Post by icebear on Feb 9, 2010 15:08:51 GMT -5
Avatar raises the bar for scifi movies. It represents so much of a leap forward in scifi movie making that, like it or not, we'll all be hearing about it for some time.
To my own thinking, the thing is basically a love and adventure story and combined with the technological achievement it represents, it works so well that the leftwing quasi-political and quasi-religious ideas it contains do not suffice to ruin it and it should be seen.
There's good news, and bad news for Cameron. The good news includes the following:
The extent to which the film works as a love and adventure story.
The technical realism of much of the machinery, particularly the twin-fan gunships which our military might want to look at, the damned things look like they'd work.
The realism of tthe starship, and the idea which the film conveys about just how much much time and effort would be involved in getting to even the nearest other star.
james-camerons-avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Interstellar_Vehicle_Venture_Star
www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3Wxr6goKDM
The fantastic world which the film creates, which is just way beyond any and all previous scifi efforts.
That's the good news. Again this film is generally more plausible than most if not all previous scifi flicks.
The BAD news includes at least the following:
The cost of getting to AC would so totally dwarf the value of anything you could conceivably mine there as to make the basic thesis of the movie a joke.
There are only two reasons for which anybody would ever travel stellar distances, i.e. information/knowledge, or escape.
There is at least some reason to think that the remains of one such escape ship are lying on our own moon:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3X5oucqQe4
That is one of the two really superior conspiracy theories out there in the world today, the other being Heribert Illig's thesis regarding the reality or lack thereof of Charlemagne. IF the claim about a final Apollo project which became a black op is true, it would represent information about people who, having no way of knowing whether the series of calamities culminating in the Noachean flood and the one or two later and smaller disasters which Velikovsky wrote about would leave anything in this system habitable, would have sought safety in the near stars.
I didn't like the hair connections in Avatar, I mean, you either have telepathic communications, or you don't. The idea of plug-in connect life forms struck me as bad thinking on Cameron's part.
The pseudo-religious ideas of the movie would have to bother anybody who keeps up with events. Environmentalism causes vastly more harm in the world today than it prevents. The needless banning of DDT for instance has resulted in 100M needless deaths from malaria, and anybody who isn't living under a rock has been reading about Climategate, the billion dollars Algor hoped to make from cap/trade legislation, the efforts to remove all mention of the medieval climate optimum from Wikipedia, etc.
Cameron shows the god of Pandora residing in a particular tree on Pandora and yet claims that life on Pandora is still based on the DNA/RNA model of all life as we know it. The logical problem with that is obvious enough before you even get to the question of Gaea worship being a form of idolatry. Moreover, you only need read the littlest bit of what Julien Jaynes had to say about idolatry to grasp why idolatry cannot be a good thing, here, there, or anywhere.
There is also a problem of consistency as well as the general problem which democrats and leftists have with the thing Jesus mentioned about a man not being able to serve two masters. The usual democrat problem with that one is the conflict between the unions, particularly the NEA, and their inner city constituency regarding such things as school vouchers. What we see here is the slightly less obvious conflict between atheists and evolutionites on one side, and the envirowhacks and Gaea worshippers on the other. In other words, if you're going to be any sort of a real leftist, you should be talking about Chuck Darwin and evoloserism, and not talking about some sort of a "tree of souls"...
The humanoids having two legs and two arms like us while every other creature on the planet past some small size has six legs. I mean, you don't have to believe in evolution to see that as a problem...
The female na-vi having breasts; nothing else on the planet looks terribly mammalian or anything like that...
The na-vi having tails. There's a really good reason why creatures which walk straight upright as we do don't have tails, i.e. tails naturally go straight out from the spine, and an upright creature's tail would drag on the ground most of the time......
Finally and worst as far as I am concerned, is the way that archery is depicted in Avatar. Archery should be a known quantity and quite well understood in the year 2010, and yet the way that archery is presented in Avatar is idiotic:
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2445628/posts
I mean, the shooting gloves which guys like Howard Hill use for longbows cover three fingers for a reason...
To my own thinking, the thing is basically a love and adventure story and combined with the technological achievement it represents, it works so well that the leftwing quasi-political and quasi-religious ideas it contains do not suffice to ruin it and it should be seen.
There's good news, and bad news for Cameron. The good news includes the following:
The extent to which the film works as a love and adventure story.
The technical realism of much of the machinery, particularly the twin-fan gunships which our military might want to look at, the damned things look like they'd work.
The realism of tthe starship, and the idea which the film conveys about just how much much time and effort would be involved in getting to even the nearest other star.
james-camerons-avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Interstellar_Vehicle_Venture_Star
www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3Wxr6goKDM
The fantastic world which the film creates, which is just way beyond any and all previous scifi efforts.
That's the good news. Again this film is generally more plausible than most if not all previous scifi flicks.
The BAD news includes at least the following:
The cost of getting to AC would so totally dwarf the value of anything you could conceivably mine there as to make the basic thesis of the movie a joke.
There are only two reasons for which anybody would ever travel stellar distances, i.e. information/knowledge, or escape.
There is at least some reason to think that the remains of one such escape ship are lying on our own moon:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3X5oucqQe4
That is one of the two really superior conspiracy theories out there in the world today, the other being Heribert Illig's thesis regarding the reality or lack thereof of Charlemagne. IF the claim about a final Apollo project which became a black op is true, it would represent information about people who, having no way of knowing whether the series of calamities culminating in the Noachean flood and the one or two later and smaller disasters which Velikovsky wrote about would leave anything in this system habitable, would have sought safety in the near stars.
I didn't like the hair connections in Avatar, I mean, you either have telepathic communications, or you don't. The idea of plug-in connect life forms struck me as bad thinking on Cameron's part.
The pseudo-religious ideas of the movie would have to bother anybody who keeps up with events. Environmentalism causes vastly more harm in the world today than it prevents. The needless banning of DDT for instance has resulted in 100M needless deaths from malaria, and anybody who isn't living under a rock has been reading about Climategate, the billion dollars Algor hoped to make from cap/trade legislation, the efforts to remove all mention of the medieval climate optimum from Wikipedia, etc.
Cameron shows the god of Pandora residing in a particular tree on Pandora and yet claims that life on Pandora is still based on the DNA/RNA model of all life as we know it. The logical problem with that is obvious enough before you even get to the question of Gaea worship being a form of idolatry. Moreover, you only need read the littlest bit of what Julien Jaynes had to say about idolatry to grasp why idolatry cannot be a good thing, here, there, or anywhere.
There is also a problem of consistency as well as the general problem which democrats and leftists have with the thing Jesus mentioned about a man not being able to serve two masters. The usual democrat problem with that one is the conflict between the unions, particularly the NEA, and their inner city constituency regarding such things as school vouchers. What we see here is the slightly less obvious conflict between atheists and evolutionites on one side, and the envirowhacks and Gaea worshippers on the other. In other words, if you're going to be any sort of a real leftist, you should be talking about Chuck Darwin and evoloserism, and not talking about some sort of a "tree of souls"...
The humanoids having two legs and two arms like us while every other creature on the planet past some small size has six legs. I mean, you don't have to believe in evolution to see that as a problem...
The female na-vi having breasts; nothing else on the planet looks terribly mammalian or anything like that...
The na-vi having tails. There's a really good reason why creatures which walk straight upright as we do don't have tails, i.e. tails naturally go straight out from the spine, and an upright creature's tail would drag on the ground most of the time......
Finally and worst as far as I am concerned, is the way that archery is depicted in Avatar. Archery should be a known quantity and quite well understood in the year 2010, and yet the way that archery is presented in Avatar is idiotic:
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2445628/posts
I mean, the shooting gloves which guys like Howard Hill use for longbows cover three fingers for a reason...
