Avatar tells the story of a group of humans dealing with a distant planet-sized moon, Pandora, which is richly full of life, but not entirely compatible with the humans in its atmosphere: humans can walk around Pandora, but They need to wear respiratory masks to do it. The humans we see on Pandora are a mix of scientists and soldiers. We don’t see them, but presumably there are some miners there too, because the only profit center being talked about is mining a valuable mineral with the pungent name of unobtainium.
And the map of the story is simple: Pandoran Natives = Plains Indians, Humans on the Planet = Chivalry, Unobtainum = Gold, Avatar Story = Dances with Wolves Story. The only small changes to this mapping are that there are scientists on Pandora and they are not happy to see the natives displaced by the massacre, and the role of a good knight who learns about the Indians and eventually goes native is played by a soldier. inhabiting an avatar that scientists use to blend in with the natives.
Ho hum … No … Worse than ho-hum! A waste!
But, that said, the movie is nice. I went to see him twice.
First, some techno-fiction flaws that I saw while watching. After that, editorialize a bit more why telling the same stories with clean new graphics is so predominantly popular this decade.
Now the flaws:
o Unobtainium, the mineral they are mining, is a pure invention of the plot. After all, there are only 92 common elements in the universe, and those same elements are available in all star systems. Once you research the structure of an interesting mineral, you submit a description of the mineral structure and do it in your own star system. I can’t think of any space trading system where transporting raw materials in bulk from one star system to another is a profitable way to use spacecraft. Only if Unobtainium is magical fairy dust will it be of value to transport it from one star system to another.
o Are there floating mountains on this planet, and the Company can’t find any way to make money from them? This is a world of wonders, and any half-awake company man would see that wonder is the product of the world, not fairy dust. If the company in this story were even half as real, they would have the Parker Selfridge company man head on a platter for not exploiting the real values of this planet: its real and virtual tourist trade and the physics behind those floating mountains. . Unobtainium costs a penny compared to these.
These first two flaws alone undermine the entire premise of the conflict between good and evil that is at the heart of this story, and that’s why this kind of story gets so old to me. It is unreal. It doesn’t fit the situation.
o Dr. Augustine, lead scientist, states that all these plants on Pandora are connected, as in information processing. Now this has some interesting story possibility, but that possibility is quickly ruled out. With all this processing power, the most remarkable thing this planetary brain does is that animals join the attack on evil humans and move human consciousness permanently to an avatar body. That’s?
o Two-thirds of the way through the movie, Neytiri, the native daughter, is shocked, shocked to learn that Jake Sully, the main hero, is working with humans! This is after she and the entire tribe know that he is a person from heaven, who has worked closely with him for months, who knows he sleeps in the most peculiar way, and who has not been particularly cunning about who he is? ?
o When human mining machines are crushing Jake’s unconscious avatar, isn’t Neytiri strong enough to just pick him up and carry him somewhere else?
o If you control space on the surface of a planet and you want to explode something on the surface, why not drop a meteor on what you want to explode? Death from above is cheap and infallible.
o At the beginning of the film, Miles Quaritch, head of security, talks about how dangerous Pandora is, but the way he describes it, the danger sounds like it’s about ignoring the native flora and fauna and being ambushed by various ways. That’s fine, but after that he becomes more and more psychopathic. What are you doing running Security in a place like Pandora?
The story would have been richer if in that first monologue he had said that the humans on the planet were a small fish in a large pond, and that they had to be careful because if the tribes united they could destroy the humans. This would have given us a more similar scenario to that of the British when they took over India. Instead, we turn to Dances with Wolves’ invention of heavy-handed civilized humans with overwhelming firepower who are defeated by native heroics and tricks.
When filming begins, the consistency of the story is the first casualty, so I won’t bother to describe anything about the second half.
Now why did this movie come out this way?
Why is there this strong relationship in movies and computer games that says, “The cooler the visuals, the more boring the plot”? It is a rarity. When you add cool effects to computers and other tools that help humans in real life, the result is many amazing new ways to use the tools. Yes, you can do the same old things with new gee-whiz things, but if that’s all you do with them, it sure is a waste of gee-whiz.
I suspect there are two reasons: the first reason is the limited processing power of human brains: if too many strange things are happening, the viewer will only get part of the picture. This is why eyewitnesses can often misinterpret what they see if what they see is unexpected and strange. So if the images are weird and the story is weird, viewers will get so lost that they will feel confused and uncomfortable.
The second reason is financial risk. The producers put in a lot of money to make big-budget movies, so they see anything that isn’t a sure story as too risky an addition.
That is my guess about the reason for this phenomenon. Yet … [sigh]… What a waste of gee-genius!
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