this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2024
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[–] Vespair@lemm.ee 33 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Yeah man, we all understood that the first time around when it was called Fern Gully.

Like Avatar if you want but like.... it is not a deep piece of media with hard-to-discern messaging. Shit is pretty clear.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 22 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Fucking Tarzan was fighting evil white exploiters of pristine Africa in books back in the early 1900s.

A good white saviour from the evil white people, because the indigenous can't do it for themselves. Just like in Ferngully and Avatar.

[–] Vespair@lemm.ee 6 points 6 days ago

I can't decide if I should post the "wait, it's all the failures of capitalism?" or "wait, it's all systemic racism?" meme, cuz it's wait it's all both (always has been).

[–] Hoimo@ani.social 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

Are there even any indigenous people in Tarzan? I haven't read the book, but from the movie I only remember his gorilla buddy and the little elephant. I think Tarzan is more about rebelling against civilization in general, instead of colonization in specific (which James Cameron's Avatar is). It's very post-industrialization in that sense.

Edit: Whoops, just read the synopsis on Wikipedia. I don't think Tarzan is the white saviour you're looking for...

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[–] Maven@lemmy.zip 15 points 6 days ago (1 children)

One time I unmatched someone from a dating app because the second avatar movie was coming out and they said that it was weird of me to say that the alien people were supposed to represent Native Americans because "they're just blue aliens why would you compare them to real life?"

Apparently media literacy makes you a weirdo?

[–] algorithmae@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 6 days ago

Yes it definitely makes you weird. Turn the brain off and consume the media like a good little sheep (/s if it wasn't obvious)

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 13 points 6 days ago (1 children)

That comic also represents 100% of all survival crafting games, plus Factorio

[–] ZoopZeZoop@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

It's true, but when I play games like Terraria, I try to preserve beautiful features of the map and even incorporate them into my builds. Like those surface cave things where it's basically floating dirt/rock with grass and trees growing on them. I often make those into the entrances of underground homes. Same with the deserts. When you get the actuators, you can make sand entrances. I also enjoy making houses in the leaves of the living trees.

[–] PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 17 points 6 days ago

Explore, exploit, exterminate.

[–] FiskFisk33@startrek.website 16 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Satisfactory music starts playing

[–] frezik@midwest.social 4 points 6 days ago

Paved paradise, put up a parking lot.

[–] Reygle@lemmy.world 11 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Avatar is just recycled CGI Fern Gully anyway

[–] robinoberg@feddit.uk 5 points 6 days ago

It's a motif as old as time. Foreign invader getting Stockholm Syndrome with the natives. Another famous example is Dances With Wolves. That film called The Great Wall as well. Some versions of Robin Hood has it. Anthropologists call it Going Native, which is what Carlos Castañeda did.

But they're not all about economic expansionism

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 11 points 6 days ago

I saw the film in a theater with someone who wanted to impress upon me that someone pointed out to her how alike it was to what happened to indigenous peoples in the Americas (someone else had pointed that out to her, so she assumed I wouldn't get it on my own). I was like, if you think that's a novel observation, you really need to be hit in the face with concepts to understand things. It couldn't have been more obvious.

But maybe that highlights how much some people just aren't observant or introspective or whatever else. It would explain a lot.

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 10 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (7 children)

So... We manage to master space travel. We manage to master interstellar travel. We eventually find a planet with suitable environment for sustaining our species. And we just overlook it.

Can someone explain me the reasoning behind this?

Sci-fi to the side, there are more minerals available - readily - on asteroids and barren planets than anywhere else. Why go hopping around looking for habitable planets, to the reason of 1 out of who knows how many, to then strip mine it?

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 15 points 6 days ago (3 children)

The resource being extracted on the avatar planet was unobtanium.

It was only available on that planet, precisely so intelligent people like you can’t say “why not mine barren rocks instead”?

[–] absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

This annoyed me also.

If the Avatar universe has physics like ours, which it looks like it does from the way things move etc..

The protoplanetry disk that the planet formed from, must have had the unobtanium, since it is so evenly spread around the later formed planet.

Yes, there are higher concentrations in various places, which could have come from impact events in the past; if this is the case the impactors are likely from the local asteroid belt or equivalent.

The unobtanium must be available, in a much easier to extract form, in asteroids in the soloar system or the moons of Pandora.

Either way, a mineral is a terrible maguffin for a space faring civilization.

In the second movie, the whale brain juice is a much better maguffin, but still kinda stupid for a technologically advanced species.

Assume that to get interstellar travel, with the suspended animation and brain beaming tech we are shown, humans are a good 200 years ahead of where we are now....given that they can also make fully functional alien bodies from scratch, that can breed and pass on genetic material to what look like viable offspring. The level of synthetic biology expertise must be insane, and they can't make this brain juice....it is just stupid.

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[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 3 points 6 days ago (6 children)

There are exactly zero minerals available inside planets that are unavailable on asteroids.

Sci-fi will be sci-fi but can we go back to the time it was at least well thought? Can't hurt. If the objective of the movie was to make social criticism, it didn't need to go to such lenghts.

And it was a boring movie; failed to captivate me.

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago (6 children)

You're intelligent. Or at least, well read/educated.

I didn't say it was a good plot-device. The entire movie was hamfisted from the world building through the dialog, the character development, and those hamfists evolved into bulldozers to bring the moral home.

The only thing it had going for it was the CGI... which was obsequious.

Regardless, it's their fictional world. They designed it to be stupid and boring so they could make some sort of moral superiority bullshit statement about capitalism while grossing 2+ billion.

Also, I'm just gonna say it. It wasn't even sci fi. sure, sure. it had ships and stuff. but that's not what makes sci fi sci fi.

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Usually, at this point, I would say even a broken clock is right twice a day, but I'm trying to get accostumed to receive a compliment, so I'll instead say thank you for those kind words. And that we agree.

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[–] dragonfucker@lemmy.nz 3 points 6 days ago (17 children)

There are exactly zero minerals available inside planets that are unavailable on asteroids.

Crystallised urea

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[–] dev_null@lemmy.ml 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

There could be many reasons:

  • The thing you are mining is actually very rare, and although it could be elsewhere, it's the only place you found it. This is the case in Avatar. The Unobtanium they are mining is not found anywhere else.
  • It's easier to mine on a habitable planet. You don't have all the extreme difficulty of operating in space or a planet/moon with no atmosphere. In Avatar workers can freely operate without any special equipment, using just a gas mask, and don't need to be astronauts.
  • You are assuming they found Pandora to mine on it. They probably found it through scientific research, and the mining angle only appeared later when the resource was found.

Another important detail is that in Avatar they don't have any faster than light tech. Pandora is in the Alpha Centauri system, the closest star to the Sun, and it takes years to get there anyway. Sure, there might be lots of better places to choose, but it's literally the only habitable body in reachable distance from Earth unless you want to spend decades flying in one direction.

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[–] Bronzebeard@lemm.ee 5 points 6 days ago

That was not a subtle theme...

[–] dylanTheDeveloper@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago

Literally Satisfactory

[–] PanArab@lemm.ee 5 points 6 days ago (2 children)

It is also about settler colonialism. There are natural gas fields off the coast of Gaza.

[–] wowwoweowza@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

There’s a lovely coast and trillions to be made.

[–] robinoberg@feddit.uk 3 points 6 days ago

Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism.

[–] LibreHans@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago (15 children)

What do you mean? Communists didn't mine minerals and didn't exploit indigenous people? Lol..

[–] AVengefulAxolotl@lemmy.world 7 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I dont get it either. This is not about capitalism, this is about human nature of mindless expansion and exploitation...

[–] optissima@lemmy.ml 3 points 6 days ago

"It's human nature," okay bud and what about all the groups in history that prove otherwise? You're just washing history with capitalist mindsets.

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