Tea Party goers
People who bitch about socialism taking over the US
and in general those who would like to see the US in its former 1940's greatness should put their money where their mouths are and not see this movie.
I was immediately skeptical of the movie when I saw obviously "Americanized" forces landing on a "undisrupted, virgin" land to take over "people who didn't look like us humans."
Sure enough Avatar is nothing more than a political statement.
Oh, sure, glitzed up with lots of special effects, but my economic spidey senses were tingling and I deep down inside knew this was going to be some kind of lecturing speech about either evil Europeans invading America in the 1500's or some kind of "Gaia" Earthy, feeling, enviro kind of thing.
Rumor has it is the "hero" is a Marine who decides to defect and some "planet nature force" helps the natives win against an obviously superior technological force. I really don't care to back this speculation up because I'm going to go out on a "crazy" limb here and take it for truth until I'm proven wrong, kind of like straddling a Texas Hold 'Em bet in that I'm supremely confident these rumors will be proven true because that's just the slant of Hollywood, and of course if I'm proven wrong, please let me know and I will take down this post. Until then, I'm going to take a wild guess and predict this Hollywood movie is going to prove my cynicism right.
Regardless, so for all you people who are all upset about socialized medicine being passed you have a choice.
Continue to throw your money at this political/propoganda machine or for once, truly boycott something that is nothing more than leftist propoganda.
I have a nice LCD projector with no children, no lines and no parking hassles in my basement. I fully intend on watching it at my house, Rumpleminze in hand, knowing I've denied these leftists sales and attendance...not to mention who in God's name actually enjoys going to the theater nowadays?
PS- I will be burning lots of wood to counter the fact I did not emit carbon driving to the theater so as to continue my contribution to global warming.
15 comments:
Sorry Captain, I already saw it. You're right about the plot being garbage, like Pocahontas but with more obnoxious jabs at the right wing. However the movie as a whole was still well done and I still enjoyed it and I wouldn't mind seeing it again. One of the things that amused me was that it seemed clear that the corporation had to have been contracted out by the government. Because of that they didn't take full advantage of the real wealth the planet had to offer,
SPOILERS
Bionetworking, the next generation of the internet. Their sacred trees are computer servers and their deity is a sentient internet. I couldn't help but notice that while they tried to portray the humans as technological I thought they seemed rather technologically primitive for having mass interstellar travel (When I can think of effective solutions to their problems using MODERN tech, you know something is up)(Even worse, they have low gravity, unobtainium, and the ability to effortlessly and flawlessly submit commands through thought across long distances and they're still using manned aircraft that look like souped up Ospreys? WTF). The natives bionetworking on the other hand seems more like the next technological jump that will revolutionize the world. So by looking at the movie closer it helps undermine the left wing thrust since reality can still seep into their own fantasy world. I'm also not entirely sure if they actually intended parts of the plot to be a parody of itself while advertising biotechnology and bionetworking as the wave of the future.
One of the things I was quite surprised and gratified by in the first Transformers movie was the fact that the United States military is consistently portrayed as tough, competent good guys.
I would give my eyeteeth for a Starship Troopers movie adaptation that actually followed the book, as opposed to Verhoeven's "Heinlein is a fascist" travesty.
It was terrible. Don't see it.
These were exactly my thoughts from the commercials and trailers. Here again is another example of misanthropy from Hollywood. They consider human beings a blight on the planet (and others as well).
Every time I see garbage like this, I remember how easily 900 Spaniards waded through tens of thousands of Aztecs and leveled Tenochtitlan to the ground with cannons. I remember how quickly we defeated the Iraqi and Afghan armies. It's only when we're "nice guys" that we have difficulty dealing with our enemies.
I agree with Daniel about Starship Troopers: Paul Verhoeven should be hanged, the movie burned, and a remake faithful to the book immediately made.
The only positive comments I have about Starship Troopers was the casting and the special effects. The screenplay sucked and they didn't even have the powered armor which was a linchpin in the book. Powered armor was featured in GI Joe.
BTW, while Starship Troopers was at least watchable, Starship Troopers II was a waste of a person's scarce lifetime. Far from the strong sense of loyalty and duty in the book, ST2 was filled with lazy, crazy, disloyal, incompetent, and insubordinate soldiers not worthy of any military force. If I find that producer, director and writer, they'll wish they got off as easy as Paul Verhoeven.
I won't waste my time or money with Avatar any more than Fahrenheit 9/11 or Sicko.
Everything Hollywood touches turns to crap.
Last time I paid to see a movie in a theater was "Star Trek - The Wrath of Kahn".
Certainly those anti-American lefties in Hollywood aren't getting rich off of me.
I also don't buy any recorded music and don't watch anything on NBC and CBS except maybe the Superbowl or the Masters. I believe NBC ought to pay a price for their consistent liberal bias and CBS deserves the death penalty for the attempt to throw the election through the obviously fake National Guard memo.
I do not attend or watch NFL games except I'll watch the Superbowl for the commercials. I have the NFL on boycott. You see, I think the NFL is a bunch of gangsters making huge money off of the public.
First, they don't have their own minor leagues - they expect universities, mainly public ones to be their development league. So they get a talent pool at no cost to them.
Then, they play the "give us a new stadium or we'll move game" basically demanding the public provide them with fancy stadiums which allow them toi capture more revenue for skyboxes and the like.
Then they always push the bogus claim that their 10 games a year helps the local economy. MLB has 81 home games to spur economic spending. Hockey has what 32(?) home games in a much cheaper venue - you can make an argument that the NHL and MLB raise downtown business due to the home dates vs. facility costs, but with the NFL you really can't make that argument with a shred of credibility - 10 friggin' dates, two of which are exhibition farces.
Anonymous, I totally agree with you regarding the NFL. Never understood all the fan arousal for such a lame sport being played by the second worst gang of prima donnas in sports (the NBA is the clear leader in this category). And the broadcast teams are worse than the players! Sadly, the TC will cave in soon and pay for another stadium for those bums, the Vikings.
Hockey has 41 regular and 2-4 pre-season home games.
Hollywood has been out of original ideas for a while now. While the visuals were nice, the movie itself was basically 'Dances with Wolves' with big blue Indians.
I watched it twice and I'd watch it again. I'll probably buy a PS3 so I can watch it on Blu-ray, so there. :P
The political themes were more than buried by the enormous amounts of eye-candy, and while I'm normally completely turned off by any sort of nature-worship garbage, the deity portrayed in this movie was basically the Internet, so points for having something that was scientifically verifiable in-universe instead of just a mash-up of whatever non-Abrahamic belief systems the director has a hard-on for.
While the trailers might make you think it's three hours of nature-worship, it's not. It's an epic tribute to what you can make with 200 million dollars worth of CGI: loads of pretty scenery, mecha and cat-people.
The story wasn't even Science vs Religion or Science vs Nature or anything like that. The scientists were good guys trying to figure out how the planetary tree-Internet worked while keeping the trigger happy mercenary wing of their company from blowing it up. They didn't make appeals to the inherent value of trees or tolerance or appreciating different cultures for what they are, even though it would have been really easy to take that route given the setting. They passed up on a lot of easy shots if that's what the movie was really about, but it's not. It's about pretty scenery and robots and cat-people, and the rest of it is just an excuse to deliver the eye-candy. Anyone getting worked up over the political content is taking this movie way too seriously, considering how massive the movie is and how small the political elements are. You could fit every political line in a 30 second spot and this movie is closer to three hours than two.
Captain, I know you really, really want to rage at the left over this, but this movie really isn't a very good target. You come across as making a mountain out of a molehill.
(spoilers)
AeroGuy, I didn't think it was all that weird that they were using lower-tech stuff for a lot of things. The Space Shuttle uses less processing power than a graphing calculator I bought eight years ago, and they do mention that their high tech thought-transmission stuff is really expensive. Their manned aircraft that look like Ospreys can be explained the same way, being the cheapest way to get the job done. While unmanned aircraft seem like an obvious better solution, it's clear that they've been on this planet for quite a while and they know there's a good chunk of it where all their electronics go wonky, so manned flight with manual controls is really the only option.
Not even worth Netflix.
SPOILERS?
I liked the fact that the scientists were defending the right of the natives to keep tons of their ancestor's memories, which it seems relies on the unobtanium mineral; a mineral which Capitalists, I think, would believe should be purchased from the Na'vi.
It was made apparent in the dialogue that the corporation was able to get some of the mineral, and the rest was mostly on the Na'vi's property.
And by the rules of Capitalism, if the Na'vi don't wish to trade, then they don't have to as it is their right to keep their valuable services to themselves.
Am I correct?
The corporation in this movie seems to have a substantial monopoly over the fictional mineral "unobtanium", and they also have almost exclusive use of the US military. Capitalist? I think not. It seems to me that socialists have invaded the alien home planet, not capitalists.
Avatar is also a wonderful tale of property rights. Those blue aliens were there first: they use the land, they live there, and it's their property! How dare this crazy monopolistic corporation disregard all property rights and trash the alien's turf? Absurd, I say! Irrational, I cry!
Avatar is about imperialism (It happens to have environmentalist victims). It depicts an organization blasting the crap out of an association's rightful home and property. The Na'vi might have had it coming, but no Capitalist, that is believer in the idea that transactions should only be made voluntarily (and so for mutual benefit), would want an organization incendiary-missile striking an innocent person's property.
This invasion of the Na'vi's home was performed because RDA wanted to be spoiled by the fruits of violence(what Lefists want as well). After pouring loads of money into Avatar technology in order to negotiate with the Na'vi, you know- diplomacy with loads of demands but with empty hands, and failing at it, RDA decides to blow the Na'vi's shit up.
Peaceful people are always blown up by warmongers who don't want to pay what's right for someone's property. It's a fact of life(and death). I don't think Avatar is Environmentalist or Leftist propaganda. It has environmental undertones because Pandora is a virgin tropical planet, and because the Na'vi have empirical evidence for a providence greater than themselves that functions by using the forests' animals, plants, trees, etc. (thus why there's empirical evidence for a providence, although the praying does go too far with that in my opinion). Making the Na'vi an indigenous tribe with superstitions just makes sense. Avatar is only about imperialism.
Have fun with the LCD Projector :).
Oh, and you're right. I saw Avatar at the movie theater. It was $38 for four people to see a movie, with cramped seats and expensive drinks. I dunno why I keep going to the movies these days.
(Sorry about the double post, but I don't think my last post explained my thoughts as completely and correctly as I normally like)
Richard and I where told about the same thing and have also decided to save our hard earned cash, we will take up space on your floor when you decide to watch it on your LCD projector! Driving to your abode should emit more than enough carbon into the air to make you happy.
I too didn't find Avatar too socialist for my sensability.
One could think of it as anti-emminent domain :)
As of now, Avatar has made $200 million outside the US and only $100 million in the US. And they say we don't export anything anymore!
I am sure some socialist do dig Avatar, but perhaps they don't realize their ticket money is going to Rupert Murdoch, hah!!!
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