The Korean watched that one movie this past weekend -- you know, the movie that everyone is talking about only because everyone is talking about it. (It involves blue aliens.)
Overall, a fine movie. Watching it on IMAX 3D helped. Here are the Korean's petty, nitpicky, spoiler-free impressions:
(1) People have called it Dancing with Wolves with aliens. The better analogy is Princess Mononoke with aliens.
(2) There was no reason why the colonel's mech infantry should have fallen when he died. (And please, that's not a spoiler.) The machine shutting down and slumping would have been more dignified. At least it didn't explode.
(3) In the words of the Korean Fiancee, your ride matters. Need respect? Roll up in a nice ride.
(4) James Cameron apparently dug deep into Stuff White People Like to make this movie: "religions their parents don't belong to", "Asian girls" (might as well be alien), "diversity", "awareness", "being an expert in YOUR culture", "natural medicine", "being the only white person around", "hating corporations", "having gay friends" (again, might as well be alien).
(5) Jake's stubborn determination to speak in English at many critical moments was rather annoying: "I am one of you, and I am here to save you! Now listen to me as I speak in a language you don't understand! I'm sorry your highest leader must translate for me like he works for me or something but hey, have you seen my sweet ride?"
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About point one, I would say this movie is more like Pocahontas instead of Mononoke Princess. In fact, I'm not the first one having this idea. I couldn't stop laughing when I found this image http://failblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/epic-fail-avatar-plot-fail.jpg
ReplyDeleteAnd I am happy to discover the Korean, who I really apreciate (I've been reading you for a while) has similar critics to this film than I do.
I haven't seen it yet myself, but I heard that comparisons to Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest were quite apt. I've also heard it fits the classic 19th century Mighty Whitey paradigm to a T: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MightyWhitey
ReplyDelete@Siltha,
ReplyDeleteThat picture is hilarious.
It's obviously Dune v2.0. Alien joins natives. Alien proves himself to be as one of the natives. Alien does something that makes him a leader/worshipped figure among the natives. The whole thing is caused by exactly one resource, without which no one would be on that stupid planet, anyway.
ReplyDeleteI was more annoyed when he spoke *their* language for too long. How did he learn it so quickly?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete@livefrommasan
ReplyDeleteIt's not hard to learn a language to a conversational level in 3 months when you spend every single day around it and have a personal tutor working with you so much. And I bet the vocabulary he had to learn wasn't all that varied. I haven't bothered looking at that fan-made grammar and vocab manual on the internet so I can't take the language's "difficulty" into account.
The third point made me laugh. It's so true!
ReplyDeleteAgreed.
ReplyDeleteBut I went into the movie knowing that the plot would probably be predictable, and instead watched for the spectacular special effects.
The ride = lolz.
He pissed me off with his hard-headdedness. He just wouldn't do what he was told in the beginning. Like dude don't just wander off in the enchanted forest, and his evil reporting wasn't great either. I never found myself liking his character at all.
ReplyDeletelol my secret word is Ricess (is that even real)