Avatar: Way Of Water *spoilers*

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Re: Avatar: Way Of Water *spoilers*

Post by MKSheppard »

Shroom Man 777 wrote: 2023-01-02 07:42amCasting Kate Winslett isn't optimal but I'll give em some slack since she and Jim go way back.
When I saw her name in the trailers, I was like wat? But thanks to BLUEWASHING, a 47 year old woman can get a role like she was 25 again!
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Re: Avatar: Way Of Water *spoilers*

Post by Broomstick »

Or a 71 year old woman can get a role like she was 14 again.
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Re: Avatar: Way Of Water *spoilers*

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Broomstick wrote: 2023-01-03 01:37pmHiring just one Maori does not really make up for it. Going from zero to one does not rate even a golf-clap.
Image

Image
Shroom Man 777 wrote: 2023-01-03 11:23am I had the impression that mind-meld-triggered seizures in Na'vi are rare, and it's quite possible that Kiri's not-quite-pure-Na'vi heritage might have been a factor (or not). On the other hand, the physical touching and manipulation of Kiri's body might have been the best treatment to bring her around after such a seizure and the native knowledge superior. We can't really know. It's very ambiguous.
I think it's the Eywa-created Sigourney Weaver reincarnation thing connecting with her mother's consciousness that's somehow in Eywa, since Jake himself and the other kids had no issues.

The healers seemed to be not so surprised so while Kiri's specific case is obviously unique, the Na'vi healers seem to have experience in some things not entirely different? It seemed like people having... Eywa-connection-allergic-shock-seizure-things wasn't entirely unprecedented to them? At least they seemed to react more level headed-ly than the eggheads, which is important in first aid even if the real issue isn't totally known.
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Re: Avatar: Way Of Water *spoilers*

Post by Crazedwraith »

You know I'll defer to the actual groups affected but I'm not sure having lots of minorities cast as aliens really helps the representation you know?

Seems a kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't though.
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Re: Avatar: Way Of Water *spoilers*

Post by ray245 »

Shroom Man 777 wrote: 2023-01-04 12:05pm
Broomstick wrote: 2023-01-03 01:37pmHiring just one Maori does not really make up for it. Going from zero to one does not rate even a golf-clap.
Image

Image
Shroom Man 777 wrote: 2023-01-03 11:23am I had the impression that mind-meld-triggered seizures in Na'vi are rare, and it's quite possible that Kiri's not-quite-pure-Na'vi heritage might have been a factor (or not). On the other hand, the physical touching and manipulation of Kiri's body might have been the best treatment to bring her around after such a seizure and the native knowledge superior. We can't really know. It's very ambiguous.
I think it's the Eywa-created Sigourney Weaver reincarnation thing connecting with her mother's consciousness that's somehow in Eywa, since Jake himself and the other kids had no issues.

The healers seemed to be not so surprised so while Kiri's specific case is obviously unique, the Na'vi healers seem to have experience in some things not entirely different? It seemed like people having... Eywa-connection-allergic-shock-seizure-things wasn't entirely unprecedented to them? At least they seemed to react more level headed-ly than the eggheads, which is important in first aid even if the real issue isn't totally known.
That's still a really bad excuse imo. When giving a chance to a Maori actress could help their career breakout far more than Kate Winslet.
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Re: Avatar: Way Of Water *spoilers*

Post by ray245 »

Crazedwraith wrote: 2023-01-04 05:38pm You know I'll defer to the actual groups affected but I'm not sure having lots of minorities cast as aliens really helps the representation you know?

Seems a kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't though.
Or not having a white actress do a "native" accent would at least be of some help.
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Re: Avatar: Way Of Water *spoilers*

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Crazedwraith wrote: 2023-01-04 05:38pm You know I'll defer to the actual groups affected but I'm not sure having lots of minorities cast as aliens really helps the representation you know?

Seems a kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't though.
Image

So we can cast SOME minorities as liens and cast Kate Winslett as an alien also!

But yes I agree, using "exotic" Earth cultures as the basis for alien ones is low-effort IMO and they should've gone with totally alien unique societies.
ray245 wrote: 2023-01-05 12:45amThat's still a really bad excuse imo. When giving a chance to a Maori actress could help their career breakout far more than Kate Winslet.


Sure but the role is not actually directly Maori but indirectly indigenous people-coded aliens. Unlike directly-Asian elemental kung fu practitioners also voiced by non-Asians but don't result in the same moral outrage?

We can agree that these flicks still have a lot of work in this regard and this includes the more-beloved other Avatar/Korra that a lot of people make comparisons to but yet don't have the same non-POC-VA moral indigation towards.

Like Crazedwraith says, it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't think. I think sci-fi works should go beyond just "re-labeled foreign Earth cultures = aliens" "minority actors and actresses = aliens and Klingoffs and Romuloids" because that's problematic and yet on the other hand we have instances where white people voicing indigenous-coded blue aliens is seen as "digital blueface" or "digital blackface." I get that it's iffy and could be avoided by being even more imaginative when making extraterrestrial societies. I'm not gonna brush these complaints off as "omg people these days SO SENSITIVE SNOWFLAKES LISTEN HERE SECOND AMENDMENT SPARTA"

I do agree that James Cameron is a boomer and using dated tropes and story conventions, my ideal would be Sigourney Weaver's character and a bunch including Trudy the pilot with military knowhow defecting and collectively aiding the Na'vi who have their own badass protagonist heroes, instead of a singular Chosen One who HAS to be a US Marine because that's sooo overdone. I'm sick of US Marines and the US and Marines and I wish we never EVER see the US or its Marines ever again. The US should stop existing right this second! :lol:
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Re: Avatar: Way Of Water *spoilers*

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Here let's call it a truce:
Avatar: Maori academic believes 'space haka' could be cringey, but not cultural appropriation
"I don't know that'll I'll be holding my breath in anticipation of seeing a space-haka, the cringe-factor possibility is quite high, but I do have confidence in Cliff. He's a kapa haka performer who has competed at regional competitions with Te Pikikotuku o Ngāti Rongomai, and he comes from a whānau of haka experts. He's talked about how he would incorporate his taonga tuku iho (cultural heritage) in to the role and [as Cameron has alluded to] I expect that he's probably had some discussion with his whānau."
Maybe there is a sliding scale, on one hand we have really horrid stuff like blackface, then somewhere in the middle we have Tilda Swinton as a monk in Dr. Strange, and then we have stuff that's cringe :lol:

Anyway TIL the Chief Cool-Dad Beefcakes is also a haka pro competitor.
Haka have featured in just a handful of US movie productions over the years. A collaboration between Dwayne Johnson and his on-screen daughter's football team was "blessed by elders" before it appeared as part of 2017's Fast and Furious 8 (aka The Fate of the Furious), Emma Roberts joined her lacrosse team for a pre-match haka in 2008's Wild Child and low-budget rugby movie Forever Strong attracted controversy with its depiction that same year.

Before its release, representatives of iwi Ngati Toa, the tribe whose late chief wrote iconic war dance Ka Mate in the 1820s, said they were not consulted about its use.

A frustrated iwi spokesman Taku Parai told Stuff that the film-makers (who claimed to have consulted with New Zealand "cultural advisers") needed to have asked "the right people".

"All we ask is for people to inquire with us, to come and sit down with us and to dialogue."

In Cameron's case, he appears to have been at pains to do that, with the help of his leading man Curtis.

"[Cliff] said 'I know exactly what to do' and I said 'is this OK should we check with the iwi on this?' and he said 'I think it's a great idea, lets just do it', so there you have it," Cameron told 1News.
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Re: Avatar: Way Of Water *spoilers*

Post by ray245 »

Shroom Man 777 wrote: 2023-01-05 03:10am Sure but the role is not actually directly Maori but indirectly indigenous people-coded aliens. Unlike directly-Asian elemental kung fu practitioners also voiced by non-Asians but don't result in the same moral outrage?

We can agree that these flicks still have a lot of work in this regard and this includes the more-beloved other Avatar/Korra that a lot of people make comparisons to but yet don't have the same non-POC-VA moral indigation towards.
Because times change and people become more aware of the issues. The "people didn't complain about it in the past" is a poor excuse. People didn't complain as much about racism in the past too.

And not to mention, the news have said they are going to recast the VA for the older OG characters from people of those ethnic backgrounds.

Like Crazedwraith says, it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't think. I think sci-fi works should go beyond just "re-labeled foreign Earth cultures = aliens" "minority actors and actresses = aliens and Klingoffs and Romuloids" because that's problematic and yet on the other hand we have instances where white people voicing indigenous-coded blue aliens is seen as "digital blueface" or "digital blackface." I get that it's iffy and could be avoided by being even more imaginative when making extraterrestrial societies. I'm not gonna brush these complaints off as "omg people these days SO SENSITIVE SNOWFLAKES LISTEN HERE SECOND AMENDMENT SPARTA"
Again, this is a cop-out. It's not a damned if you don't. Just having a first step of not making a White American actor do an "native" accent would help. There is no reason the whole movie have the cast doing all sorts of weird accents in the first place.

The Na'vi aren't even speaking English. The movie could just have been done with subtitles from the get-go. Cowards.
I do agree that James Cameron is a boomer and using dated tropes and story conventions, my ideal would be Sigourney Weaver's character and a bunch including Trudy the pilot with military knowhow defecting and collectively aiding the Na'vi who have their own badass protagonist heroes, instead of a singular Chosen One who HAS to be a US Marine because that's sooo overdone. I'm sick of US Marines and the US and Marines and I wish we never EVER see the US or its Marines ever again. The US should stop existing right this second! :lol:
The problem is when people are not willing to call out on dated-tropes, thus reinforcing certain ideas that will just entrench racism even amongst "progressives".
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Re: Avatar: Way Of Water *spoilers*

Post by MKSheppard »

You know, there's so much about the Avatarverse that doesn't make sense.

Like, humanity is all "meh" over the whole "there exist a planet full of sentient stone age aliens" thing. Could it be because the Na'vi are actually the fifth race we've found?

That's what frustrates me so much about this universe; it's clear we're not seeing the whole picture.
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Re: Avatar: Way Of Water *spoilers*

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

ray245 wrote: 2023-01-05 01:35pmBecause times change and people become more aware of the issues. The "people didn't complain about it in the past" is a poor excuse. People didn't complain as much about racism in the past too.
When did I say people shouldn't complain? The second series was more recent and was after the first Cameron movie, people were already conscious about the social issue then. And anyway when there was a work filled with Asian VAs, i.e. Raya, ironically the outcry compared it unfavorably to the work that lacked Asian VAs :lol:

(To be fair Raya was alright and does actually compare unfavorably to the Avatar shows which don't get moral indignation for ANIMATED HAND DRAWN YELLOWFACE!!!!)
Again, this is a cop-out. It's not a damned if you don't. Just having a first step of not making a White American actor do an "native" accent would help. There is no reason the whole movie have the cast doing all sorts of weird accents in the first place.
Sure yeah. But even if we adjust for time and currency inflation, assuming white people in POC roles or alien-that's-ethnic-roles are spherical masses of iron, we can determine that Legend of Korra (2012-2014) is several orders of magnitude higher in the gigajoules of moral indignation than Way of Water (2022) :lol:

Legend of Korra:
  • - 52 episodes
    - 23 mins per episode
    - Shown 10-6 years ago
    - Running 4 years / 4 seasons
Avatar 1 and Way of Water
  • - 2 movies
    - First movie 2h 42m, second movie 3h 12m, total 6 hrs
    - First movie shown 2009, second in 2022
The Na'vi aren't even speaking English. The movie could just have been done with subtitles from the get-go. Cowards.
Heck have Star Wars entirely be done in not-English space-Basic language, or LOTR (right?).
The problem is when people are not willing to call out on dated-tropes, thus reinforcing certain ideas that will just entrench racism even amongst "progressives".
People are calling it out for being dated? I did say it's dated?
MKSheppard wrote: 2023-01-05 05:20pmLike, humanity is all "meh" over the whole "there exist a planet full of sentient stone age aliens" thing. Could it be because the Na'vi are actually the fifth race we've found?

That's what frustrates me so much about this universe; it's clear we're not seeing the whole picture.
You could say the same thing for other works tho. Like in Tarkovsky's Solaris is the average proletarian sovietski aware that they have encountered life forms on that distant space colony? Is it one of several extraterrestrial stations or is it something Soviet children write postcards to?
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Re: Avatar: Way Of Water *spoilers*

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

ray245 wrote: 2023-01-05 01:35pm The problem is when people are not willing to call out on dated-tropes, thus reinforcing certain ideas that will just entrench racism even amongst "progressives".
Still, even imperfect works with dated tropes can contribute to progressive causes. Like this :lol: from the first movie:

Image

Image

12 February 2010: Demonstrators dressed as Na'vi from Avatar for the weekly demonstration against Israel's separation barrier, in Bilin


If only they could actually penetrate glass canopies:

Image
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Re: Avatar: Way Of Water *spoilers*

Post by ray245 »

Shroom Man 777 wrote: 2023-01-06 01:11am When did I say people shouldn't complain? The second series was more recent and was after the first Cameron movie, people were already conscious about the social issue then. And anyway when there was a work filled with Asian VAs, i.e. Raya, ironically the outcry compared it unfavorably to the work that lacked Asian VAs :lol:

(To be fair Raya was alright and does actually compare unfavorably to the Avatar shows which don't get moral indignation for ANIMATED HAND DRAWN YELLOWFACE!!!!)
People have pointed out issues with Raya, more notably the American tendency to lump ALL of Asia into one block. And cast East Asian actors for a largely Southeast Asian setting.
Sure yeah. But even if we adjust for time and currency inflation, assuming white people in POC roles or alien-that's-ethnic-roles are spherical masses of iron, we can determine that Legend of Korra (2012-2014) is several orders of magnitude higher in the gigajoules of moral indignation than Way of Water (2022) :lol:

Legend of Korra:
  • - 52 episodes
    - 23 mins per episode
    - Shown 10-6 years ago
    - Running 4 years / 4 seasons
Avatar 1 and Way of Water
  • - 2 movies
    - First movie 2h 42m, second movie 3h 12m, total 6 hrs
    - First movie shown 2009, second in 2022
Cameron's Avatar movies are bigger in terms of reception, no matter how much fans defend the animated series.

Heck have Star Wars entirely be done in not-English space-Basic language, or LOTR (right?).
Star Wars doesn't have a English-speaking human going to Pandora and learning the local language. Let's not forget the non-English speaking places ARE watching Avatar movies in subtitles anyway.

People are calling it out for being dated? I did say it's dated?
I find that you're still trying too hard to find merits.
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Re: Avatar: Way Of Water *spoilers*

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

ray245 wrote: 2023-01-06 08:54amPeople have pointed out issues with Raya, more notably the American tendency to lump ALL of Asia into one block. And cast East Asian actors for a largely Southeast Asian setting.
It's annoying and should be improved upon but how does this scale in comparison to the great moral indignation of Cameron's Avatar and the Avatar cartoon? Like, is Cameron's Avatar the BDZ-capable ISD turbolasers compared to Airbender+Korra's Enterprise-D phasers to Raya's B5 multi-megaton-yield warships?
Cameron's Avatar movies are bigger in terms of reception, no matter how much fans defend the animated series.
Then again naysayers were going on about how Cameron's Avatar had zero cultural impact "name one character from that movie" where are the fan fictions etcetera.
Star Wars doesn't have a English-speaking human going to Pandora and learning the local language. Let's not forget the non-English speaking places ARE watching Avatar movies in subtitles anyway.
Are outside-US Avatar flicks shown with English language and subs or are they given local dubs?

Anyway, I'm reminded of Cinemax' WARRIOR show which is badass, it has great code-switching dynamics. Amongst themselves we see the Chinatown Triads speak in English but with a made up anachronistic gangster greaser speak with terms like onions for fresh off the boat Chinese and ducks for white people and bulls for cops. Then when the POV shifts to white people, the Chinese are speaking in Chinese lol

I think this is a mechanic because maybe the Chinese-American and Asian-American performers they hired might not be that fluent in the mother tongue?

Maybe that's the case with Avatar too, the Navi-American performers might already be assimilated and speak English better than Na'vi and they might get criticized by native speakers from the homeland or first and second gen aunties and uncles if they speak in the language but with bad American accents and lousy pronunciation. :lol:
I find that you're still trying too hard to find merits.
I find you're still trying too hard to nitpick Kate Winslet's role? It has a lot of merits because a lot of Americans got killed by the Na'vi. Where have we ever seen Americans portrayed as universally bad and where shooting down their aircraft is portrayed as universally good with no both sides YOU HAD A POINT BUT OH NO YOU'RE GOING SO FAR Magnetomongermasher bullshit.

So I'm glad. Ideally yeah we wouldn't need white protag and the next blockbuster cutting edge CG franchise would have totally non-white casts following Ho Chi Minh as they shoot down American VTOLs in their distant jungle environments while American soldiers get devoured by hostile lifeforms in the bush etcetera.
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Re: Avatar: Way Of Water *spoilers*

Post by ray245 »

Shroom Man 777 wrote: 2023-01-06 10:59am It's annoying and should be improved upon but how does this scale in comparison to the great moral indignation of Cameron's Avatar and the Avatar cartoon? Like, is Cameron's Avatar the BDZ-capable ISD turbolasers compared to Airbender+Korra's Enterprise-D phasers to Raya's B5 multi-megaton-yield warships?
Irrelevant?

Then again naysayers were going on about how Cameron's Avatar had zero cultural impact "name one character from that movie" where are the fan fictions etcetera.
This is not a point I am making though.
Are outside-US Avatar flicks shown with English language and subs or are they given local dubs?
Subs and dubs usually exist side by side, but a lot of people in different parts of the world I've been in do watch subs with no issues.

I think this is a mechanic because maybe the Chinese-American and Asian-American performers they hired might not be that fluent in the mother tongue?

Maybe that's the case with Avatar too, the Navi-American performers might already be assimilated and speak English better than Na'vi and they might get criticized by native speakers from the homeland or first and second gen aunties and uncles if they speak in the language but with bad American accents and lousy pronunciation. :lol:
If anything Jake Sully should be the one doing bad accents lol.
I find you're still trying too hard to nitpick Kate Winslet's role?
I think people dismissing this as just nitpicking IS the issue here.

It has a lot of merits because a lot of Americans got killed by the Na'vi. Where have we ever seen Americans portrayed as universally bad and where shooting down their aircraft is portrayed as universally good with no both sides YOU HAD A POINT BUT OH NO YOU'RE GOING SO FAR Magnetomongermasher bullshit.

So I'm glad. Ideally yeah we wouldn't need white protag and the next blockbuster cutting edge CG franchise would have totally non-white casts following Ho Chi Minh as they shoot down American VTOLs in their distant jungle environments while American soldiers get devoured by hostile lifeforms in the bush etcetera.
Watch RRR instead. That movie does those stuff far better than Avatar did. Or watch plenty of non-American blockbusters.
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Re: Avatar: Way Of Water *spoilers*

Post by MKSheppard »

MKSheppard wrote: 2023-01-05 05:20pmThat's what frustrates me so much about this universe; it's clear we're not seeing the whole picture.
Or as pezook pointed out elsewhere; RDA returns in this film with four or five ships braking -- the energy for that alone would be like god, enough to power the world in 2023 for like 30 years?

So it's clear there isn't an energy crisis -- or any sort of crisis, if a private company can do this.

Hell, Star Wars was better with backstory building:

"The Rebellion will continue to gain support in the Imperial Senate…"

"The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I've just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away."


Cameron had 3+ hours in which he could have done a few lines to clue us in on what was going on, other than General Soprano's rah rah speech to Nu-Quarritch.
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Re: Avatar: Way Of Water *spoilers*

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

ray245 wrote: 2023-01-06 07:54pmIf anything Jake Sully should be the one doing bad accents lol.
To be fair yeah. But ah man you've reminded me that John Cena speaks better Chinese than me, that he actually speaks Chinese while I can't. I bet his Chinese is better than Awkwafina or Simu Liu.
I think people dismissing this as just nitpicking IS the issue here.
It's not even a one-for-one literal indigenous person role though but more indirect, an indigenous-style space alien, so it's actually a degree of separation away from Raya or Airbender/Korra roles that are generalized-Asian-humans.

Watch RRR instead. That movie does those stuff far better than Avatar did. Or watch plenty of non-American blockbusters.
I did watch RRR and it was incredible, though Brits are acceptable villains. I specified, specifically, Americans! Maybe there should be an ahistoric Last Samurai kind of deal except its inexplicable Americans getting arrowed and eaten by tigers. Oh man I wonder how much it costs to ship a bullet to Pandora. The British should've just used 3D printing fabricators in colonial India :lol:
MKSheppard wrote: 2023-01-06 08:06pm
MKSheppard wrote: 2023-01-05 05:20pmThat's what frustrates me so much about this universe; it's clear we're not seeing the whole picture.
Or as pezook pointed out elsewhere; RDA returns in this film with four or five ships braking -- the energy for that alone would be like god, enough to power the world in 2023 for like 30 years?

So it's clear there isn't an energy crisis -- or any sort of crisis, if a private company can do this.
Maybe they just wantonly consume THAT MUCH. Like we could be having a resource crisis in the near future and would still be producing nuke plants and oil plants' worth of energy that would've eclipsed all of previous human civilization.
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Re: Avatar: Way Of Water *spoilers*

Post by ray245 »

Shroom Man 777 wrote: 2023-01-06 08:09pm It's not even a one-for-one literal indigenous person role though but more indirect, an indigenous-style space alien, so it's actually a degree of separation away from Raya or Airbender/Korra roles that are generalized-Asian-humans.
The problem isn't the degree of separation, it's the idea of there being a "fake native" accent in the first place.
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Re: Avatar: Way Of Water *spoilers*

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Shroom's overly attached to the movie and doesn't want to admit it has a flaw; I've done it myself plenty of times. People dislike it when something objectionable is pointed out about the movie they like so they try to make excuses.
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Re: Avatar: Way Of Water *spoilers*

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

ray245 wrote: 2023-01-06 10:50pmThe problem isn't the degree of separation, it's the idea of there being a "fake native" accent in the first place.
Of Kate Winslet specifically or the space aliens in general?
Darth Yan wrote: 2023-01-07 12:13am Shroom's overly attached to the movie and doesn't want to admit it has a flaw; I've done it myself plenty of times. People dislike it when something objectionable is pointed out about the movie they like so they try to make excuses.
I do admit and have admitted it's a flaw but then I'm asking how big of a flaw is this flaw? Hence my analogy, is this moral outrage the Imperator-class Star Destroyer turbolaser equivalent of moral outrages or is it more comparable to Star Trek Enterprise-D phasers or Babylon 5 warship weapons yields? If we compare Cameron Avatar, Airbender and Korra, and Raya, which among them is the moral outrage flaw ISD, Ent-D and Minbari Sharlin or whatev. Or assuming digital blackface is a spherical mass of iron asteroid, then which sci-fi versus debate warship weapon yield do these works correspond to? For reference, to illustrate a high end figure, let's say Christopher Lee as Fu Manchu or Justin Trudeau's makeup is the equivalent of, IDK, Culture-verse power levels.

Another example: Lindsay Ellis getting run out of Twitter because of the heinous moral outrage of comparing Raya to Airbender would be say 40k Imperium Battle Barge-level of weapons yield :lol: Assuming her Twitter account is a spherical mass of iron then we can computate the yield it took to cause vaporization assuming DEW (direct energy weapon) and not NDF chain reaction. It would've been an NDF chain reaction if her Twitter account was undamaged because it was behind packing crates or something.

I would argue the favorable depiction of mowing down American soldiers counteracts the yield of moral indignation, like some kind of inertial dampener or neutronium-impregnated durasteel armor or neutrino heat sink.

Ray is assuming a maximum estimate of moral outrage indignation yield, like asteroid-cracking yield, whereas I'm giving a more minor yield like say barely scorching landing pad plating and no damage to nearby dueling bystander Jedi and bounty hunter and not even environmental effects like vaporizing Kamino rainwater.

We can say that Airbender and Korra or Raya (lol) also have flaws in those regards without having those flaws overshadow the rest of those works? (I actually enjoyed Raya but then the martial arts I do was featured in that film)
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Re: Avatar: Way Of Water *spoilers*

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Shroom Man 777 wrote: 2023-01-07 09:19am Of Kate Winslet specifically or the space aliens in general?
Winslet. Getting a white-actor to act in with a "native-sounding" accent is bad and cringe no matter what sort of fantasy you are talking about.
I do admit and have admitted it's a flaw but then I'm asking how big of a flaw is this flaw? Hence my analogy, is this moral outrage the Imperator-class Star Destroyer turbolaser equivalent of moral outrages or is it more comparable to Star Trek Enterprise-D phasers or Babylon 5 warship weapons yields? If we compare Cameron Avatar, Airbender and Korra, and Raya, which among them is the moral outrage flaw ISD, Ent-D and Minbari Sharlin or whatev. Or assuming digital blackface is a spherical mass of iron asteroid, then which sci-fi versus debate warship weapon yield do these works correspond to? For reference, to illustrate a high end figure, let's say Christopher Lee as Fu Manchu or Justin Trudeau's makeup is the equivalent of, IDK, Culture-verse power levels.
The thing is... why does it matter? What's the point of making comparisons? This isn't a contest.
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Re: Avatar: Way Of Water *spoilers*

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Darth Yan wrote: 2023-01-07 12:13am Shroom's overly attached to the movie and doesn't want to admit it has a flaw; I've done it myself plenty of times. People dislike it when something objectionable is pointed out about the movie they like so they try to make excuses.
Hiding behind making jokes about the whole thing really isn't helping him. That might have worked in 2009, but this is 2023.
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Re: Avatar: Way Of Water *spoilers*

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

ray245 wrote: 2023-01-07 09:38am
Shroom Man 777 wrote: 2023-01-07 09:19am Of Kate Winslet specifically or the space aliens in general?
Winslet. Getting a white-actor to act in with a "native-sounding" accent is bad and cringe no matter what sort of fantasy you are talking about.
The thing is... why does it matter? What's the point of making comparisons? This isn't a contest.
Is it a hanging offense, or not?

My line of inquiry is how severe is it? Hence the various comparisons because on one hand I think this is being taken out of proportion, but on the other hand I do believe representation matters. So there's grades of severity here. Like, Airbender and Korra and Kung Fu Panda could have these faults too, yet we can all point out said faults without regarding them on the same severity as Christopher Lee as Fu Manchu.
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Re: Avatar: Way Of Water *spoilers*

Post by Crazedwraith »

Lol, if Shroom argues too long against you he cares too much, as opposed to you who have argued just as long on the other side.

And good old it's [current year]! That makes a difference for some reason.
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Re: Avatar: Way Of Water *spoilers*

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Crazedwraith wrote: 2023-01-07 10:47amAnd good old it's [current year]! That makes a difference for some reason.
To be fair the awareness for these issues grew over time and I *do* agree that we should show consideration, but there's a scale or proportionality here.

Like Raya was better in representation than say Airbender and Korra, but it still falls short when it comes to distinguishing East Asians from South East Asians, but that would be looking into the finer details and we know "not being region-specific enough" isn't a moral outrage compared to the actual shittiness of Yellow Face Christopher Lee Fu Manchu.

Then we have examples where Raya got criticized for its lukewarm-ness by Lindsay Ellis who compared it unfavorably to Airbender and Korra, yet this resulted in people thinking she was racist or whatever, because Raya has representation compared to Airbender and Korra (which DO lack representation but told similar-ish stories in a better way), and so we can say that works that might not be so good in terms of representation can have these flaws acknowledged while remaining beloved.

Or... what, Airbender and Korra ARE moral outrages and by siding with Airbender and Korra instead of Raya, Ellis is tantamount to committing the Chinese Exclusion Act? Aha, her name is Ellis which is like Ellis Island, where immigrants from Europe were welcomed to the East Coast, whereas on the exact opposite end of the nation immigrants from Asia were treated to the Chinese Exclusion Act! Lindsay Ellis, Ellis Island, immigration inequality, Warrior on Cinemax, coincidence I think not! Plus Lindsay Ellis, Ellis Island, European immigrants tend to be Italian so for all we know Lindsay Ellis is related to Tony Soprano whose cousin that animal Blundetto I can't even say his name actually committed a hatecrime against an Asian! And The Sopranos has more seasons than Warrior on Cinemax (god I hope we get the next season and it gets renewed some more despite HBO being a shitshow now)! Nooo!

(This is me being hyperbolic and pointing out that there is proportionality duh and lol in the Lindsay Ellis case it's hilarious since every Nickelodeon-watching Filipino here was like ITS JUST LIKE AVATAR AIRBENDER KORRA and probably thinking the cartoons did it better than Raya)
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shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN!
Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people :D - PeZook
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