Bullshit. Sure, had the operation gone perfectly as planned, the Na’vi would be scattered and the mining operation could continue. It didn’t go as planned, and rather then withdraw, saying “We want to minimize casualties, fall back!” the humans just kept shooting.
And then it got all personal and shit, with the Colonel going after Sully specifically.
Sadly, this is why the movie winds up being something of a political hatchet job: it lionizes the natives but, as with a lot of the “noble savage” genre, never really treats them as people. They are ciphers for a purity uncomtaminated by all the “sins” the author sees in his own society, and therefore cannot be allowed an actual personality.
So now you admit that the objective was to scatter the Na’vi and not to “exterminate” them, which is what you originally alleged.
The objective was to destroy the Home Tree (to make the unobatanium accessible) and secondarily to scatter the Na’vi so they could not resist. It went perfectly as planned, succeeding completely in these objectives.
Again, I think you must have seen a different movie than the one I saw. The humans did not “keep shooting” at the Na’vi after they had destroyed the Home Tree; in fact, I don’t recall any Na’vi being specifically targeted at all. The Na’vi who died were killed by falling debris or by being in the tree, not by being shot.
At this point you are just making stuff up.
Empire is also widely considered to be the second film in the series. Correctly, in my opinion 
The first film ends on a very high note. Shoot, everyone even gets medals! I think Avatar may even be less upbeat at the end than A New Hope. I do hope that Cameron goes this route with the inevitable Avatar sequels, his scriptment contained a lot of more murky stuff that could still be brought into the Avatar universe. With a built in audience and a smaller budget, he ought to be able to do a little more shaded storytelling.
I think Cameron gets a bad rap for being “film-lite” without the important caveat that his biggest two hits were largely considered to be the Heaven’s Gate of their time, and were victims of all sorts of corporate meddling. For Pete’s sake, he even surrendered his paycheck for Titanic when it looked like it would be a huge washout. He has compromised his vision to simplify stories for his two biggest hits, despite his multi-billion dollar haul over his last two films, he has not had much in the way of creative freedom due to the sheer expensiveness of his thinking.
I am hopeful that with his foot firmly planted with Avatar 1, he will get his rocks off like he did with Terminator 2 and Aliens- two preexisting franchises that he extended into new and interesting territory.
Of course it is possible, even probable, that as he spends time with his material he feels the need to sharpen it or polish it in a way that removes all of the nuance. I guess we will get an answer in the next two years or so.
Whoops, I think I thought I was in the other thread. Not particularly on topic, that.
Trivial difference not worth arguing.
Well, when relevent clips start appearing on YouTube or some other free source, I’ll be happy to revisit the issue. Meantime, I see not a fraction of a shadow of a reason to budge from my earliest assessment, formed about halfway through watching the movie - the story is simplistic and attempts to manipulate, and I feel no compulsion to cut it any slack.
Which explains why you’ve been arguing it.
You haven’t been “not cutting it any slack,” you have been ignoring explanatory elements that are actually in the movie, while at the same time reading into it things that aren’t there. So your arguments shouldn’t be cut any slack either.
Well, then I guess you and I are at an impasse.
Right. You can think Iraq was a clusterfuck and still think the Iraq analogy in “Avatar” was moronic. Show a Sadaam Hussein equivalent, show a George Bush equivalent - do something. Make it an interesting analogy.
This is an interesting article about how so many different groups are hanging their own issues onto the movie. This thread is a good example.
I like this part:
I especially like this part:
Cameron as an underdog. I love it!
Attacks left and right, but people still love it and are flocking to see it. “Simplistic” movies do not generally generate this kind of controversy and adoration.
There’s something about Avatar…
What about the politics of the Na’vi themselves? Superficially (as if this movie is anything but) they resemble what Jared Diamond calls a “Big man” society, a few hundred villagers with a chief. Do they maintain individual personalities in light of their fiber-optic networking? Do they vote on anything?
They allegedly have hard lives where only the strong and smart survive, yet the only dead Na’vi we see (prior to the humans going all Krystalnacht on them) looks like a victim of old age. Do Na’vi children with birth defects or who show signs of illness get abandoned to the jungle? Do Na’vi adolescents who fail one of the rituals get written off, i.e. after climbing Wile E. Coyote mountain to bond with a glider-critter, little Ji’bolla got thrown off and plunged 80,000 feet to his death. It’s okay, though, the tribe is better off without his kind of weakness. I’m prepared to start speculating, for the sake of discussion, in light of the lack of information presented in the film.