Dragonriders of Pandora

[mothwing]

What we learned from this movie:

• we live in a post-racial society, and cultures are the same and totally equal - like Western cultures and whatever passes for culture among those weird savages who run around naked and worship sky jellyfish.
• women have to look after men. In any species, on any planet, women look after men. Until it gets dangerous. THEN the mighty male white saviour rescues the savage females.
• men make decisions. Women may disagree with these decisions, but that's clearly wrong.
• women (in this case, all-powerful nature goddesses) are resilient and need to get told what to do by foreign male saviours interfacing with them.
• heterosexuality is a natural norm.
• mother-characters are only in the story to take care of their men and then die and through their death make a powerful statement about how their men can live better.
• men get to choose women. On any planet, in any society, men get to choose women. Also, everybody mates for life.
• on any planet, women are the ones who cry, and the men are the ones who harden their features in response to grief.
• minorities have to instruct hostile foreigners in their weird ways for the benefits of the foreigner.
• white Americans can easily learn the ways of a noble savage race within a couple of weeks.
• "tribal" music that fits a Westerners idea of African music is the only appropriate score for a movie about blue Aliens. Until there is large-scale genocide, that calls for a full orchestra. Until we reach personal tragedy, then we need a sad, shapeless lament sung by the Universal Voice of Grief™, a sad alto.
• James Cameron is a huge gamer dork. Even the quest progression of the avatar in question is like that of any MMORPG. Even the order in which he gets mounts follows that (riding mount, flying mount, EPIC flying mount!!!11), and did we see the floating mountains of Outland on the horizon? Also: good to see that other people are looking forward to the Cataclysm expansion pack. Oh, yeah. Also, we know, James, we know, gaming addiction can be a real pain.
• we know that the main character is a Real Man because a.) he really showed that pterodactyl who's boss by sticking his body parts into its body and restrains it physically, and b.) his manly rugged behaviour throughout the rest of the movie. 
• unobtainium. Unobtainium. Yeah, we got nothing.
• white invaders are hurt by warfare, too - their love told them to piss off, imagine how that feels! They all make really sad faces. The complete obliteration of what passes for culture among the nekkid tribe pales in comparison.
• no genocide can be quite as bad as Grace dying (grace, get it?). So let's have a huge-ass ceremony all about a white woman.
• savages will trust a complete stranger who absolutely cannot be bothered to learn their language just as long as he boinks their  princess and has their biggest ride to lead them into battle that will cost most of their lives.
• there is a good military and a bad military. The good military are benevolent colonialists who are willing to put up with some heathen mumbo-jumbo in order to rise to the top, and the bad military do the same, only that they're willing to make sacrifices among enemy lines and just take what they want.
• Intentions really, really matter - the hero (eventually) didn't mean to hurt anyone.Yes, fine, he told everybody everything about all of the savages secrets, but he didn't mean to do any harm!
• Oh yeah, protect trees!.

In short: holy shit, this is a bad movie.

BAD. Really BAD.

I have never seen aynthing quite as bad in a long, looong time. Just how can anyone be involved in that movie and not realise how fucking bad it is?

Also, the worst thing: it is so obvious that in thousands of cinemas everywhere, people are going, "Wheee, flying dinosaurs!! Wohooo! BOOM, explosions!!" rather than, ".... what is this shit?!"

Comments

MTE

[bronnyelsp.livejournal.com]

Wowieeeee, amazingly well-summarised, doll.

Re: MTE

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Thanks. :)

Re: MTE

[bronnyelsp.livejournal.com]

The only other thing I got out of that movie is that we are currently so far into post-racial paradise that when sci-fi movies are created with the intent of allegorising race relations, white people are played by... people; and POC are played by... aliens. (cf District 9)

Re: MTE

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Yeah, seriously, what's up with that? Also, if they have to go there and use aliens to allegorise topics like colonialism and race, my gut-feeling says that movies in which aliens colonise human planets to show the inhumanity of this kind of behaviour would be somewhat more appropriate. Well, just as long as the resulting movies don't involve a huge epic final battle in which male white US soldiers lead a rag-tag army of POC locals into battle.
Not that I think that allegories of these kinds do much good, anyway.

[krakelwok.livejournal.com]

Apart from all that, what really rattles my cage is how many wrong signals this movie sends especially on the film-making side.
It is apparently enough to dress up weapons-grade BULLSHIT with $500,000,000 in CG effects and butt-ugly, unoriginal, mo-capped cats with abs and tits to get a bullshit-talking director NINE Academy Award nominations! I'm really about to choke on my own bile here.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

Actually, the one thing I did like about the aliens is the fact that they managed to make female aliens look a lot less hyperfeminine than I'd have expected and more androgynous, so props for that - it was a positive surprise, I'd have expected something more Draenei-like in terms of sexual dimorphism.

The nine Academy Awards are really not warranted, though, especially with that lack of any kind of story (Best Movie? Give me a fucking break). Sad to see that they feel it necessary to dress up something as uninteresting and unconvincing as that plot in these shiny wrappings. Also, how come they love the score so much? Did I sleep through the awesome parts?

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

I cannot decide which I hate more, this movie or the fact that ALMOST EVERYONE LOVES IT.

Also, it had a crappy, boring plot, and crappy, ridiculous worldbuilding. On top of being an offensive pile of crap. Have I said "crap" enough?

I hate this movie SO MUCH. Possibly more than any other movie EVER because apparently its ickiness is too subtle (?!) for most people to notice!

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

It's probably impossible to say "crap" enough in this case. I actually rather enjoyed the involuntary humour of the worldbuilding in the midst of all the fail. I had the feeling that whoever came up with this was feeling rather smug about it, too, which only made it all the more hilarious.

What I find most perplexing about this movie is that there are still people out there who think that constructing this type of story around serious real-world issues such as the one the movie so utterly fails in acknowledging is actually very clever and illuminating. Where do these people live...?

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

Presumably the same place the people who post things like "We have real Na'vi! They are Native Americans and Africans and we should all learn from how ~spiritual~ and ~in tune with nature~ these ~exotic~ people are!"

I'm barely paraphrasing, although the tildes of sparkly sarcasm were absent in the original.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

No one says things like that, do they? Do they? Say they don't. D=

I hope they get verbally smacked by everybody around them if they do, at least.

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

I WISH. D=