids without it becoming known.

Furthermore, they would also have to then have perfect control over all their staff, and not one of them would think of going to future-wikileaks or the press, either due to ethical concerns or simply for profit.

They couldn’t function without the RDA

The treaty granted to the RDA could easily be reallocated to another multinational, who could be kept on a much tighter leash.

But the guys in the film get off scott free!

What makes you think they were not punished when they returned to Earth?

The film’s last scene, filmed in the abandoned RDA outpost, implies that Jake Sully (and the surviving scientists) transmitted a message to Earth, which was certainly the intent in earlier script treatments. Such a message would arrive at Earth before the ISV Venture Star did.

For all we know, Selfridge and the other leaders of the RDA expedition were immediately arrested upon arriving at Earth, and duly imprisoned/executed.

Avatar Human-Wank Argument #2: Earth needs the resources/Earth is Dying

We’ll just take that as read, there’s some strange ideas about the economics and need. I’ll compare this logic with another species.

The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells [1898]
At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.

[…]

The secular cooling that must someday overtake our planet has already gone far indeed with our neighbour. Its physical condition is still largely a mystery, but we know now that even in its equatorial region the midday temperature barely approaches that of our coldest winter. Its air is much more attenuated than ours, its oceans have shrunk until they cover but a third of its surface, and as its slow seasons change huge snowcaps gather and melt about either pole and periodically inundate its temperate zones. That last stage of exhaustion, which to us is still incredibly remote, has become a present-day problem for the inhabitants of Mars. The immediate pressure of necessity has brightened their intellects, enlarged their powers, and hardened their hearts. And looking across space with instruments, and intelligences such as we have scarcely dreamed of, they see, at its nearest distance only 35,000,000 of miles sunward of them, a morning star of hope, our own warmer planet, green with vegetation and grey with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad stretches of populous country and narrow, navy-crowded seas.
And yet, no one justifies the Martians’ intention to seize the Earth due to their own planet dying (in this case, through no fault of their own). Murderously stealing other people’s land does not become okay just because you’re fucked up at home.

The rebuttal to this particular argument is simple. The land of the Ometicaya clan of Na’vi belongs to them. Not to the humans. There is no ethical mechanism except fair exchange, by which it can be acquired. Being there without their approval is trespass, taking control of that land is theft, and killing for it is murder.

Avatar Human-Wank Argument #3: The Na’vi Started It, Savages!

This one has more basis than the others; the first hint of the Na’vi we see is evidence that they’ve been attacking the humans, and later, it’s revealed that they’ve a kill on sight order for avatars.

This implies that they must simply be brutes, and sure enough there’s plenty of characters in the film that express that opinion.

So, clearly, the Na’vi must have always been hostile.

Image
Image

Wait… That doesn’t look very hostile.

As mentioned above, the Na'vi were sending their children to a human-run school prior to the incident where the RDA started shooting said children as collective punishment for the crimes of a small group. The first killing we hear about is an act of massive assholishness by the RDA, not the Na'vi.

Avatar Human-Wank Argument #4: Jake Sully is responsible for RDA aggression.



Okay, now our little laugh’s over… let’s look at this, because people take it seriously:

Less than fifteen minutes into the film, Selfridge says ‘We’re at the brink of war’ and demands Grace come up with a diplomatic solution.

Later on, Jake Sully says he thinks he can talk the Na’vi into surrendering their land to the company.

Despite this, for most of the film, he’s not given that task early on, and is indeed given the job of reporting to Col. Quaritch about Na’vi weaknesses.
Quaritch wrote:I want you to learn these savages from the inside, I want you to gain their trust, I need to know how to force their cooperation or hammer them hard if they won’t.
Which of course, he does – he does tell Quarich how to hammer them hard, because they won’t cooperate.

That was his job, which he did.
Quaritch wrote:You gave me good, usable intel, about this tree of souls place. Yeah, I got them by the balls with that when this turns into a shit-fight, which it will.
Only at this point did he want to try and convince the Na’vi to accept a peaceful shafting, and that is because he knew full well that they would be slaughtered horribly, when Quaritch starts a shit-fight. He wanted to complete the manhood ritual before attempting to bring the Na’vi around to this course of action; the sex happened exactly after the manhood ritual.

It was clear that Jake didn’t know where the bulldozers were precisely, or he wouldn’t have gone to sleep in their path. It can be safely assumed he didn’t know it was so urgent.

Jake Sully is not meant to be a professional diplomat, and blaming him for the aggression of the humans and saying he is at fault for being unable to make a settlement that forces people from their land within a day is unfair and unrealistic. He offers to “negotiate the terms of their relocation”he doesn’t say it’s going to be done inside a day or anything like that.

If the RDA truly wanted a negotiated settlement to happen, then they would certainly at least give a reasonable time for that. They did not, because they were not especially serious about that goal, which was only introduced very late.

Jake Sully does try and get the RDA to stop demolishing one set of sacred trees, and only resorts to violence to stop them when they try to run him and his new wife over - when they attempt murder her, let's get that right. Murder.

Moving on, both Grace and Jake Sully try and persuade the Ometicaya not to react aggressively to this.

To the RDA's credit in a small way, Selfridge allows Grace and Jake to try further negotiation after this, but he doesn't recall the gunships, which shows just how serious he is about that. They're still out to steal and willing to murder anyone in their way, and that's the bottom line.

Avatar Human-Wank Argument #5: The protagonists are traitors to humanity.

Firstly, of course, the RDA is not humanity, and does not represent all of humanity, instead it represents a corporate interest.

Technically, of course, Jake, Grace and the others do betray the RDA. Given the RDA's behavior, I would contend that it is morally justifiable to betray them.

Avatar Human-Wank Argument #6: Stupid Glass Canopies, If only the humans had used fixed-wing aircraft/tanks/etc etc etc...

I'm covering this here because it crops up with others.

A lot of people complain about the design of the vehicles in Avatar, and then describe scenarios where the humans would do better. No doubt.

And well, I've got nothing against calling fictional bad guys cool; look at my username, but the implication often seems to be that the humans ought to have won on moral grounds. Certainly not, see above.

Fairly obviously, a few hundred necrons would easily exterminate the Na'vi forces in the film.

But that wouldn't stop it being wrong to do so.

Complaining about technical aspects is fine, but sympathizing with one faction because of their technology doesn't make any kind of valid argument on the morals. No matter how cool or otherwise the bad guys are, they're still bad.

In defense of the overall film's engineering credibility, this topic is gone into in some detail on Pandorapedia, and the ISV Venture Star is one of the most realistic hypothetical spaceships ever displayed on film. Atomic Rocket has an excellent analysis of the Venture Star


Avatar Human-Wank Argument #7: The Na'Vi won! They overcome a superior military force, that's stupid! (Guest-Written by Zixinus!)

Answer: They did not overcome anything. Before the VERY PLANET intervened, the Na'Vi were about to be slaughtered by the very-real superior military power they were faced. That's actually part of the tragedy implied in the film.

If it weren't for the massive wave of animals attacking the RDA troops, the Na'Vi would have had their Holy Tree bombed, despite their immense resistance.

The Na'Vi are not a superior military force, nor were they depicted as such. Yes, they brought down SOME losses on the the RDA, but more out of surprise and trying to use the terrain to their advantage than by their own military strength. And this military strength was not half-assed either, they were called to arms with essentially their equivalent of Jesus (or at least, a Messiah), fifteen tribes have gathered and joined the fighting, easily outnumbering not only the military forces of the RDA but the RDA itself.

Yet the RDA would have still won if it weren't for the foreshadowed Deus Ex Machinaca. Even with all the "flaws" of the equipment they had, even with gaps in their equipment (no artillery, no anti-air emplacements, no heavy armour, etc), even being greatly outnumbered, the the RDA would have won.

Avatar Human-Wank Argument #8: The Na'Vi didn't declare they owned the land!
Apples and oranges. Russians took and held onto the huge territory they call their own. They have formally declared a border and guard that border zealously.

The Navi have done none of that. They have never declared how much land they own or even how much territory belongs to which tribes. As seen in the official video game tie in the RDA are polite enough to at least fence the area they consider their own. They rarely venture outside or bother anyone save for scientific or diplomatic expedition.
That's the logic of a Vogon Destructor Fleet, whose response before destroying the Earth to construct a hyperspace bypass was to tut that (modern) humans hadn't even gone to the local planning office at Alpha Centauri to lodge a protest, despite the evident lack of spaceflight.

To take it apart piece by piece:
  • We don't know what territory they claim, it was not explored in the movie.
  • We don't have any reason to believe the RDA knows either.
  • The site in contention in the film is very clearly the property of the Ometicaya tribe; they live on it, demonstrating both usage and ownership.
  • This also ignores any claims of ownership by the planet, which at least in wooded areas, have unquestionable validity, as they form the entity's brain.
Avatar Human-Wank Argument #9: The humans need the Unobtanium, to regenerate Earth.

Perhaps; it is implied that the material is used for making transport easier and for meeting energy needs (how this is a requirement when they had a giant solar laser array in the first place is another matter) and thus that it might be essential; but they don't need this unobtanium. The film outright states there are other deposits of the material:
SELFRIDGE
Their damn village is sitting right over the richest unobtanium deposit for a hundred klicks in any direction. Which sucks -- for them -- because they need to relocate.
Selfridge then goes on to mention:
SELFRIDGE
Killing the indigenous looks bad, but there’s one thing shareholders hate more than bad press -- and that’s a bad quarterly statement. Find me a carrot to get them to move, or it’s going to have to be all stick.
Note how he doesn't mention the idea that saving Earth is the goal, or that they need to access this particular unobtanium deposit or they'll stop production, go under, or have anything but a bad quarterly statement. The choice of that particular site can only be motivated by profit. Profit is irrelevant to helping earth; only bulk output matters there, even if the mission runs at a loss.

But are there any others?

Pandorapedia provides
Closer inspection by an orbiting ISV revealed that there are many deposits of unobtanium on Pandora, some of which are even richer than that at ESM 01. It is expected that further exploitation of Pandora’s unobtanium deposits will eventually result in construction of further mines, with at least twenty-five potential sites already located. Plans are already underway to develop a substantial deposit within a few miles of ESM 01.
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Re: Avatar Military Wankers Read This First

Post by NecronLord »

As promised, the Avatar RDA apologetics rebuttal resource thread.

I'm leaving this open for comments/suggestions for now, and I will sticky it later.
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Re: Avatar Military Wankers Read This First

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Thank you, NecronLord. You are the greatest. :)
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Re: Avatar Military Wankers Read This First

Post by andrewgpaul »

You appear to be missing an answer; the final "question" in section one, "But the Pandorapedia mentions a previous scare like this." goes unanswered.
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Re: Avatar Military Wankers Read This First

Post by NecronLord »

Ah yes. I was going to put that in but couldn't find the thing, I think that may have been removed from the online version of the Pandorapedia, so I ditched that one.

In short, the answer was to be "Yes, a group faked images of a starving Na'vi to stir up public sympathy, and the publicity problem ended when it came out that these were fake.

The gunning down hundreds, on the other hand, is quite real, and if the RDA were worried about being seen to abuse one Na'vi, they would surely balk at being seen to be out to annihilate the species."
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Re: Avatar Military Wankers Read This First

Post by Ford Prefect »

Complaints about the technical details strike me as ridiculous, given how consistent they are with the environment that Cameron created. The Samson and Scorpion and Dragon gunships don't have ducted rotors for no reason: the rationale for that is explained in greater detail than any naysayer has ever presented. It's the same thing with the large 'glass' canopies, which are a response to the difficult of operating electronic equipment on Pandora, which is most immediately obvious and significant in the Hallelujah Mountains but is known to be an issue elsewhere. Simply put, the designs make sense. The technical details are such that you can easily see that the RDA made design compromises to deal with environmental factors. End of line.

People say 'well they could have done this and this and this and then they would have won', but in a perfect world the RDA forces would have been made up of regenerating artificially intelligent smartmatter UCAVs.
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Re: Avatar Military Wankers Read This First

Post by Lord of the Abyss »

Another point I've heard made about #2: Earth Needs Unobtanium; why there? The stuff is common enough to have dramatic geological-scale effects like floating mountains; the RDA couldn't just find another deposit that wasn't underneath someone else's home?
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Re: Avatar Military Wankers Read This First

Post by Ford Prefect »

Hometree probably represents the highest profit margin: the highest yield of Unobtanium versus the cost of actually getting there and extracting it. I think someone has suggested that the RDA could have looked into mining the Hallelujah Mountains, for example, and that's probably true. We can probably infer that the accountants probably baulked at the cost of either mining in that location, or at the cost of safely moving one of the formations with a high concentration of Unobtanium. When it comes down to it, the deposit beneath Hometree is enormous and reasonably easy to get at, because they can just drive the heavy equipment there.

That a company would think this way is not even remotely unbelievable. Corporations do all sorts of unscrupulous and unadvisable things for maximum profit. For all we know, Parker Selfridge's remuneration package is designed in such a way that it encourages immediatel profit over more stable and sustainable (and ethical) return. You can see that sort of thing in the collapse of Enron in America or HIH in Australia.
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Re: Avatar Military Wankers Read This First

Post by fgalkin »

I believe they even address this in the movie. The closest other deposit of that size is a few hundred (IIRC) kilometers away. So, it's cheaper and easier for them to displace the Na'vi and blow up their tree than to develop it properly.

In other words, they were killing for convenience.

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Re: Avatar Military Wankers Read This First

Post by Ugolino »

In the end, it boils down to this: the Na'vi are annoying. Perfect space elves? Poorly disguised symbolism and paper-thin characters? Bring on the napalm. However pretty Avatar is, the protagonists are annoying.
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Re: Avatar Military Wankers Read This First

Post by Srelex »

Meh, the so-called 'Mary Suishness' of the Na'vi is overblown. It's not hard to make them look better than the invading corporate minions, and anyway, the first thing they talk about when Jake arrives is if they should slit his throat or not.
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Re: Avatar Military Wankers Read This First

Post by Whiskey144 »

Ugolino wrote:In the end, it boils down to this: the Na'vi are annoying. Perfect space elves? Poorly disguised symbolism and paper-thin characters? Bring on the napalm. However pretty Avatar is, the protagonists are annoying.
Yeah, I consider the Na'vi to be pretty annoying and Mary-Sueish. Most of it boils down to the whole Gaian-earth-worship crap they practice, and the appearance (I've not seen the movie, so I might be wrong) that because they have said Gaian crap, they are better than technology-using humans.

Which is absolutely stupid. I think that natural resources should be preserved, though more because of "we need to make it last" rather than "save the trees".
Srelex wrote:Meh, the so-called 'Mary Suishness' of the Na'vi is overblown. It's not hard to make them look better than the invading corporate minions, and anyway, the first thing they talk about when Jake arrives is if they should slit his throat or not.
It may be overblown, but so far everything I've read review-wise seems to indicate the movie portrays the Na'vi as better than humans because of Gaian-earth-worship crap, rather than any moral superiority due to unwillingness to genocide.

One thing though, is that, AFAIK, it's never actually clear on whether the first time the Na'vi met the humans, they (Na'vi) attacked them (humans) first, or if it was peaceful.
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Re: Avatar Military Wankers Read This First

Post by Ahriman238 »

Avatar Human-Wank Argument #2: Earth needs the resources/Earth is Dying
Should go without saying, but I'll say it. I saw people justify this one with the line of dialogue where Sully is oraying or whatever to the Na'vi nature god and says that "there is no green there" (Earth.) My rebuttal: So why were he and Quaritch reminiscing about South America jungle hellholes earlier?

From what we know, the unobtanium is A.) a room tempature superconductor, almost the holy Grail of engineering and it B.) is used to build antimatter reactors that are C.) needed to resolve an energy crisis and D.) build relativistic spacecraft like the Venture Star, letting us reach nearby planets in years instead of decades. All of this justifies the vast resources RDA has sunk into the Pandora operation and the vast monetary value of unobtanium without it being our only hope of survival.

The value of the unobtanium most certainly does not justify theft, or the dozens that died before the locals got pissed off enough to raise an army. Something I'm confidant they would have done, though probably with less success, without Sully.
Avatar Human-Wank Argument #5: The protagonists are traitors to humanity.

Firstly, of course, the RDA is not humanity, and does not represent all of humanity, instead it represents a corporate interest.

Technically, of course, Jake, Grace and the others do betray the RDA. Given the RDA's behavior, I would contend that it is morally justifiable to betray them.
Yeah, I don't what went into whatever contract Sully and the others had with the RDA, but I'm pretty confidant they shat all over it. Morally justifiable in the face of Quaritch and Selfridge's crimes, absolutely. Legally, I suspect both parties would wind up being punished.
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Re: Avatar Military Wankers Read This First

Post by Simon_Jester »

Um.

I, who have seen the movie, disagree, Whiskey. I feel that the Na'vi are 'superior' only insofar as the whole 'rugged outdoor living' thing breeds a higher quality of men and women: in some respects it does, in others, it doesn't. Their ability to live in harmony with nature contrasts with the humans of the movies; this does not in and of itself make them some kind of master race, nor does it mean they are presented as such.
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Re: Avatar Military Wankers Read This First

Post by Ford Prefect »

The idea that the Na'vi are 'superior' because they worship that 'Gaian crap' is basically total nonsense. What they have are simple, meaningful lives that weren't achieved through mass commercialisation and consumption. They're better than humans in the sense that they have their priorities straight: they're not interested in accumulating all sorts of whizzbang toys and the latest and greatest in slim and sexy touchscreen whozamawats. Cameron pretty clearly believes that modern societies are mental. The Na'vi show you can have a life which is special and important when all you've got is bioluminescent horses and a big ass tree. There is certainly a significant element of environmentalism in there, of course, but that was the message I took home from Avatar.
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Re: Avatar Military Wankers Read This First

Post by Vympel »

I can't remember if I've expressed any views (let alone strong ones) about Avatar's plot, but I'm puzzled as to what this "Pandorapedia" stuff is, and whether it should be assumed to have any validity. A google search indicates its either a wiki linked to the official website or something off the Avatar game. Neither fills me with confidence.
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Re: Avatar Military Wankers Read This First

Post by Simon_Jester »

Well, all I know is that a huge amount of ancillary canon material was released along with the movie- I can't speak to whether Pandorapedia is consistently based off it.
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Re: Avatar Military Wankers Read This First

Post by Ahriman238 »

Pandorapedia is an Avatar wiki, so named because the Avatar wiki name was taken by the popular tv show.

A ten minute review shows no inconsistencies with the movie or associated release materials. That doesn't mean, of course, that there aren't any, just nothing obvious in any of the articles I lloked at.
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Re: Avatar Military Wankers Read This First

Post by Whiskey144 »

Simon_Jester wrote:Um.

I, who have seen the movie, disagree, Whiskey. I feel that the Na'vi are 'superior' only insofar as the whole 'rugged outdoor living' thing breeds a higher quality of men and women: in some respects it does, in others, it doesn't. Their ability to live in harmony with nature contrasts with the humans of the movies; this does not in and of itself make them some kind of master race, nor does it mean they are presented as such.
Ford Prefect wrote:The idea that the Na'vi are 'superior' because they worship that 'Gaian crap' is basically total nonsense. What they have are simple, meaningful lives that weren't achieved through mass commercialisation and consumption. They're better than humans in the sense that they have their priorities straight: they're not interested in accumulating all sorts of whizzbang toys and the latest and greatest in slim and sexy touchscreen whozamawats. Cameron pretty clearly believes that modern societies are mental. The Na'vi show you can have a life which is special and important when all you've got is bioluminescent horses and a big ass tree. There is certainly a significant element of environmentalism in there, of course, but that was the message I took home from Avatar.
I naturally bow to your greater knowledge of this point; from the reviews I've read it seemed as if the Na'vi were presented as morally superior due to their no-tech, earth-worshipping lifestyle.
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Re: Avatar Military Wankers Read This First

Post by Ahriman238 »

I naturally bow to your greater knowledge of this point; from the reviews I've read it seemed as if the Na'vi were presented as morally superior due to their no-tech, earth-worshipping lifestyle.
Nah, they're superior by virtue of not being the villains or doing anything overtly evil. And arguably by being twice our height and having almost unbreakable bones, but that issue never really comes up.

Truth be told, more than a few of the Na'vi, with Tsu'tey in the lead, are massive dicks. It's just being surly and laughing when someone falls of a horse is a lot less dick-ish then killing lots of people who just happen to be in your way.

Think of it this way: in approximatly seven months they're making a Muppet movie. In this movie, the Muppets must save their Theater home from a rich oil-baron. This is essentially the plot of Avatar. Yet no one is suggesting nuking Kermit the Frog for standing between this wealthy gentleman and his much needed resource.

Well, not seriously.

I hope.
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Re: Avatar Military Wankers Read This First

Post by Whiskey144 »

Ahriman238 wrote:Think of it this way: in approximatly seven months they're making a Muppet movie. In this movie, the Muppets must save their Theater home from a rich oil-baron. This is essentially the plot of Avatar. Yet no one is suggesting nuking Kermit the Frog for standing between this wealthy gentleman and his much needed resource.
While you do have a valid point, no one would say such a thing because it's the Muppets. The Muppets, by definition, are pretty much incapable of being evil dicks.

Plus Animal is awesome.
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Re: Avatar Military Wankers Read This First

Post by Ahriman238 »

While you do have a valid point, no one would say such a thing because it's the Muppets. The Muppets, by definition, are pretty much incapable of being evil dicks.

Plus Animal is awesome.
Which technically makes the Muppets morally superior to human and Na'vi alike.

Oh dear, maybe we really will be having this argument all over again in December. :lol:
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Re: Avatar Military Wankers Read This First

Post by Whiskey144 »

Ahriman238 wrote:Which technically makes the Muppets morally superior to human and Na'vi alike.

Oh dear, maybe we really will be having this argument all over again in December.
I'm doubtful, on the grounds that the Muppet-ness of the Muppets protects them from people wanting to nuke them. I mean, come on, they're the Muppets!

And, as I noted above, Animal is TEH WINZ. To reveal total nerdyness, a shirt with Animal on it gives +10 to Animal Attraction.

And I just realized I made a bit of a pun there.
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Re: Avatar Military Wankers Read This First

Post by Ford Prefect »

Vympel wrote:Neither fills me with confidence.
Your ability to use Google doesn't exactly fill me with confidence either.

Also the game was made in close cooperation with the film's production team. The in-game encylopaedia was, as reported by the developers, essentially handed to them on the peaks of Mount Sinai. There's no real reason to doubt that. The wiki is perhaps a little more dubious, but I've never encountered anything on it which hasn't been reported in official material, either the official website or the hardcopy Survival Guide.

EDIT: Or wasn't actually in the movie.
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Re: Avatar Military Wankers Read This First

Post by Vympel »

Ford Prefect wrote:
Vympel wrote:Neither fills me with confidence.
Your ability to use Google doesn't exactly fill me with confidence either.
No, I went there. And since that page says nothing about what its standing even was, I found it not illuminating at all. So I went to the Avatar wiki, looked up Pandorapaedia, and found out exactly what I said I found out.

As for being from 'official' material - well maybe its worth shit, maybe it isn't - it just bothers me that so many arguments about Avatars plot are being resolved by stuff that only a tiny minority of people would ever actually be arsed reading. Its very Star Wars in that way, though worse.
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