5:15 Ah so that's why there are so many Navi's getting locked up for shooting Arrows at Humans
@thebubonicj2 күн бұрын
Did you know, despite being only 14% of the universe…
@Mr_Thinks-0k2 күн бұрын
I didn't like it when I saw it and I remember it being massively overhyped in my opinion. Remember when people were getting depressed because they didn't live in the avatar world? Occams razor, people just calmed down and became more rational about the product and saw it for what it was, fairly and unfairly. While I appreciate the effort of this video, jumping straight into selective enforcement rather than analysing the original reaction vs the current reaction and which one is the fairer, it seems more focused on tearing down peoples criticism of it. Doesn't seem to require 45 minutes of defending the film against that people that don't, to me. Feels like a big swing and a miss which is a shame. I like your stuff normally
@extofer2 күн бұрын
Agree. I also watched it in the theater at the time and didn’t like it very much. I found it to be a generic action film at the time. I tried to watch it again recently before the second one came out and I still feel the same. I feel the same about the second one. I just happen to not think this universe Cameron created is that interesting. I don’t even care if it’s similar to other films or not. Subjectively I don’t think it’s a good franchise. And that’s it.
@laserwolf6516 сағат бұрын
27:37 Frankfurt School ideas? Ew, bro. Ew.
@laserwolf6516 сағат бұрын
Then you use Freud? Fucking Freud? You know that, like, 80% of that dude's work has been discredited and thrown out at pseudo science, right?
@disaffectedliberal86726 сағат бұрын
You understand this is not how intelligent people think, right?
@thebarkingyears2 сағат бұрын
Hey man, I used to think the same thing about the FS until I read them myself. You don't have to agree with everything they said to recognize when they got things right. It is possible to have nuanced opinions about them. Also, I just want to point out what you're doing, especially freaking out about Freud: do you understand that this is not even Freud's idea? He is describing something related by other people. But your reaction to the statement that I quoted went no further than "you quoted the bad man." If you want to grow, I would suggest recognizing when you're having an emotional reaction rather than logically evaluating whatever it is you're engaging with. Thanks for watching though!
@thebarkingyearsСағат бұрын
@@disaffectedliberal8672It's alright, man. People don't know what they don't know.
@Deapcrash1012 күн бұрын
I dislike Avatar, and although I do find it's aesthetics uninspired that doesn't really matter. My real problem is the way it's story is told, and if only that was changed the movie could have been great. The movie is clearly relying heavily on modern viewers preconceived notions of both humans (particularly white European culture acting as a stand in for "human supremacy") and native tribes. Through this, it lazily attempts to tell a story based on the preconceived notion that most modern people have of civil savages and ruthless colonizers. However they do it so lazily that they actually end up creating a story that was intended to be a simple good vs evil story into a much more gray story. And if they knew what they were doing and rolled with it, it could have been way more interesting, and way more honest of an examination of this type of conflict. The humans from avatar were fleeing an extinction event. Never had first aggression against the Navi, attempted negotiation even when facing Navi aggression, and only sought to pacify them when they were becoming a legitimate threat to their operations, which again is also a threat to their own survival as a species. All these elements made me disappointed that this story wasn't written as a tragedy, and instead was a story about oppression. If the contradictions were intentional, James Cameron could have made a story about humanity; who after it's failures was given a second chance after finding a new garden of eden among the stars. Colonel quaritch could have been sympathetic to the Navi, wanting to avoid conflict, merely wanting to get what's needed to ensure survival. However the Navi being a stone age society can only see the humans as encroaching on their territory, so negotiations eventually break down, and the humans are eventually forced into retaliation. And in the end although the Navi survive they're kept under a tight leash by humans, (instead of miraculously beating the humans in the end in spite of their weapons clearly being shown to be ineffective earlier) You could even have all the same themes of anti-consumerism, and naturism just told from a light that doesn't demonize anyone. This story is somewhat similar to king Philips war in 1600s new England. Where Wampanoag and other tribes clashed with English settlers. The Wampanoag were warry of the english, although they had good relations in the past the english executing Wampanoag tribes men for a murder lead them to fear the english would encroach on their autonomy, what followed was series of raids on english towns, before the english retaliated and after a long conflict broke the Wampanoag. This conflict defined much of the distrust between the english and the Indians after. But in the end it was largely a gray conflict, of differing cultures who had yet to understand each others innerworkings. It was not a conflict of english aggression, And although the Indians aggressed it was from their perspective understandable but still not justified, as the natives goal was to essentially kill every colonist man woman or child, that or force them back to Europe which wouldn't have had home for them any longer. Further, I take issue with your pretense about the movies themes. I will tell you with absolute certainty right now. James Cameron did not consider his films themes when making it as deeply as you did trying to salvage it. All of the ideas in the film are ones any story teller can make up simply incorporating the tropes that are already built into the mind of the common western man. Just because you can wax poetic about the substance of the origins of the ideas others inherited, doesn't make it good story telling.
@romanschautfilme2 күн бұрын
No AVATAR was MID Actually...it was Bland and predictable, sure it looked cool, but there was nothing behind that blue CGI, just an old "nothing burger" story. I fell asleep the first time i watched it.
@laserwolf65Күн бұрын
Joke's on you: I never did an "about face." I hated it then, and I hate it now. I like your channel though, so I'm watching your defense anyway.
@BabyArms18 сағат бұрын
The first Avatar-related memory I have is being a cashier at Target after it had been released on DVD and Blu-ray. A guy probably in his 30s or maybe very early 40s came through my line to buy it (just the movie and nothing else, if I remember correctly) with a wide smile on his face. He asked if I'd seen it, and I said something like "No, how is it?" and he replied really confidently and steadily "Phenomenal. It's the best movie I've ever seen," still smiling. It was very clear that he'd been thinking about it a lot and waiting for it to come out. He went on to talk about the graphics being incredible, and I was happy for him, but I remember thinking I didn't really care about that. Nothing against the movie or its graphics, but that just wasn't something I'd given any thought to and it didn't make me want to see the movie. In 2012 I became friends with someone who had gone to school for animation. She told me she'd watched Avatar in theater ten (or twelve? But I think ten) times because she loved it so much the first time and she knew she was going to miss that experience once it was no longer available. I've heard a lot of "It's just Pocahontas" over the years, but that isn't why I've never been interested in seeing it. I didn't even think that was necessarily such a bad thing. For whatever reason, nothing about it ever flickered across my mental radar for more than a second or two. You bothering to make this video about why you like it is actually the first time I've ever thought I might want to give it a watch sometime.
@n_n_n_n_n_n2 күн бұрын
I also went to Avatar (in 3D) with a small group of friends, who all loved it. I *hated* it however, so I likely just annoyed them all, as the movie was discussed afterward. This cultural backlash you're describing apparently hasn't crossed my radar, though I don't see myself seeking it out. :Edit: I'm prepping for The Barking Years villain arc.🌝
@extofer2 күн бұрын
How about I just didn’t like the film. Found it boring. It didn’t even come close to matching other more spectacular cinematic experiences I’ve had in my life. Others can revere it all they want but it just didn’t hit me the same way and that’s not for lack of trying. I watched it when it came out. I tried to watch it again before the second one - which I also found quite boring. Avatar just doesn’t work for me. Subjectivity at its finest.
@laserwolf6515 сағат бұрын
Ok, I finished watching, and I gotta say, this is a huge stretch. The idea that the militantly atheist Cameron spent $300 million dollars of corporate money (and, might I add, required millions of dollars of renovations to existing movie theaters to add 3d projectors and, thus, also inflated ticket prices wildly) to make a statement about how we should reject consumerism and reconcile spirituality with materialism is just silly to my ears. Avatar is ultimately a blend of Ferngully's environmentalism told through a "white man 'goes native'" storyline rendered by supercomputers not because Cameron wished to remix these cultural ideas to form a new synthesis of ideas. It is all of those things because in 1997 Cameron accidentally figured out the exact way to remix and dumb down pre-existing narratives alongside cutting edge special effects to create a movie that appealed to the widest possible amount of people on a global scale. Avatar was an encore for Cameron. A "you wanna see me do that again?" kind of moment. It really is that simple. I'm glad you enjoy it. I'm glad you've found a personal interpretation that imbues it with meaning for you. As a vocalization for for you own appreciation of the film, I found this quite interesting. As for as creating a compelling argument for detractors to reconsider, however? Nah. This aint it.
@thebarkingyears2 сағат бұрын
Thanks for watching and for the comment. So there's this concept in literary analysis that I make use of pretty frequently called "the death of the author." The basic idea is that a work of art isn't limited to only meaning the things that the author intended them to mean. I don't for one moment believe that Cameron was thinking about the things that I talked about in the latter half of this video when he made the movie. I also don't think that he's suggesting we embrace spirituality, since in the real world, we can't actually commune with trees. BUT those themes are present whether by intention or not. I'm trying to get people to look at this movie as a fable about cultural regret in the same way that the Iliad is, but it clearly didn't work. Based on the comments, I don't think many people got what I was going for, and that's on me. Maybe I should have put that concept more front and center, but I have/had no idea how to make it SEO friendly.
@Ghoulonoid22 күн бұрын
I watched it a few years after the initial wave of hate videos like the RLM one. While I didn't hate the movie I honestly felt like it was very generic, not outright terrible but very forgettable, and it really needed to be trimmed for length. It generic qualities are more noticeable if you were big into the videogame scene of the era, which i was. Often the movie felt like a Call of Duty Modern Warfare sequel, and the design aesthetics the humans used resembled the Halo series a great deal, both of which were had reached the height of their popularity before Avatar came out. Aside from some breakout designs like the realistic spacecraft they used to get into the solar system. Its one of those movies that's always going to be overshadowed by the hype, like Titanic, but there's not really that kind of cultural relevance Titanic has to maintain Avatar's legacy. If anything, the rise of the glowing neon Hotline Miami "synthwave" aesthetic makes Avatar look even more generic now, even though it predated all of that by years. Which is strange since that sort of thing never blew back on The Terminator, maybe because they were so far apart from each other. Stephen Lang is still awesome though. Its weird that it became a conservative talking point in recent years. Avatar came out just after the end of the Bush administration, after Obama's political and cultural victory taking over the popular zeitgeist, and it seemed like liberal outlets largely dismissed the film's message as too hippyish even back then.
@NagySzentAntal10 сағат бұрын
DO NOSFERATU (2024) NEXT! WE'RE COUNTING ON IT!
@BoyKagome5 сағат бұрын
If you like it, like it. Wont try to take that from you.
@thebarkingyears2 сағат бұрын
I mean, I really don't expect to change anyone's mind with this. Mainly I just wanted to talk about instrumental reasoning and those other concepts at the end and how I see them connected to Avatar. Just didn't really know how to package this one. Thought beginning with some more typical film talk would make the other stuff go down smoother, but apparently not. Any suggestions?
@BoyKagomeСағат бұрын
@@thebarkingyears You spoke your peace, and it was a fair peace. You did fine, I started listening to you because of Falling Down and you were fair there too. The things you are passionate about will be the things that are most interesting to people, because your passion will shine through.
@FathDaniel2 күн бұрын
10:41 my man, seems to me you didn't listen to a rapper wearing 300 kg of fake gold chains, and yelling about how he sells illegal substances and has fun with girls. Things can be all style no substance and on the nose/blatant.
@TristanBakon2 күн бұрын
you and LocalScriptMan should meet
@thebarkingyears2 күн бұрын
Who dat?
@TristanBakon2 күн бұрын
@@thebarkingyears He's another creator. He focuses on screenwriting. For me personally, his wise words are leagues more useful than the average storytelling channel. You also both will die on the hill of Avatar being good.
@thebarkingyears2 күн бұрын
Haha, sounds like my kind of guy. I'll check him out. Thanks for the recommendation!
@reinhardt30902 күн бұрын
I enjoyed it, better than most of what comes out nowadays.
@johnsonasiziba51722 күн бұрын
Bro is already in 2025
@thebarkingyears2 күн бұрын
Uploading from the future man.
@MrLordMooMoo3 күн бұрын
I prefer to watch Avatar over Dances with Wolves due to the lack of reality. I find it very hard to watch the 2nd half of DwW, it breaks my heart.
@thebarkingyears2 күн бұрын
That's fair
@nash_69082 күн бұрын
This was average if not great movie. Everyone that says its bad are the ones who say avengers are the greatest films ever. They are truly the ignorant and arrogant masses and its a breath of fresh air compared to all the sequels and adaptations of comics into films. James Cameroon is ahead of his time.