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.
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.
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 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:
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.