when the world needed him most, he vanished
I agree. Avatar can now (symbolically) join the cream of the crop of the anti-imperialist media.
Eh it was fun enough to get me thinking about rewatching avatar.
I remember the dialog being awful in that movie though I’m surprised they just totally gloss over that.
One thing I will say is that this ep solidified in some people what I’ve felt for awhile - Felix is not the best chapo and virgil’s sardonic wit is sorely missed.
Felix is the family guy of left twitter - “everyone shut up so Felix can painfully adlib some weird adjectives in front of this obscure references for 3 minutes, there’s like a 30% chance it’ll be hilarious”
I don't agree with their take that Avatar is actually really good but I find analyzing films I've seen to try to construe a leftist point of view to be very entertaining. So I'd say that's a good enough reason itself, even if they mean it sincerely.
"it has to be bad so that it was popular" is weak special pleading. It's not a great film. Mostly an excuse to try out his new camera tech (which is legit impressive) and a boiler plate white savior/heroes journey plot, flavored with edgy "america is bad" iconography. I wouldn't consider the movie subversive, but I'm gonna rewatch it
Edit. To be fair, I saw it two or three times in theaters, but I'd say it's because it is a beautiful film
and a boiler plate white savior/heroes journey plot, flavored with edgy “america is bad” iconography
But the podcast episode referenced in this thread is about how it's an inverted white savior plot and that the whole point is that america is bad
How is it inverted? Because it isn't uncommon that the white saviour is a military man that is sent to the periphery of Empire, meets the locals against the wishes of the top brass and then joins the "natives" as he is impressed by their noble yet savage ways and then ends up fighting for them.
Lawrence of Arabia and Dances with Wolves being the prime examples.
Been a while since I saw it, but doesn't he die and literally become one of the avatar blue people? I guess that could be like, he's renouncing his whiteness, since he's not white at the end of the movie, and his white body is discarded.
It's been years since I've seen the movie lol, and I didn't listen to the chapo episode
Yeah, that's the argument. I'd say an actual inversion is he doesn't get to be the big hero, because why would he? He's just some guy. He helps the natives both with his body and knowledge of the invading forces tech, but because he's just some dude that's been there a few months and is kinda useless otherwise. The movie makes him the best at all the local things, better than people doing it their entire lives, who've lived in their bodies their entire lives. And then he gets to be king, basically.
It's like 6/10 subversive of the trope, at best, imo
Look, I'm sorry the 12 year old wasn't ready to take on the fucking fire nation yet. I got anxious about all the math homework I didn't do, let along combat or logistics.
its funny because its kind of a bland and shitty movie but every marvel movie that people like to praise as masterpieces of cinema are all just worse versions of it. people forgot the og
if you didn't cry because of this movie you are a chud, sorry i don't make the rules. it is a masterpiece, rewatch it if you don't believe me. do you remember how it felt seeing it in the theater all those years ago?
YangAang was a lib right up til the end, and even then he does the thing where he gives the big baddy more respect than the hundreds of hench men he's plowed thru to get to that point. (The show makes it clear that he isn't killing anyone, but he doesn't know that and lots of stuff he does would kill a person), but he doesn’t know that
says u someone whho doesnt evwn bend syfu
right, "Aang". Too bad Yang is so boring, otherwise that would be really funny to think about
'Avatar' by Swans is a good song, but there are better ones on the album.
The Seer is a great album but tbh each of the last 3 songs is a big exhausting ending track on its own, makes it difficult to listen all the way through in one sitting.
It's definitely an album you've got to be in the right mood for to listen to it in one sitting. Apostate goes hard though.
I twist myself into a pretzel to prove that Avatar is more subversive than Pocahontas. Or do a weird long bit about it where you can't tell anymore if it's a bit or not.
And doing it while being backed up by Matt, who has said multiple times on his vlogs that capital strips movies of their art and replaces them with politics to help the audience feel something that would otherwise be missing. This is capital doing that for you, bucko. This movie is not great.
Honestly it sounds like Chapos are trying to fill whatever void they're experiencing with something at least a bit similar to what they collectively felt about Starship Troopers.
This is the part of the Chapo movie where they realize they can't bring their favorite Dutchman's magic back and will have come to terms with those feelings being tied to their past selves -- to the people they are no more and never will be again. Not only because how they changed, but how the world changed around them. They will struggle to understand this as they refuse to acknowledge how they are, in fact, not entirely independent from their surroundings. They will try to claim that Avatar -- the same thing that destroyed the future of the kind of art that Starship Troopers represents -- is, actually, its extension. They will believe that they can make it true with sophisticated incantations and rituals, but they will stumble and fail.
How will they reconcile their insular identities as defiant critics of reality they pretend to be above and their longing for attachment to the very reality that inevitably shapes them? How will they cope with the fact they failed to hide their earnest longing for Paul Verhoeven's art of their younger years, but the anxieties about the futility of the act made them preface their faux-ironic analysis in the guise of a bit?
...damn this movie is better than i thought. i wonder what they'll do in the sequel? do you think they'll just reboot the same concepts as the original but more modernized with a sassy BIPOC woman plot driver (AOC 2024)? Also, it's starting to hemorrhage characters as the actors move onto other things. Do you think they'll try to find someone to replace Virgil or just re-cast the same character with a new actor and not acknowledge it?
It has a very lib ending but it's also a children's cartoon, so they can't exactly have the main character execute hitler
