I don’t have words.
The movie is just non-stop humans being absolute colonizer monsters and the people (and creatures) of Pandora, who want to live in peace, being forced to fight back (and kicking human ass).
The movie lives and dies by it’s visual effects and by god are they incredible. Pandora is just such a beautiful world, and Cameron lets you experience it in all its beauty and unity and peace before he shows the ugly human machines and weapons kill and destroy it. You feel the pain and the righteous anger when the Navi fight back. I was cheering for every human death of which there are many.
Is the story perfect? Nah. There are points where it’s cliche etc but I don’t mind that. There is a larger story about nature and colonisation and that’s what matters so much more. Pandora is a world that can fight back because the world itself is alive and connected and god just imagine if Earth was like that.
I’m definitely gonna see it again and I’m super pumped for the sequels.
I really cannot overstate how awesome the world of Pandora looks. It’s the perfect blend of real life nature and fantasy nature. Same goes for the military tech too.
As probably horrible a monkey's paw wish it might be, an Avatar RTS would look and maybe even play amazing the way Dune did in the start of the genre.
Oh man. Dune.
I need to see it again to figure out if I like it more than Avatar 2. The visuals I mean. Story wise obviously Dune is much deeper etc.
But visuals? Oh man, that’s close.
Arguably, the RTS game genre's roots go back to a game called Dune 2 in the early 90s.
literally the first command and conquer is just dune 2 with the dune bits stripped out
the single resource that spawns in fields on the map that is collected by shitty vehicles was 100% dune inspired (first spice, then tiberium)
there's also a less shitty remake called dune 2000
and openRA also has it
DUNE 2 THOUGH
BEFORE THE GENRE GOT FUCKED UP BY 2 BILLION APM STARCRAFT NONSENSE
Some really cool sci-fi stuff. The crab submarines were probably my favorite.
I think this movie really made it clear just how vast the human colonisation operation is. It’s scary.
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The fucking entry with those spaceships by god. That was terrifying. Humans really did go interstellar and decided to be evil dickheads.
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I thought the first movie was fairly underrated from a sci-fi perspective. This one absolutely expanded on that. Some of the best sci-fi machinery I've seen. The ships landing was surreal and horrifying. The evil corporation is one of my favorite things about the Alien universe and I'm glad to see a similar presence in Avatar.
We’re lucky he just wants to make cool art and look at fish. If James Cameron wanted to rule the world he could
Let's be real, he'd do a better job than the current bunch of :porky-happy:s
Can’t wait for the Chuddy “Humanity Fuck Yeah” memes to make the rounds and get ebic updoots on Reddit.
This was the same cryptofascist argument that Ayn Rand made for why First Nations peoples deserved to be mass murdered. :scared-fash:
No, see, it’s okay because they’re blue aliens and not actually native Americans!
Just like how HP’s Goblins aren’t actually Jewish (despite being grotesque, centuries-old caricatures of them) so you can un-problematically commit pogroms on them in a game just fine!
"Doing atrocities for humanity" is always exclusionary and said for the purposes of "othering" a killing target, human or otherwise.
Gee, I wonder why Warhammer 40k attracts Chuds and Cryptos like flies to shit.
Isn’t there one alien species in 40k that are based commies or soemthing?
The Tau were that, but the creepiest development head in Games Workshop, Matt Ward, went out of his way to try to retcon the Tau into evil mind controllers that sterilize their alien recruits. He's the same developer whose self-admitted favorite faction "The Grey Knights," (cw: Gambo-tier gory edgy misogyny)
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were written by him to have a habit of ritually mutilating and murdering Sisters of Battle to wear their body parts as magic talismans to protect against the Warp. You know, in a way that totally isn't Chaos sorcery at all. Morally grey. During a softball "interview" given by a Games Workshop employee, Matt Ward giggled like the manchild he is while remarking about how funny that was to him. :sus:
Jesus what a creepy loser.
I guess you can still homerule the Tau as being based.
There's some continuity mending later where the "Tau are mind controllers that sterilize their alien recruits" is presented in-setting as official Imperium of Man propaganda. That is to say, highly suspect and likely just made to stoke xenophobia further.
The Ultramarines even sign a treaty with the Tau and even trade some technology in the post Matt Ward era.
back when I used to be into 40k I remember that arguments used to flair up all the time on r/sigmarxism about whether the Tau were actually communist or not and the consensus was basically that although they weren't perfectly communist (since they were made in the 80s by a bunch of british nerds who didn't know much about communism except that it was the thing that happened in the scary eastern countries), they were close enough and the only thing that couldn't be easily explained away was their caste system
There's a Warhammer 40k/Avatar crossover fanfic. It's exactly what you'd expect :agony:
Hey, no problems here. Someone can match that with a fic where an advanced communist species smokes the human invasion force ahead of time, establishes ties with the Na’vi to ensure their autonomy and sails off to the horizon to liberate Earth of its Bourgeois masters.
I seem to remember reading somewhere that the argument was already made at least as early as during the colonization of America that it's not enough to live on and use land for it to be ones property, but rather "developing" the land gives one that right.
Polluting the water and dumping microplastics into the sky is developing something all right.
Such a dumb fucking idea too
"Oh so you're hunting, fishing, gathering, farming the land and keeping the ecosystem healthy? Well that's clearly not developed. You're not even extracting surplus value and using it to enrich a small class of slave-owning scumbags!"
fern gully in space
this is the first time i've heard this connection and it's...just perfect :chefs-kiss:
It's been chanted in rage on :reddit-logo: and elsewhere for over a decade.
Humanity fucking killed their own planet you fuckhead. What the fuck is this chud on about.
There are thousands of sci-fi stories about humans killing each other (and other aliens) in space. Every time humans are the “good guys” and the military etc bs gets valorised. This is the one franchise where humans are unquestionably evil and we side with the native people.
I remember this part of internet culture with absolutely no fondness
No need to remember it when it hasn't yet gone away. :soypoint-1: :melon-musk: :soypoint-2:
When I was younger I thought the premise (exploring how aliens and humans would view eachother) of a lot of HFY was pretty interesting but lacking, so I started doing a little short story series on tumblr. Iirc I was trying to counter the chuddy homo-supremacy thing by making the characters have to cooperate and work with eachother while the human antagonists fail due to ego and infighting.
This was years ago, I only got a few chapters in and I've since lost the login creds for that account. :deeper-sadness: I may revive the idea though
Rad. I look forward to seeing it.
Pandora is a world that can fight back because the world itself is alive and connected and god just imagine if Earth was like that.
Ohohoho my friend, Earth is alive and is fighting back. Covid and climate change will fuck us up royally
Reminder: By taking action to protect the biosphere of this planet, we become the Earth acting in its own self defense
Yeah, we will never be space colonisers cuz either we’d get to socialism first or die by climate barbarism.
Ohohoho my friend, Earth is alive and is fighting back.
It's mostly gonna kill poor and indigenous people though
Climate change is the genocide of the poor by the wealthy and to treat it as justified comeuppance is ecofascism
Chinese Covid situation , lack of Russia and shitty exchange rates are holding it back Box Office wise . It would have done 2.5b+ otherwise
I have an absolutely crippling phobia of whales. Like shaking and crying if I get a glance of our large underwater mammal friends. Is this movie safe for me to watch? Sufficiently non-whale-like sea monsters are usually safe, as are sharks, it's a baleen whale thing.
Well…a whale inspired creature is one of the main characters in the second half of the film. So…you could stay till then and see if you’ll be fine?
WELP, just googled it and got real anxious. Guess this movie is gonna have to be a hard pass for me. That sucks.
I have a bird phobia. It's stupid, I know. And yet, if a harmless little sparrow lands on me, I will FREAK THE FUCK OUT.
I apologize to all the birds of Hexbear. You're great, just please don't land on me.
I know, pal. If you've been wondering why, whenever we meet on Liberal Mountain, I insist on waving instead of giving you a big ol' hug .... well, that's why. I'm so ashamed. Comrades can still be comrades if they'd prefer to keep some distance, right?
I mean, getting shit on by birds while they're flying is no joke.
As far as I can remember, I've never been pooped on by a bird. I've had the phobia as long as I can remember, and so have two of my cousins who are very close in age to me. We assume some hotshot bird thought it would be funny to freak out some toddlers, and it ended up scarring us for life. What a punk.
I had a really severe phobia of spiders until I started taking anti-anxiety meds and it just evaporated. And it didn't come back after I stopped taking that medication. Just a thought.
I'm scared of tornados. Have been my entire life. Used to have nightmares about tornados as a kid. I live nowhere close to where tornados form lol, Ive never seen one in real life but it's like paralyzing and I used to get scared of certain kinds of thunder clouds cause I thought they were gonna form a tornado as a little kid.
No it makes sense, giant ancient intelligent creatures that could kill you instantly are worthy of fear
Whales creep me put too.
Like, I respect and love them as one of Earths creatures, but they still scare me.
I hope this doesn’t come off as insensitive (and I get some animal phobias at least, I firmly stand against anything with an exoskeleton they’re fucking gross and make me recoil in disgust) but I don’t get why whales.
They’re fellow mammals. They are smart. They are mostly gentle (killer whales are smart enough to attack boats but that is a learned response not an ingrained one).
Is it like an extension of thalassophobia?
That’s fair, but for my phobias at least I can explain what the exact details are (the chitin, it’s the chittering, the FUCKING PNEUMONATIC SYSTEM THAT MOVES THEIR LEGS).
I was hoping to at least understand the aspects of whale that cause it. Hypothetically: the size, being swallowed, ect.
Is that a “wtf Jesse but I’m polite” gotcha or a “oh that’s why you were asking” gotcha?
I don’t get why whales.
If they were in any way rational they wouldn't be phobias. People don't get to choose.
I understand that, being afraid of a roach is pathetic from a rational view, yet I scream if one touches me.
It doesn’t mean I can’t explain the qualities of the roach that make me itchy on the inside. I wanted to learn what those are for whale phobia.
I come within touching distance of whales pretty often, they're massive and if you get too close one swish of their tail can kill you without even knowing you're there. Blue whales are also the largest creatures to ever exist on planet earth, which is a pretty reasonable thing to fear imo.
The largest creatures to ever exist on planet earth that we've seen so far :alex-aware:
My mom blames Pinocchio, but I'm pretty okay with toothed whales actually. And sharks are really cool, except for basking sharks and whale sharks because they set me off too. I think it's a Big Thing Underwater sort of fear, but very specific.
The big mouths too maybe? Fantasy art of whalelike creatures underwater with big open mouths always get me.
I don't think it's just thalassophobia though. I really enjoyed Subnautica, and the scariest part for me was ironically the big peaceful floaty whale guys near the surface. The rest of the game was only the normal kind of scary, not the "I can't function" sort of phobia-scary. Sure that leviathan is currently trying to swallow me whole, but at least it looks like a cool sea serpent and not a blue whale..
Harry Potter is my childhood so I can’t be objective about it. I have a lot of memories associated with it with my parents, siblings, friends etc.
Yeah I just saw it. It was pretty incredible. You're absolutely right, the world is so beautiful and interesting and the action sequences are so engaging that I can easily ignore any problem I'd normally have with parts of the story being cliche or corny. In fact they sort of become endearing.
I'm actually pretty pumped for the sequels now. I want to go swimming lol.
SAME.
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What’d you think of Jake as a dad? He was pretty fucking hard on his kids. Sometimes it was justified, like when they went disobeyed the command to be scouts and started handling the weapons at the train robbery, or when they went to site of the last movie’s climactic battle early on.
But most of the time Jake was just an ass lol.
And Neytiri…damn she was so fucking racist to Spider! He’s just a kid! Why you hating on him 😭
I really like the angle they’re going with Kiri. I’m like 90% sure she doesn’t have a dad at all lol and Ewa did a Mary on Grace. She’s I think my favourite of the Sully kids other than the boy who died (rip).
I honestly loved all the teenage stuff in the movie. It makes sense to me that they are ones who’re gonna be focused on more and more as the movies progress. Jake and Neytiri will become more supporting and I’m cool with that.
I think it’ll be the first time we get a movie series where we see the old protagonists just gradually be replaced with their younger counterparts without it feeling forced.
Anyways, glad you enjoyed it too lol.
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I definitely think Jake was an overbearing father, but I guess it kind of makes sense given the circumstances in which he's raising a family. There were an uncomfortable amount of military dad vibes for sure though.
Yeah Neytiri was pretty tough on the poor kid. He obviously just wanted to feel accepted by the Na'vi. I'm surprised he didn't make a bigger deal out of her threatening his life!
Kiri was extremely cool. I'm glad they found a way to work Sigourney Weaver back in. Definitely a child of Ewa. I hope that don't go overboard with her powers but I like where it's headed.
Anyway, I'm excited about the future of these movies. I wasn't sure what to expect but I really enjoyed it.
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I thought Neytiri being weary of Spider was because she didnt like seeing the son of the man she killed hanging around. (Wasn't sure if he knew she was the one that did it or not) Then she threatened to kill him so I guess she really just doesn't like him lol
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jake military dad bullshit
on my first watch I thought "man that was a weird ass direction, aren't we supposed to like this guy, this was pretty corny, etc etc"
Just watched it again tonight. I think the military-jargon was a very deliberate choice for a few reasons. First, we don't see jake use any of that lingo until the humans return to Earth. It's almost a PTSD/stress response. It's most obvious in the first quarter of the film and falls off towards the end (but still present). Second, something I noticed was that all the military phrases he uses like "what's your poz" and shit like that gets repeated almost verbatim by the blatantly evil human military counterparts within 2 minutes of each other. Like there's a 20 minute sequence at the start of the film where it goes back and forth between Edie Falcos' General Girlboss/Quaritch and Jake using identical phrases in a way that made me think it was deliberate comparisons. Specific examples elude my high ass right now but I remember several moments in the movie where I thought "wow that bit of jargon was JUST used in an identical fashion by some human ghoul". Third, Jake gets chastised by Neytiri repeatedly throughout the film for doing this.
I think Jake unlearning old military habits and Earth-biases is going to be a huge point going forward in the next 3 films. I have it, allegedly on good authority, hypothetically in Minecraft, from someone who might potentially a few years ago at one point have had access to the scripts for 3 and 4 in a video game, that the third film will at least partially serve as an Earth origin story. Overcoming last vestiges of attachment to Jake the Human will be a big plot point.
Wow, thanks for sharing that. I’ll be watching it again soon so I’ll be on the look for that.
Isn't it like one mega corpo that's trying to colonise Pandora in the Avatar universe?
In Avatar 2 they make it clear that Earth is dying and humans need a new place to live.
Plus, if you saw the extended cut of Avatar 1, they show Earth at the start. It’s basically the Blade Runner/Cyberpunk future.
In Avatar 2 they make it clear that Earth is dying and humans need a new place to live.
It’s basically the Blade Runner/Cyberpunk future.
It's Plan B for Bazinga then, just like in real life: extend the policies that are killing the Earth toward space. :my-hero:
100%
Humans are evil and I’m glad at least one major blockbuster franchise is willing to show that.
Humans are evil
:doubt:
Humans are capable of evil but there's so much more they are also capable of. Saying "humans are evil" is giving a free argument point over to capitalists that claim that "because humans evil, let's be the most efficient evil" :capitalist-laugh:
Bro cmon I clearly meant it in context of the movie dog.
I assume that the humans left on the dying planet are a mixed bag ruled by the evil ones among themselves, the same ones sending evil boots to murder and plunder the Na'vi's planet.
Even in fiction I don't like "dae this entire le species is le evil" ideology, implied or directly stated. A lot of ideological evil is made possible by declaring that an entire population is evil and therefore "fair game."
Well, you clearly haven’t watched even the first avatar then because the entire point of Jake Sully’s arc was that the good humans would side with the Navi.
Which is what they did in both these movies.
You’re literally making up an enemy to be mad at. Neither Avatar says “all humans bad”. That’s not the theme of the movies.
Think of it at ACAB but applied to the colonising humans rather than just cops. So, the only good cops (good humans) would be those who turn on other cops (ie human colonisers) to save the people that were being oppressed.
Well, you clearly haven’t watched even the first avatar
Yes yes there's "good boots" in a very :LIB: way and so on and on but even those "good boots" have to first feel bad about what they're doing after they're already doing it.
I don’t understand your point?
Do you want a scene of humans on Earth protesting against Pandora’s colonisation?
Cameron has said Earth will play a bigger role in future movies, so I’m sure they’ll show how humans are suffering too (outside of that extended cut).
But right now this movie is in Pandora and from the perspective of the colonised. It’d be super weird to force a scene like that in.
Like, it’s wild to expect colonized people to have a “nuanced” view on the issue and say “not all sky people are bad” while they’re actively being colonized.
Like, right now all the Navi was separated into different tribes, each fighting their own battles. A major point of the series is how all the Navi need to set aside their differences and unite to face the much, much greater threat.
Do you want a scene of humans on Earth protesting against Pandora’s colonisation?
That might actually have helped, yeah.
Like, it’s wild to expect colonized people to have a “nuanced” view on the issue and say “not all sky people are bad” while they’re actively being colonized.
I wasn't asking for that at all. I'm actually fine with the space boots being seen as bad because ideologically they are and even the ones that are not only start feeling bad after participating or at least witnessing the atrocities. Jake did it for the chance to get out of the wheelchair, like how a lot of real life boots do it to get college money.
Hey man, I’m sorry. I don’t know why I got so aggro. You obviously raise a good point and I could definitely have phrased my response much better.
I understand.
I've put up with a lot worse here in defense of much worse fiction, so it's fine.
Eclipse Phase is very explicit that most people are the descendents of Americans, Europeans and a few other regions in the post-apocalypse space future because the rich European countries evacuated their populations and left the global south to die, and it's played for horror.
and it’s played for horror.
That may well be, but the local enthusiasts for that game missed that point entirely and were more into the "wow, cool transhumanism!" angle and didn't know/care about that. It also may be a narrative shortcut so the writers didn't have to consider much of non-white cultures in the speculative future. It put me off from trying it for years, especially because of that sus inclusion in the canon material about creepy childlike waifu "sheaths" :kombucha-disgust:
That's your local group. The setting is very explicitly horror. The fact that most people who escaped Earth are from the global north is a critique of how global north nations are refusing to address or actively exploiting global warming. Neotenics are considered creepy in-universe by some people because what kind of person would want to run around in a body that looks like a pre-pubescent child? But the potential for horror is very much the point. Eclipse Phase is an extremely, extremely dark setting that explores both the risks and benefits of how leftist societies might deal with radical transhumanism and potential new technologies, alongside the unrelenting, gut churning horror of how capitalist societies would invent new forms of exploitation and violence using those same technologies. People creeping on Neotenics is... pretty far down the list of routine horrors faced by Firewall agents. Eclipse Phase frequently makes "I have no Mouth and I must Scream" look cheerful and optimistic.
As for why Neotenics are in the setting at all - Neotenics were built because a smaller body means you need less food, less air, and less pressurized volume in a space ship. It's a highly efficient way to still wear a meat body while min-maxing your available resources in space. People who are more comfortable operating in synths/robots or as infomorphs would skip having a biological body all together and go full digital, but many, many people are not willing to live like that just for more fuel and energy efficiency. Neotenics were built as a compromise solution.
That’s your local group.
That's what sucks; the local group was both large and the only one in my area. They even set up a promotional display for Eclipse Phase at a local convention and were talking about "the risks and the promise of transhumanism and posthumanism" as if implying that their bazinga take on it was the intended message, not really the horror except in a "oh yeah space Cthulu is around I guess" aside.
Worst of all, the same booth promoting the game was also pushing that "MIRI" shit from Big Yud's LessWrong cult. :disgost:
As for why Neotenics are in the setting at all - Neotenics were built because a smaller body means you need less food, less air, and less pressurized volume in a space ship. It’s a highly efficient way to still wear a meat body while min-maxing your available resources in space. People who are more comfortable operating in synths/robots or as infomorphs would skip having a biological body all together and go full digital, but many, many people are not willing to live like that just for more fuel and energy efficiency. Neotenics were built as a compromise solution.
With those other options available (or even ones not mentioned like "uplifted" monkeys of small compact size or even simply physically smaller proportionate adult humans) that still seems like a Thermian Argument to justify :libertarian-alert: options in the established primary lore instead of just something a group could come up with themselves if they must. Why does "smaller and require less resources" have to mean "like a creepy otaku pedo fantasy" exactly? I think it was put in there to move copies of the game, at best, as a cynical business decision, and judging by my local group, it certainly did. :kombucha-disgust:
I also still stand by the suspicion that the game's writers were using a narrative shortcut so they didn’t have to consider much of non-white cultures in the speculative future. There's plenty of nonwhite billioniares in powerful positions now, why would they suddenly let :lmayo: monopolize the space lifeboats? They'd be economically and materially and logistically more likely to abandon their own ethnic groups in favor of their own class first, making the "saved white people" thing kind of sus.
Exactly. Capitalism conditions humans to be evil at a young age.
Try YouTube. I think it’s basically just an extra scene where the movie starts on earth.
James Cameron is so underrated as a director. Is the story better than the first one? First one was just Pocahontas with blue aliens.
The first one worked as a standalone movie whereas this one is definitely a sequel AND just one part in a larger story.
It’s cliched at parts but I don’t mind that. It’s better than fucking MCU, Maverick, Bond etc.
Underrated? Come on dude, he’s the one director every single “normie”creams their pants over. He’s the Ridley Scott of CGI.
Might invite some friends to see it with me. Maybe on some drugs as well.
I went in sober because I wanted my first experience to be just me. But I’ll def see it high.
I'll just wait for corridor to do a vfx breakdown of jt
Do I need to watch it in HFR? Can human eyes even resolve anything different at that frequency?
I saw it in IMAX 3D and I think the HFR was only there for a few scenes. I dunno. I know a few scenes felt kinda “flowy”.
When it first happened, it was pretty jarring and I was worried it’d be bad. But pretty soon I stopped noticing it, so I’m guessing it did its job.
I can instantly tell the difference from 144 and 60 frames, and it gets harder the higher the framerate. So yes, the difference between 24 and 48 is very noticeable.
play Sid Meyer's Alpha Centauri, liberal. (or just watch the playlist of all the secret project cutscenes on YouTube, it gets the point across without having to play an ancient strategy game)
"Richard Baxton piloted his Recon Rover into a fungal vortex and held off four waves of mind worms, saving an entire colony. We immediately purchased his identity manifests and repackaged him into the Recon Rover Rick character with a multi-tiered media campaign: televids, touchbooks, holos, psi-tours— the works. People need heroes. They don't need to know how he died clawing his eyes out, screaming for mercy. The real story would just hurt sales, and dampen the spirits of our customers."
– Morgan Stellartots Keynote Speech, "Mythology for Profit"
In that game, late stage capitalism and techbro ideology kills off Earth and the survivors go to a new planet in Alpha Centauri to (mostly, factions vary) do a late stage capitalism with techbro ideology, but the planet fights back.
I went IMAX 3D cuz I knew that’s what would be best. It was a 1.5 hr journey one-way.
And I’m willing to do it again.
I also do wanna see it regular to see how different it is. But Avatar is really about the world of Pandora, which is best experienced in a big ass screen and with 3D.
It’s really the only franchise that needs to be in 3D at all lol. Everything else is better 2D imo.
Planning on getting super baked and seeing this, but damn its three hours, is there a slow point half way through to pop out and have a sneaky top up vape without missing much? lol
not major spoilers, just a scene where you can leave
After the Sully family arrive at the water tribe, there are a few scenes showing the kids learning “the way of water” and facing some bullying etc. you can leave for a couple minutes during then. Scenes after that are important, so you can’t take too long.
Honestly, I’ll not worry too much what you miss. You’ll most definitely wanna see it again, so the next time you can leave during a scene you’ve already seen, and stick for the one you missed the first time around.
