Avatar and the Avatar Cadence (James Cameron, 2009-2031)

[hanshotfirst1138]

I don’t hate the Avatar films; Cameron still has a way with spectacle that few directors, if any, can match. But they all have functionally the same very simplistic storylines (which I find a bit more problematic when he inject the political element) and 3 hour+ overlength, and compared to something like LOTR, the design of the fantasy world is really unimaginative, at least in my opinion.

The only contribution I have to make on this discussion is that revisiting the first two Avatar films, I was completely wrong about them the first time around*. Utterly brilliant mass entertainment, leaps and bounds ahead of the way other blockbuster films are made and packaged. He can tell me to move out of mom's basement all he wants.

*I might need to blame the terrible theatrical 3D experience for this in both cases, but I know that ultimately it falls on me completely missing the point.

Maybe. But even from my mom’s basement, I still hate the 4K transfers and don’t want to buy them .

[pistolwink]

I mentioned Dances with Wolves because it's a very popular film that treats Native Americans patronizingly as embodiments of "close to nature" stereotypes. Yes, there are many other films that utilize the same putatively positive stereotypes. The New World is just one other, less popular film that does something similar, but I doubt Cameron had that one in mind as a model. There are even plenty of science-fiction narratives that, like Avatar, transpose those stereotypes onto alien races.

[Brian C]

I mentioned Dances with Wolves because it's a very popular film that treats Native Americans patronizingly as embodiments of "close to nature" stereotypes.

Does it? Obviously, "patronizing" is in the eye of the beholder to some degree. But the film has never struck me as either patronizing or as indulging in stereotypes, despite often being caricatured as such. Often, I wonder if the people making these kinds of complaints about it have actually watched it.

[beamish14]

If anything, Avatar, is far, FAR closer to Bill Kroyer’s 1992 film Ferngully: The Last Rainforest. Both films feature a strong ecological message, a protagonist being transformed to live among the persecuted population he is entrusted with destroying, an essentially inter-species love angle, they’re set in rainforests, etc.