That was not a subtle theme…
Avatar is just recycled CGI Fern Gully anyway
It’s a motif as old as time. Foreign invader getting Stockholm Syndrome with the natives. Another famous example is Dances With Wolves. That film called The Great Wall as well. Some versions of Robin Hood has it. Anthropologists call it Going Native, which is what Carlos Castañeda did.
But they’re not all about economic expansionism
I saw the film in a theater with someone who wanted to impress upon me that someone pointed out to her how alike it was to what happened to indigenous peoples in the Americas (someone else had pointed that out to her, so she assumed I wouldn’t get it on my own). I was like, if you think that’s a novel observation, you really need to be hit in the face with concepts to understand things. It couldn’t have been more obvious.
But maybe that highlights how much some people just aren’t observant or introspective or whatever else. It would explain a lot.
Yeah man, we all understood that the first time around when it was called Fern Gully.
Like Avatar if you want but like… it is not a deep piece of media with hard-to-discern messaging. Shit is pretty clear.
One time I unmatched someone from a dating app because the second avatar movie was coming out and they said that it was weird of me to say that the alien people were supposed to represent Native Americans because “they’re just blue aliens why would you compare them to real life?”
Apparently media literacy makes you a weirdo?
Yes it definitely makes you weird. Turn the brain off and consume the media like a good little sheep (/s if it wasn’t obvious)
Fucking Tarzan was fighting evil white exploiters of pristine Africa in books back in the early 1900s.
A good white saviour from the evil white people, because the indigenous can’t do it for themselves. Just like in Ferngully and Avatar.
Are there even any indigenous people in Tarzan? I haven’t read the book, but from the movie I only remember his gorilla buddy and the little elephant. I think Tarzan is more about rebelling against civilization in general, instead of colonization in specific (which James Cameron’s Avatar is). It’s very post-industrialization in that sense.
Edit: Whoops, just read the synopsis on Wikipedia. I don’t think Tarzan is the white saviour you’re looking for…
I can’t decide if I should post the “wait, it’s all the failures of capitalism?” or “wait, it’s all systemic racism?” meme, cuz it’s wait it’s all both (always has been).
It is also about settler colonialism. There are natural gas fields off the coast of Gaza.
Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism.
Explore, exploit, exterminate.
Satisfactory music starts playing
Paved paradise, put up a parking lot.
Difference being the colonists of our world left perfectly habitable areas. In avatar the earth isn’t habitable to most and so the colonists are actually kind of sympathetic. The real bad guys never have to leave earth but because it’s Cameron it falls on the poors to play the bad guys
So… We manage to master space travel. We manage to master interstellar travel. We eventually find a planet with suitable environment for sustaining our species. And we just overlook it.
Can someone explain me the reasoning behind this?
Sci-fi to the side, there are more minerals available - readily - on asteroids and barren planets than anywhere else. Why go hopping around looking for habitable planets, to the reason of 1 out of who knows how many, to then strip mine it?
There could be many reasons:
- The thing you are mining is actually very rare, and although it could be elsewhere, it’s the only place you found it. This is the case in Avatar. The Unobtanium they are mining is not found anywhere else.
- It’s easier to mine on a habitable planet. You don’t have all the extreme difficulty of operating in space or a planet/moon with no atmosphere. In Avatar workers can freely operate without any special equipment, using just a gas mask, and don’t need to be astronauts.
- You are assuming they found Pandora to mine on it. They probably found it through scientific research, and the mining angle only appeared later when the resource was found.
Another important detail is that in Avatar they don’t have any faster than light tech. Pandora is in the Alpha Centauri system, the closest star to the Sun, and it takes years to get there anyway. Sure, there might be lots of better places to choose, but it’s literally the only habitable body in reachable distance from Earth unless you want to spend decades flying in one direction.
Tbf, the air on Pandora is toxic to humans. That was the entire point of using the avatars in the first movie… Wouldn’t exactly call that suitable for sustaining the life of our species
And that material they found in the planet was some fictional things humans had never encountered before.
The resource being extracted on the avatar planet was unobtanium.
It was only available on that planet, precisely so intelligent people like you can’t say “why not mine barren rocks instead”?
Pandora was a moon, not a planet. (Doesn’t change your point, just correcting the detail.)
This annoyed me also.
If the Avatar universe has physics like ours, which it looks like it does from the way things move etc…
The protoplanetry disk that the planet formed from, must have had the unobtanium, since it is so evenly spread around the later formed planet.
Yes, there are higher concentrations in various places, which could have come from impact events in the past; if this is the case the impactors are likely from the local asteroid belt or equivalent.
The unobtanium must be available, in a much easier to extract form, in asteroids in the soloar system or the moons of Pandora.
Either way, a mineral is a terrible maguffin for a space faring civilization.
In the second movie, the whale brain juice is a much better maguffin, but still kinda stupid for a technologically advanced species.
Assume that to get interstellar travel, with the suspended animation and brain beaming tech we are shown, humans are a good 200 years ahead of where we are now…given that they can also make fully functional alien bodies from scratch, that can breed and pass on genetic material to what look like viable offspring. The level of synthetic biology expertise must be insane, and they can’t make this brain juice…it is just stupid.
Me too.
It’s supposed to be an indictment of capitalism. But that falls flat when you realize it was one of the most profitable movies of all time; grossing over 2 billion and being one of the fastest to reach the various benchmarks at theaters.
There are exactly zero minerals available inside planets that are unavailable on asteroids.
Sci-fi will be sci-fi but can we go back to the time it was at least well thought? Can’t hurt. If the objective of the movie was to make social criticism, it didn’t need to go to such lenghts.
And it was a boring movie; failed to captivate me.
isn’t wood a hard to find resource?
That depends. Although massive deforestation throughout the planet, tree farms are a thing. So…
But haul wood over who knows what expanses of space? It would be cheaper to build greenhouses on barren planets and moons. The biggest challenge would probably be to prevent the oxygen in those enclosed habitats to eat away the building materials.
I remember following the advances on an experiment, during the 90’s, where a team of scientists designed and built a fully self contained habitat, with only plants inside. I think the objective was to measure if the plants could/would survive in very limited resources conditions. Well, the plants survived. After an initial shock, the plants self regulated and the habitat stabilized into a fully enclosed ecosystem. Things became weird when the oxygen levels rose to a point where the ciment of the walls started to come apart. They had to hastily coat the walls with very thick rubber paint to prevent more damage.
You know the point I’m making though: there are indeed precious resources that can’t be mined from asteroids. It is not inconceivable that there are organic compounds out there with unique properties that can’t simply be made in a lab (e.g. ancient wood properties compared to new forest) and exist in a state that is economical for easy extraction.
It’s not inconceivable but I will insist on the point that technology is the right tool to solve such issues.
It was inconceivable a few decades ago - even a couple of years ago! - several medical advances that are today used routinely.
It is a fun theoretical discussion to entertain but we would reach no real conclusion.
You’re intelligent. Or at least, well read/educated.
I didn’t say it was a good plot-device. The entire movie was hamfisted from the world building through the dialog, the character development, and those hamfists evolved into bulldozers to bring the moral home.
The only thing it had going for it was the CGI… which was obsequious.
Regardless, it’s their fictional world. They designed it to be stupid and boring so they could make some sort of moral superiority bullshit statement about capitalism while grossing 2+ billion.
Also, I’m just gonna say it. It wasn’t even sci fi. sure, sure. it had ships and stuff. but that’s not what makes sci fi sci fi.
Aliens, Mech suits and remotely controlled vat-grown body doubles aren’t enough to make it sci Fi?
Nope.
Science fiction is an exploration of how science or technology changes society, or how society might respond to stuff, or how a society with a given tech might exist; it’s a form of speculative fiction.
Avatar isn’t that. It’s supposed to be an indictment of capitalist greed.
Just because it has technology doesn’t make it “sci-fi” and the elements that might are just a maghuffin to explain what they’re doing there. It could have just as easily been gold. Or diamonds or alien art.
Take Marry Shelly’s Frankenstein and compare it to say, avengers.
Sorry, no. Genre doesn’t require a specific theme. This is some literature vs pulp gatekeeping.
Usually, at this point, I would say even a broken clock is right twice a day, but I’m trying to get accostumed to receive a compliment, so I’ll instead say thank you for those kind words. And that we agree.
There are exactly zero minerals available inside planets that are unavailable on asteroids.
Crystallised urea
Nice to cross paths with you again!
I’ll grant that but what use for crystalized urea is there? Urea I know a few. And if we already know how to cultivate diamonds and other artificial gems, why bother mining for that?
Drag was making an allegorical point. Perhaps Unobtanium results from an organic process. In the second movie, the capitalists are killing whales for a substance in their brains that makes people immortal. Can’t find that on an asteroid.
We can save mental effort and just go for the Dune series at this point. What is the point in that? In considering the advances in modern chemistry, there are ever few organic compounds that can not be synthesized.
I fall back to my original thought: is well thought sci-fi so hard to achieve nowadays? If seems there is a fixation about misery and destruction nowadays.
Dune is a universe where computers are severely limited. The ability to synthesize organic chemicals may be limited by that alone.
IIRC, the Tleilaxu do figure out how to produce spice artificially in their Axlotl tanks, but those are another example of Dune getting weirder and more disturbing as it goes.
Avatar does have some good science fiction like the idea of a planetary hivemind being worshipped as a god. The Na’vi religion is literally true, it just seems false to humans who don’t know anything. That’s very different to Dune, where the Fremen religion is true because people like Paul’s mum make it true.
I fall back to my original thought: is well thought sci-fi so hard to achieve nowadays? If seems there is a fixation about misery and destruction nowadays.
considering that mass media will slap a space ship into anything and call it “Science Fiction”… yes, actually. Because they’re idiots who will only copy what’s already been done because it’s a reliable way to make money.
You realized I just opted for having a divergent view on the subject, right?
It seems more like intentionally missing the main point of the comic.
Literally Satisfactory
Avatr is about capitalism
That wasn’t glaringly obvious to everyone?
Thx. Thought I missed something
There’s someone arguing otherwise in this very thread
Like, to absolutely everyone? This ranks up there with “breathing is good.”
you forget the kind of people who complain that wolfenstein games or the x-men animated series “became” political
Some people are dense enough that “the point” is the name of a baseball bat you have to go get to get it across.
It was also about the poor soldiers getting used to further capitalism.
Honestly, though…. That military wasn’t very credible. Half their aircraft you could disable by dumping buckets of pebbles into the fans.
Satisfactory
Factorio.
The factory must grow.
I like to describe the aliens that attack you in factorio as environmentalists.
Pollution actually makes the bugs stronger. Maybe they like pollution and want to go eat it all up.
They get stronger because they mutate to fight back
That’s not how evolution works. A species evolves to get stronger in battle if the weak ones die in battle. A species evolves stronger lungs if the weak ones die of lung cancer. Dying of lung cancer doesn’t make a species better fighters.
Pollution makes their species stronger; this doesn’t imply an individual preference.
Idiots walking off cliffs doesn’t make the survivors like cliffs; it teaches them to avoid them.
That said, evolution can be a real crap shoot, and you never know what sort of perverse effects you’ll get: like us loving sugar so much we eat ourselves into diabetes.
Drag is correct, but it’s fantasy evolution we’re talking about
Maybe. Or maybe they like the pollution. Maybe with better resource availability, they’re able to spend more energy on growing bigger and stronger without threatening survival.
They hate that fresh, artisanal air
I just got done with an 8 hour factorio session so this meme resonated
The factory must grow
I feel so bad cutting trees and draining lakes 😔
But your corporate overlords demand it, sadness isn’t efficient, get back to work!
But really they did a great job with commentary. People still say “why can’t we get green energy in the game?”. Because that’s not the point. This is raw capitalism. You’re dropped on a pristine planet, destroy the environment, clear it of all natural resources. It’s &meant_ to make you feel guilty. Maybe look around outside
i feel like the enviroment is into that shit
consume
I thought we were saving kittens and puppies…
That’s just Evil, if we build an industrial park there where will the
slavesforced laborwork bit*hes*Due to recent very public events our Public relations officer has been sent on leave with pay instead Nataly will complete this statement.
That’s just Evil, if we build an industrial park there where will the (Checks Notes) Employees park there cars?
Nataly needs a spelling-checker. Also, a quick tutorial on comma splices wouldn’t be wasted.
You know: grade school stuff.
Thanks, I’ll remember that when I go to school… oh wait, I’m not in school anymore. I’m gainfully employed, get paid plenty, and nobody cares. Huh, it’s almost like the hyper-educated imposition placed on us by society is simply a form of control, gatekeeping, and self-aggrandizing and the people who spent more time studying than forming relationships wasted their time and are now disgruntled because they have to work harder than those who aren’t overly anal grammar Nazis.
What do you mean? Communists didn’t mine minerals and didn’t exploit indigenous people? Lol…
I dont get it either. This is not about capitalism, this is about human nature of mindless expansion and exploitation…
The word you’re looking for is imperialism, and that’s definitely not unavoidable human nature
“It’s human nature,” okay bud and what about all the groups in history that prove otherwise? You’re just washing history with capitalist mindsets.
That’s right. For example, Australian communists lived in balance with nature for 60,000 years. Then capitalists came and started breaking stuff.
I guess those megafauna who vanished about 59,500 years ago were really messing with the balance.
Regardless of megafaunata, just by being in Australia, humans became an invasive species and did all sorts of damage that invasive species do.
Worse, indigenous Australians brought the dingo with them. Two very intelligent predators where two didn’t exist before did a lot of damage. Colonizing Europeans also did a lot of damage and nothing that the indigenous people in Australia did justifies what Europeans (basically just the British, let’s be fair) did, but pretending that indigenous humans aren’t as flawed as all other humans does them a disservice. It does not help indigenous people to put them up on pedestals and treat them as noble savages.
https://www.unimelb.edu.au/newsroom/news/2020/may/mysteries-of-megafauna-extinction-unlocked
the team found that extreme environmental change was the most likely cause of extinction, not humans.
Aboriginal Elders have told us we are a reflection of the Country: if the land is sick, so are we. If the land is healthy (or punyu), so are we. Wik First Nations scholar Tyson Yunkaporta says our collective wellbeing can only be sustained through a life of communication with a sentient landscape and all things on it.
You wanna go tell Tyson he’s being racist against his own people?
deleted by creator
Are you Tyson?
The totem system from the Countries I am from allows for the person to be the knowledge holder of the animal or plant they are given or born into. Within your family group (also known as mob) you are the person that is responsible for its survival and use. For example, if you are given the Kangaroo, people in your mob or Country would come to you to gain permission to hunt the Kangaroo for food or clothing. If you had observed the Kangaroo having high population numbers you could allow them to be hunted to feed families, and on the flip side if population numbers were low, you would not allow this. This totem system was vital to survival of Indigenous people, but also ensured that biodiversity was sustained. It is considered the social responsibility of the community to preserve the environment. By having this relationship and responsibility with a totem creates lifelong physical, spiritual, and emotional connections to the environment. With my personal totem being a Koala, I have dedicated my research interests to understanding more about this animal and advocating for its conservation and preservation. I have focused my early career research on understanding the Koalas diet selection and its relationship to habitat selection.
https://oxsci.org/conservation-through-the-eyes-of-indigenous-australian-culture/
Go tell Teresa that her tribe’s environmental management strategies are fake and racist because they make aboriginals look too smart
Are you Teresa?
Are you? You’re the one claiming racism because drag listens to Aboriginal elders. Drag’s got sources for what drag says, and it seems like you don’t. So you’re just making stuff up.
Besides, the noble savage trope is about thinking indigenous societies were pure an untainted by evil. Aboriginal Australians knew what evil was. They had policies in place within their governments to prevent ecological devastation. That’s not innocence, it’s technology. Aboriginals aren’t savages and drag didn’t say they are. You’re the one denying their advanced environmental policies. Sounds like you’re the one calling them savages.
Holy shit! Avatar is about capitalism? How did I miss that?! I better rewatch it and see if it’s a recurring theme.
Wait until you learn about its subtle ecological message!
Oh! The bit where they fire dozens of rockets at a giant tree was also an allegory?!
Or when they blast a few square kilometers of forest from orbit to make space for an alien whale refinery. It may say something about us and I hope to understand it one day.
