You've seen the argument before. "If jake told the navii to move the whole battle couldve been avoided". But that whole argument is so stupid because that was never gonna happen no matter how much influence jake had. The navii valued their home and nature a ton and to abandon that because some humans want to destroy it and steal all their resources is stupid. Not to mention the tree for their religion would also be destroyed if they leave it. They would much rather fight to keep it, especially with how much they dont like humans anyway. Its still wrong that jake never told them or at least gave them a heads up but its not the big gotcha people pretend it is
Even if it wasn’t an important site for them and they ditched it to avoid a fight, literally all of history across all cultures shows that appeasement NEVER works. You give the attacker an inch, they’ll come along later to take a mile
Exactly. Chances are, theyd have crossed paths again with the same problem. The navii would be screwed if they listened
Yeah. The whole situation could have also been avoided if the RDA didn't insist on mining the largest* Unobtanium deposit under a sacred site to the locals and instead decided to mine elsewhere on the moon.
For example, the RDA could grab some of those floating islands everywhere, which float because of Unobtanium. They don't seem to be inhabited.
* The deposit under the tree isn't even said to be the largest deposit on the moon, but just the largest deposit within 200 kilometers of the RDA base.
It’s crazy how often people down play the agency of the RDA as antagonists.
its because some people sympathzhie with the colonizers, which is what the RDA are supposed to be
Avatar is essentially an alien invasion narrative but with humans as the invaders.
Most arguments defending the RDA are also applicable to antagonists of other "super advanced aliens are coming for our resources/planet" plotlines, but I don't see people defending those alien invaders.
I think part of the reason people tend to sympathise with the RDA is actually related to something very particular: the sedentary-nomadic divide.
The Na'vi are fundamentally unrelatable because they don't not practice a lifestyle familiar to us. They do not seem to have farms or livestock nor build cities, which is like the bare minimum for us to recognise a "civilization." Whatever habitats they build seem quite makeshift, and they evidently can move around relatively easily.
From the perspective of someone of a sedentary civilization, all the land is basically "unowned." No one seems to have built so much as a mudhut on it as a permanent immonile residence, none of the land seems to be put to productive use through farming or otherwise, the are no gravestone of ancestors nor does it seem that there would be a system of land ownership or inheritance.
Even the earliest Sumerian farmer would have thought "yeah, that's up for grabs, let me just expand my farmland"
Now, nomadic and seminomadic people did exist irl, and they have always faced erasure in this sense. Sure, they could always move a bit further, but as the available land decreased (whether for hunting and gathering or for grazing animals) their resources to keep themselves alive would decrease and they would increasingly come into conflict with other nomads for the mlre and more limited land they had.
At the same time, there were the soft, sedentary peoples they could raid for stockpile of food, which was much easier and more rewarding.
The end result? Sedentary peoples from the earliest days of writing complain about barbaric nomads who come in and steal the hard work of others. Not to mention the murder, rape and property damage that tended to come with it. So they would invest in walls, militias, militaries, etc. They would protect their produce, wealth and cities the best they could, and they would often have a redoubled motivation to expand and subjugate or eradigate the nomads who posed a threat to them and their lifestyle.
In a sense the destruction of nomadic lifestyles, peoples and cultures is the oldest and longest genocide in the world from the dawn of civilization up tonthe present day. At times nomads could actually have the upper hand historically, but the Mongols were the last time this really happened, and after that it's all been downhill as sedentary societies simply became too developed for nomads to be able to compete with. Now practically nowhere on Earth is inhabited by nomads, and all land is controlled by a bureaucratic state. There are however some last echoes of it. For instance in Nigeria the conflicts between the government and Jihadists is also kind of a conflict between sedentary farmers and semi nomadic herders, both of whom have need of the same land for their lifestyle.
Avatar combines the colonial invasion with the sedentary/nomadic dynamic, but it does not really elaborate on it in a way that would make an interesting comment on the latter or their differing understandings of the world. Therefore, rather than being deep and interesting in this regard, it undermines the main anticolonial narrative by not making the Na'vi a civilization in their own right and thus making them less relatable and their claims less justified in the audiences eyes.
Holy media literacy. I didn’t even think about that until you mentioned it.
I mean yeah, the entirety of civilization diverged from nomadism like 10,000 years ago and all of our culture is rooted in it. It's also a "cultural universal" in that basically every ethnic group or nation or state regardless of language, faith or origin in some fundamental level adheres to it. Any occasional nomads are tolerated by sedentary people on land they claim, there's no "sovereign" nomads.
Basically, of course you and most people won't think about it. I didn't initially think about it. But it instinctively delegitimised the Na'vi cause in my eyes. Not completely or anything, but what I mean is that it was diminished.
If the writing was good, they could have overcome this, made it more of a part of how the Na'vi are alien to us and focused more on the differences of worldview and the way the humans and Na'vi misunderstand each other. It could even have been a relevant commentary on things like differing ideas of land ownership between European colonists and native Americans in North America and the results this had. But there's no real commentary on this at all. Nor is Na'vi land use really something that's ever thought about, even though nomads and hunter gatherers also need and use land.
It's also still more difficult to make it relatable, if that's the intent.
War of the Worlds, the original alien-invasion story, was actually deliberately written around the premise of "what would it feel like to be on the receiving end of colonialism." So it's not some accident - alien invasion narratives were intended to have this subtext all the way back to the beginning.
There's a great movie to be made out there about an alien invasion that gets to Earth and at first, they mine in mostly unoccupied areas off the coast or whatever. Then they proceed to demand the right to turn Rio de Janeiro into a mine and have every human leave it, with the justification "there's a lot of cities out there, they can move". They will be offering space beer and a train system as compensation, so it's a totally fair trade, and they definitely promise that they will not make plans to stripmine another city in a year or two.
I’m seriously considering making something like this
Kinda, but also a crucial way it differs from that, is exactly in how much it actually portrays the humans as going through the familiar motions of a colonial invasion.
The alien invasion narrative, from War of the Words to Independence Day, usually relies on the aliens just showing up and immediately decraring a war of extermination on everyone.
The humans in Avatar act like actual colonizers. A lot of the "plothole" criticisms that the first movie gets, are from people missing is that the humans are not openly planning from the beginning to annihilate the Na'vi, they don't just nuke them from orbit before even landing, because they are going through the legalistic motions of just being a well-intentioned Trade Company willing to negotiate, while hiding behind their big guns to be ready to escalate whenever it is convenient to them.
It's also important to the plot that all sides kind of know this. That's why Jake keeps it to himself for too long, because he knows that once he starts negotiating terms for the RDA, the Na'vi will start seeing him as an enemy and he'll lose his newfound sense of belonging.
This right here. Education regarding the atrocities committed against indigenous people is pretty bad and will usually try to justify, downplay or outright deny they happened so when a movie comes along that uncritically supports Indigenous people’s right to resist their colonizers people hate it. I don’t like Avatar either but so many of the arguments I hear for why it is bad boils down to they don’t portray the RDA in a good enough light
My frustration with this isn’t that the RDA is portrayed in a good light, but rather that important context is intentionally ignored in order to paint the RDA in the most one-sided, evil way possible - and also be a scapegoat when I’d argue that wider human society is the real problem.
For example:
how is unobtanium used in human society? What is the demand for it like at home? Who is actually PAYING $55 million per kilo of unobtanium?
who are the RDA’s shareholders and corporate leaders beyond pandora? If, for example, a distant corporate headquarters is imposing harsh mining quotas on the Pandora office, then that could allow us to better understand and judge their actions while still having a villain.
how does the RDA’s actions compare to those of other companies in their universe? Are they more or less ethical than comparable peers? Is their treatment of pandora an isolated incident, or is this par for the course? Are they considered an ethical company compared to others in their field?
what is earth like? Is it dying and in desperate need of resources, or prosperous and have plenty to spare? Do they NEED pandora and its resources for survival?
Again, my issue that the RDA isn’t portrayed in a more positive light - but that Cameron and the writers did an absolutely terrible job of establishing them as actual villains to the point where they can easily be seen as the good guys if you add any of multiple bits of context. It’s that the show comes off not as an unbiased look at colonialism, but as some sort of hyper-biased anti-RDA hit piece that falls apart with a bit of critical thinking.
For crying out loud, I’d argue that governor Ratcliffe from Pocahontas is more developed than the RDA!
James Cameron said he wants to visit Earth one day so I assume all of your complaints will be addressed
Why do I have to wait until quite possibly the 5th movie to have these complaints addressed - especially when one of the supposed strengths of Avatar is its world-building? Is basic motivations and context too much to ask for in a three-hour movie?
Not to mention, until those issues are addressed they’re perfectly valid to bring up and believe. It doesn’t matter if he brings them up later - he hasn’t brought them up yet.
The RDA is literally the American military. Not just as a metaphor, but its literally the US military in-canon.
Cameron is one of the few blockbuster directors to show the US military as outright evil, and not use a faceless allegory.
A lot of Americans, whether liberal or conservative, are scared of even minor critisizm of America's military action. Remember, even liberals were falling for the Iraq War propaganda.
It’s more of a state sponsored monopoly, East India Company style. It’s a company that has a lot of ties with the military, but it has shareholders and a director. From the little we know of Earth, it’s likely Avatar’s U.S. is more openly corporatist than OTL
Pretty sure the RDA is an ngo with superpower resources who no nation can actually control. Some of the mercenaries they hire are former US military but there's no active links from what I remember.
I don't believe this is true. The RDA is a non-governmental corporation, and Security Operations is all under the corporation's umbrella
People sympathize with humans or the obvious human stand-ins. Even if both sides are sapient beings and functionally moral agents equivalent to humans.
If it's a story about humans being colonized by aliens then they will scream purge the xenos as well.
You will be surprised how people's moral compass will be affected by this simple framing.
I mean, shouldn’t the shareholders and people on earth who need unobtanium be the real villains?
How much agency DOES the RDA truly have if, for example, they’re under incredible pressure to provide specific quotas by their shareholders on earth, or if there is a massive, critical demand on earth for unobtanium as a necessary resource for their survival? Do they actually have the luxury to say “no”?
Or let’s say the RDA was trying to be as ethical as possible while still reaching their goal of getting unobtanium. Would anything actually be much different?
What if they took the base... and move it somewhere else? (PatrickWhatIf.png)
That's crazy talk. You know how much it would cost the company to move?
No, that tracks. History books are full of worse offenses by colonizers for even weaker reasons. “It’s near our base” is probably middle of the road as far as excuses go. What was the excuse for machine gunning entire herds of buffalo?
Military measure against the Native Americans.
But the Supreme Court said not to, Prez. Jackson!
I personally saw it as the Na’avi making poor but incredibly justifiable decisions, while the RDA made stupid AND morally trashy decisions.
I’m more mixed, because the movie doesn’t specify that there are in fact other options.
Are there, in fact, other unobtanium deposits suitable for mining in the area, that wouldn’t require an insurmountable amount of resources to mine?
Giving the RDA a more generous interpretation, it is possible that:
There are no other unobtanium deposits suitable for mining in the area that are accessible to the RDA with the resources they have. Either there are none, or any other deposits would require too much resources to make it viable.
given that there appears to be a potential connection between unobtanium and Eywa, any other significant unobtanium deposits could very well also be Navi sacred sites. It could be possible that you can’t mine ANY unobtanium without destroying some sort of Navi sacred site. In this case, the RDA has no choice but to choose which Navi sacred site to destroy.
For the floating islands, it’s reasonable that there’s logistical challenges that make mining them difficult if not impossible. Perhaps mining them messes up the equilibrium of all the floating islands, possibly causing even more massive ecological damage. Perhaps the strong magnetic field they’re said to generate makes mechanical mining impossible. Perhaps disrupting the “floatiness” of the islands by mining the unobtanium in them causes them to crash or explode violently, which makes them too dangerous to mine. Or maybe mining the floating islands causes them to crash onto yet another Navi sacred site, ruining it anyways.
I don’t blame the RDA for this, because the movie fails to provide any sort of meaningful alternative. It could very well be the least evil option they could take without completely compromising their fundamental goals.
And maybe that’s the furthest they can mine without either overextending themselves (leaving them even more vulnerable to Navi attacks), stretching themselves too thinly, or moving their entire base to a new area? Perhaps that could be the furthest their planes can fly before refueling?
The problem is the RDA fundamental goals are evil, it's exploitation wrap around with gift. History has showed that compromise never led to anything good for the native and the colonizers would keep finding excuse to push it further. The RDA started out asking nicely while preparing weapons behind the scenes, their policy wasn't about appealing the tribes and find mutual understanding, it's about finding the pass of least resistance while ready to strike if they can't get what they want.
Would you like to live without oil? Without lithium or any other precious resource unethically mined?
If not, then the act of mining precious materials like lithium, oil, or in Avatar’s case unobtanium cannot itself be evil - or, if it is, then you are just as much to blame as the RDA. If you, and the rest of human society, depend on oil and lithium to survive, then who are you to criticize others for supplying you with that resource? At the very least, you are just as bad as the RDA.
Or take the whale juice, for another example. If it stops aging, it can be assumed that it can also effectively cure or prevent aging-related diseases, like dementia and cancer.
You can’t criticize the RDA for the act of mining whale juice if you then, say, choose to rely on that juice to cure your elderly grandmother’s dementia. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Now, can you criticize how it’s acquired? Sure, but to do so, you have to either establish an “ethical” way of obtaining that resource, and show how the RDA is intentionally neglecting that option for, say, more profits or to save costs.
True, but again - do you want to live without oil or your precious resources just so some random tribe can live peacefully while you suffer?
Sorry, but I’m willing to admit that we can’t live without those resources. And if push comes to shove, I’m going to choose my people over yours.
Well, that’s arguably OP’s point - that “appealing the tribes” and “finding mutual understanding” is IMPOSSIBLE given that the movie shows - the interests of the NAVI and the RDA are fundamentally incompatible.
Again, I’d like to ask - if the RDA wanted to mine unobtanium as ethically as possible and make every effort to work in good faith with the natives (with the condition that they can’t simply not mine unobtanium and leave the planet alone, as they need unobtanium to exist), what would that look like? What should they do? How would things have turned out any differently?
If the tribes were never going to collaborate with the mining of their planet, or allow their resources to be mined, then what is the point of trying to appeal to them? It’s a waste of resources and time. As is pointed out in the movie, the humans have nothing the Navi want. The Navi were never going to negotiate, and no amount of good faith appeals or actions by the RDA would have ever changed that.
And since, from the human’s perspective, going without unobtanium is not an option, exploitation and the use of force is simply a tragic but necessary consequence of the Navi’s stubbornness. Thus, the RDA is not evil.
That's true.
really it was a waste of time. they're lucky they're favored by the plo i mean Ewya.
They weren't gonna leave, but surely they weren't gonna angrily dive head first at the humans like they did. What Jake did by saying something then and there was put them in flight or fight. When what Jake REALLY needed to say was "Yes. They have the power to destroy the tree. We did way worse on my home planet with way less fire power. You need a plan."
Their plan worked pretty well for a while
Honestly my big issue had been that Jake never told them anything. Even if it would ultimately change nothing. Dude still didn't do his basic job description.
Though a Grunt going rogue with the first piece of native strange he encounters is hardly anything new or strange to the USMC.
Yeah it's less about whether Jake would have been effective at convincing the na'vi to leave.
It's about he didn't even try.
He did not care enough about or trust Neytiri to confide in her this information. He did not respect the na'vi enough or this woman he's supposed to love to give them the agency to either choose to leave or die defending their home tree.
At the same time, he doesn't try on the RDA side to coax a way of mining elsewhere. Jake the dipshit doesn't even figure out that RDA was going to watch his video diaries. I know Jake is supposed to be....stupid, but come the fuck on. What's worse is that there is one teeny thing Jake does try: he talks to the RDA manager and it only takes about 20 seconds to convince him to let Jake and Grace go as avatars to warn the na'vi like an hour before the strike happens. Holy shit, if Jake got that much progress done in 20 seconds to be granted that favor, imagine if Jake had taken the approach to convince him of more. Guy doesn't want to listen to the scientists, maybe he'll listen to a soldier. Wanna try, Jake? No?
Instead Jake just sat with his thumb up his butt for like three months straight.
And at first Neytiri rightfully calls him out on it, she's so outraged and overwhelmed by the betrayal that she tells him to GTFO, he'll never be na'vi.
Like holy shit he spews some "but I fell in love with the forest! :3" line as soon as he realizes she's upset about his admission that he'd known all along the RDA wanted to blow up their tree. What did falling in love with the forest DO, Jake? It did jack shit. You sat back and enjoyed the sex and you didn't trust HER. Gee glad you were having so much fun, white boy, that really takes the sting out of her murdered father and slaughtered people and burned home/temple.
And in a good story this would have been an absolute major pivotal part of the story where Jake would struggle to redeem himself because this is such an overwhelming stain on his character that it cannot just get brushed under the rug.
And so in Avatar it gets brushed under the rug. Because Jake's the Chosen One the goddess lets the special shiny pokemon to appear before him, and seeing it wham bam that's the sign that he's their Chosen One, he's their leader, he's a better na'vi than any of you real na'vi, and he gets accepted by them once again.
I don't know, there's something absolutely slimy about Jake who thinks Neytiri is good enough to fuck but even after he's realized that the na'vi would never leave their home, he does nothing. One might even interpret it as by keeping Neytiri ignorant she'll stay happy and willing to have sex with him and buuuuuuu he doesn't want his fun jungle vacation to stop. And instead of being resourceful and perhaps working at changing the minds of the RDA, Jake does nothing but sulk. I think Cameron was trying to go for 'loveable numbskull' but Jake's stupidity really makes him look like a selfish asshole.
He just fucking sucks. And he never really gets better. Sure he takes action later, but that's after everyone else has given him no other option, so it doesn't feel like satisfying character growth. And of course everything gets forgiven because he's the Chosen One.
I think he was trying to warm up to them and then tell them but got too distracted to let them know. He still couldve warned them though and was an asshole for that.
He didn’t get distracted, it’s a major plot point when he says in his logs that now that he’s immersed in the Naavis culture he understands they’d never accept to leave.
Havent watched the movie for years so I mustve fprgotten that part but wasnt he taken completly by surprise when the humans attacked. When he asked why they were attackimg they explained time was up and he had nothing to show for it. Maybe he knew not to ask them to move early on but towards the end he definetly forgot to tell them.
They won't leave because their environment is ingrained in their culture. Simple. Without seeing and having exclipt military force removal brought upon them they have no reason to leave. It would make no sense to their pyschogoly
Just happened to see a video explainimg they have trouble adapting to different environments due to how they have their environment ingrained into their genes.
IDK about that. I'm pretty sure water Navi can live a full day out of water and don't need it at all
The guy was mostly talking about the rainforest navii
Its weird that the mineral is downplayed in the sequels in favor of whale brain juice. Imagine if the juice was found first, there wouldnt be an avatar program.
I heard the 3rd movie also abandons the whale juice and now its a completely different vital respurce they want
Nope, 3rd movie still revolves around the brain juice. There is a mcguffin that comes up that the humans want to collect but the main conflict point is still whale hunting.
No they still want the sapient whale brains they just are also going after Spider because early in the movie Kiri manages to use her connection with Ewa to adapt him to breath Pandoran air and the RDA a want to study him so they can replicate that
Who was arguing that they would have left? Like, Jake himself said they valued the tree and their home over anything else and that they'd never abandon it. They would have posted up, not left it.
Yeah its be liike "oh just let the evil colonizers destroy your home for profits, I am CERTAIN they will not bother you or the world ever again after this. Right? Right? (sarcasm to make fun of the people arguing they should "just leave" )
The argument was really popular back when the second movie came out. Everyone was acting like the entire battle was purely hakes fault and couldve been completely avoided had jake said something. Talking as if the humans were the peaceloving victims when theyd have done it anyway
Jake had the job to soften the navi to leave peacefully, but he neither openly tells the human army the navi are so stubborn they aren't planning to leave, nor to the navi about the destructive potential of the human side. He does a jack shit of his one job, and the plot only moves forward because he accidentally records himself saying what he have done to that point is a waste of time. He couldn't avoid the war, but also did nothing to delay or soften it, only lead the navi to victory.
Which is a problem I have with the film.
I mean, the blue smurfs use the trope of the noble salvage living in communion with nature, I get it. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. The problem is the film paint the human as technologically superior to the point the fight between them shouldn't be a fight from the beginning and the savage should have been beaten if not because the colonialist, white guy is on their side to guide them.
Nobody before them had the idea to ask directly for help to the giant tree. For this battle, nobody tried to tame the biggest and more menacing flying creature in the world. (Which has its own problems as in what's the point if the entire planet will help them? Shouldn't be like a dozen of those creatures helping?) Nobody had a better idea than jumping straight into the ships to get sprayed with bullets.
Imagine this: instead of navi and humanity, we had native americans and englishmen. Imagine a disney pocahontas scenario, the natives try to repel the Englishmen by climbing the ship and stand in front of the muskets, but at the end, they win because John Smith spend a large part of time asking to other tribes to help (how's that nobody thought about that before?) and instructed them to not stand in plain view in front of the firearms.
Other films following these tropes know better, that's why they paint the ultimate defeat of the less advanced group (the sioux in dance with wolves, or the traditional samurai in the last samurai), pointing that one single man, disregarding his ethnic background, can't stop progress. The tragedy is how progress steamrolls over tradition and what's lost in the process. Even a man called horse clashes the native tribe against other natives, so the victory feels more natural instead of plot armor. Meanwhile, avatar clearly says the navi would have lost if not because the white guy was there to tell them how to win.
Smurfs are already blue, you don't have to say blue smurfs.
Asking for help wasn't what was unique. What was unique was his memories of Earth and proving to Eywa that it wasn't going to stop at just one tree. It's not about him being special, it's about being an envoy from Earth that is essentially saying "it's not going to get any better".
Literally the whole reason him becoming Toruk Makto works is because there is in fact a tradition of previous leaders riding it.
Eh, people have lost wars historically with huge resource and scientific advantages. I mean the Zulus had a huge victory early with less men when they were fighting with spears versus rifles. It's possible the Boers could have won if not for the gap in infantry numbers.
Tactics is where I have a problem as with how many wars have occurred here, it's improbable the humans wouldn't've been careful especially with the resources gained with a victory.
Also, your first statement implicates that Jake should've lowered resistance so the invasion doesn't lead to as much damage. The movie is explicitly anti-colonialist so the takeaway being that indigenous people shouldn't resist to prevent damage to their region wouldn't come across great. It also doesn't work narratively as he has found a new life and to allow the humans any access would most probably destroy his chance of getting to live that life.
This is the real reason Jake never brings it up.
The movie would end far quicker if he did.
One grip I always had is that technically the RDA could've easily dug the minerals without destroying the tree; that unobtainium hotbed was very wide, they could've just dug a bunch of tunnels and take it without bothering people.
Tbf, the navi would still hate that. The humans would have to still drill close their home and it wpuld still impact theur ecosystem
Yeah, I guess that also works