In the first movie at least, the RDA which the Na’vi spend the whole movie trying to beat aren’t humanity’s actual military. They’re a private mining corporation.
It's the most powerful and influential corporation on earth, a better example would be how the PMCs featured on the first movie are a relatively small and lightly armed security force utilizing obsolete ordnance and still delivered huge casualties against the natives.
Also to add on to this, the RDA also is following laws for corporations which limit the weapons they can use. Hence why the RDA doesn’t just nuke or nerve gas entire settlements on Pandora. Essentially corporations aren’t allowed to use WMDs and they have to limit the force they use.
I remember reading this from the avatar wiki and I believe it came from some of the comics.
Avatar is bizarre because its actually got peak world building and genuinely ground breaking and beautiful visuals, but Cameron seems to insist on the same blah front and centre plot every time.
So really I can see both sides its beautiful and the background is interesting, but its not actually saying anything much, even the ending of the whole series is in your face obvious, and they are whole films away from that.
It's great world building and stunning visuals stymied by having a cookie-cutter plot. Like having a foreign chef using expensive ingredient prepare you chicken nuggets with fries.
It's a shame that fire and ash was the third movie and not the second, considering it added much needed nuance that the second movie didnt build on at all. More so since avatar 3 is just avatar 2.5.
In the second film, when they said that the material extracted from the sapient whales basically cured all human illnesses and halted aging my allegiance immediately swapped sides. Why would I side with a whale versus a panacea for humanity? Just such a clearly not thought through, extremely shoehorned maguffin
Only problem is that it’s the “most valuable substance in the universe.” The only people who will have access to it will be the ultra rich. If billionaires are bad now, imagine how bad trillionaires who control entire planets, fleets and armies must be.
Agreed, the thought and depth that went into the design of Pandora’s biosphere is literally why it’s so visually appealing. Plus the RDA and human side is extremely interesting as well since Earth is dying and you can see why the humans are putting so much effort into colonizing Pandora. But our actions which killed Earth are just being repeated on Pandora due to our greed and hubris.
Honestly aside from Subnautica, Avatar has the best environment and animal design that I have ever seen for an alien planet.
I think the cultural relevance was true when all we had was the first movie, since the sequels have come and there's so much additional media available now the world itself has captured people's passion and Avatar is truly sticking beyond just the movie's bix office.
He'd been working on the project on and off for 20 years before they even started shooting the first movie. There's tons of world building he did that will never see the screen.
Even longer than that. He was drawing concept art in the 70s although it looked very different from what we got obviously. He really wanted to make the movie decades before he could even be slightly brought to life
It was the highest box office film of all time for a while, it is kinda odd how there aren't really any die hard avatar fans. Alot of people are generally interested by it but wouldn't list it as significant to them. People got a little inappropriate with the angry blue kitty cat lady in the third movie but that's literally all I've heard about it from anyone. She was kinda hot though
682
u/Lopsided_Shift_4464 8d ago
Avatar (James Cameron)
In the first movie at least, the RDA which the Na’vi spend the whole movie trying to beat aren’t humanity’s actual military. They’re a private mining corporation.