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- - Why Cameron Failed. (https://tree-of-souls.net/showthread.php?t=3186)

Quote:

Originally Posted by tm20 (Post 114514)

this thread is a fail because of 1 simple fact, james cameron never fails

Quote:

Originally Posted by txontirea (Post 114515)

damn it tm20. I was going to say that, i shall say it anyway.

This thread is a fail. Just because the film failed to reach a few people, it didn't stop it becoming the highest grossing movie of all time. Kthxbai. <3

Nuff said...

this thread was...

sorry it had to be done

There are always a few people who lack empathy, who lack an understanding of the message. It's the same as the realistic if depressing statistic that half of the population is below average.
The people who didn't get Avatar's message are the ones who have been opposing that message for decades already.
There are still VERY few people who actually do support the RDA, and with a couple of very obvious exceptions, most of them don't like Avatar at all anyway.
I agree that it would arguably have been better if the skypeople had been worse (and if they hadn't all escaped at the end... :angry: ), but there's certainly no vagueness. The people who support the RDA are the same people who have been opposing attempts to change the world for the last few decades in favour of short term profiting.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tsyal Makto (Post 114464)

- We're here. As Zenit said, that says something...

- There's thousands of others out there that See, but are not on the forums, or only posted once back in the hay-day of PAD.

- Activist groups/people fighting oppression all over the world have taken up the image of Avatar and the Na'vi to symbolize their own struggles.

- James Cameron is now one of the major faces of environmentalism and indigenous rights.

Cameron didn't fail. He succeeded, quite epicly I might add. :D

As for conservatism, yeah, the backlash is pretty ridiculous, but that's corporate-sponsored neo-conservatism for you. I'm sure old-school Eisenhower-conservatives wouldn't have reacted that way. In fact, I'm sure the message would have resonated with many of them (rapunzel77 is a perfect example :)). Basically what the right-wing has become is a mass of corporatists and luddites who can't fathom that middle-aged white men don't rule the world anymore. So they see something like Avatar that embodies everything they hate, and for lack of a better term, it makes them have a hissy-fit. There's plenty of other, more reasonable (though less vocal) conservatives out there.

Very well said :)
I completely agree. Some people are just too entrenched in old ways and oppose everything out of principle with little or no understanding any more.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ScottWashburn (Post 114472)

Actually Cameron did fail in one respect (and I've mentioned this before). He made the RDA and the security forces, indeed, all the humans on Pandora, far too American. The RDA is supposed to be a multi-national super-corporation, but all we see are people who look, talk and act like Americans. There should have been people with French, German, English and Russian accents. Obvious Japanese and Chinese and Indian people (Max looks Indian, but he still talks like an American).

What, based on the ~5 RDA characters with lines? (and Trudy seems to be at least partly South American). Not to mention Jake's Australian-ish accent (although easily fixed in background as being half-Australian or whatever)

America is not even MENTIONED (well, Selfridge does have a miniature American flag on the shelves in his office but I doubt most people even noticed that) and they are by no means he only country to be 'RDA-ish'.

Also agreed, this thread fails epically :P

Quote:

Originally Posted by Human No More (Post 114528)

Very well said :)
I completely agree. Some people are just too entrenched in old ways and oppose everything out of principle with little or no understanding any more.

What, based on the ~5 RDA characters with lines? (and Trudy seems to be at least partly South American). Not to mention Jake's Australian-ish accent (although easily fixed in background as being half-Australian or whatever)

America is not even MENTIONED (well, Selfridge does have a minature American flag on the shelves in his office but I doubt most people even noticed that) and they are by no means he only country to be 'RDA-ish'.

Also agreed, this thread fails epically :P

The only reason why Jake sounds a little Australian is because Sam Worthington is not good at masking his accent. Did you see him in Black Ops? It was terrible.

As for the movie, and I'm including all deleted scenes, it was a success. Cameron created a believable world in which people were people, not one in which humans are scene as evil. Humans are just on the wrong side of the fight in Avatar. I wouldn't call ever Nazi soldier evil, but I would say they were fighting for the wrong side. A movie in which humans are seen is evil would give "conservatives" ammo against it.

You couldn't make Quarich more "dastardly" if you gave him mustachio's and a canine sidekick.

I was going to write a paragraph on the terrable things about King leopold and the congo (He was Dutch, not american) but I think there are enought people here to prove this thread wrong. I deal with people like this on Battle.net all the time, me and my friend Will call them "Fail haters." - a person who doesn't have good reasons to hating something.

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Originally Posted by Rainbowhawk1993 (Post 114611)

Battle.net is nothing now. The OT migrated away. The OT was the best gathering of trolls on Blizzard sites. Ever. Of all time.

I've actually seen critics who say the villains are TOO black-and-white. If anything, a more sympathetic view of the RDA would have worked better. Make it a fight not just between humans and aliens, but between human "progress" and Na'vi society a-la the situation with Native Americans in the 1800s. Or, even arguably today where our ever-expanding desire for "stuff" is using resources at an unsustainable rate.

I think that Cameron did a pretty good job of interpreting an 'evil' military. After all, Humans have got a hell of a lot of experience in warfare.

Events in Avatar could have easily been borrowed from real life events, so to give off that same feeling in the movie like in real warfare.

Example: The Hometree's Destruction = The 1940 Blitz.

He did a great job if you ask me. Plus, I doubt his intentions on creating Avatar were to create a story in which you hate the villian(s).

I disagree with the statement about how he should have added more conflict and you listed slavery and rape as examples. Even if I wasn't against this idea, how would you go about creating a scene or even just a story about a human raping a Na'vi? Like physically, I doubt that would work very well.

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Originally Posted by joeylovesgaia (Post 114432)

People were rooting for the RDA. Not everyone, but many. If Cameron meant this story as more than entertainment (and he clearly did), if he meant to change people's minds with this, then he screwed up.

James, you failed.

If James Cameron changed just one person's mind that ended up changing the world for good even in the smallest way, could it not have been said that he succeeded?

Quote:

Originally Posted by ScottWashburn (Post 114472)

He made the RDA and the security forces, indeed, all the humans on Pandora, far too American. The RDA is supposed to be a multi-national super-corporation, but all we see are people who look, talk and act like Americans. There should have been people with French, German, English and Russian accents. Obvious Japanese and Chinese and Indian people (Max looks Indian, but he still talks like an American).

Keep in mind that it is not a requirement for an evil corporation to be American as many foreign corps are just as evil as domestic ones.

Also, with American English being the lingua franca of both the internet and international business, seeing people fluent in it is to be expected.

Lastly, as an indictment of evil American practices, going for the obvious is understandable.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Human No More (Post 114528)

Actually, just a quick count gives over 30 RDA personnel with speaking lines in the movie and there are probably more. Every one of them sounds like an American. But whatever the number it still comes down to 100% of them talking like Americans. Not a single non-American accent to be found. An easily corrected thing if Cameron had wanted to correct it.

The movie was amazing, and that to is a fact.

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