[Weekly Update] I Saw Avatar 2: Water Boogablue

Here in Canada, our largest cinema chain Cineplex implemented online booking fee for buying tickets online without a membership. It's an additional 1.5 dollars PER TICKET, on top of 12.5 dollars for an adult.

Decisions like these that are made by executives with no financial worry is going to further dig North American cinema into the ground.

CHANNEL UPDATE

Happy Lunar New Year!

I'm currently still on break. Hope you are having a good time this winter, too! Last Friday, I was invited to do a guest lecture for CalArts students. It was a fun albeit somewhat nerve-racking experience, as animation has never been my forte. If you missed the lecture, don't worry. CalArts has recorded the entire thing. I'll share the link to it soon, if you are interested.

No changes were made to our upload schedule. I'll start working the bonus video for this week. I'm thinking of talking about the first Avatar. What do you think?

MEDIA TALK

So, I saw Avatar 2. I like it, probably more than your average filmgoer. But I only enjoy it in a technical way.

I watch it with the mindset of a filmmaker, and was impressed by the technology on display, the world building, the spectacle, the acting, the structure and flow of the story. And they are all amazing.

However, for a cinephile, the film is also very lacking in many aspects.

It is just as cliche as the first one, lacking in complexity: Like the first film, Avatar 2 is a strong criticism of capitalism and colonialism. It seeks to show how a profit driven society exploits nature. And the result is a mix bag. I can't say I don't agree with the thesis. But the overly simple good vs. bad dichotomy, with villains bordering on comedy, feels unconvincing. It would be find if this is actually a comedy, like Don't Look Up. But this is a serious movie that demands depth.

What's worse is that, in the process of pitting capitalism against nature, the film indulges in outdated native stereotypes frequently. It's no secret the Navi are based heavily on generalized various American Indian tribes. But then the film presents the Navi as people who are one with nature, who do not vast any part of an animal, who has secret knowledge beyond what science is capable off, all (debatably positive) stereotypes that American Indian communities have been fighting very hard to shake off.

In one scene, Jake calls upon his human scientists friend to save his Navi daughter. The scientists are completely dumbfounded by the condition of his daughter. And she was saved by a shamanistic ritual performed by a Navi leader instead.

Sure, it makes sense in universe, that the Navi know better about their own anatomy. But as a allegory for Native American culture? It falls flat.

It's the same kind of problem we see from using the X-Men, or Robots as metaphor for racism. Navi, Mutants, and robots are fundamentally different from humans. But people of color are humans. It's the limitation we have to accept for this genre.

People have criticized Cameron for this kind of problematic parallel before. Aliens 2 draws a lot of its inspiration from the Vietnam War. But in the process, Cameron unintentionally compared Vietnamese soldiers to a hivemind of faceless xenomophs.

At the time, it wasn't that big of a problem. At least, society at large isn't very sensitive to this kind of issues. But now, decades later, Cameron is making the same mistake. But this time, society is much more aware of the problems.

This, to me, is why Avatar 2, just like Avatar 1, feels like it leaves no cultural foot prints. The stories written by James Cameron were, at one point, trendy. A sci-fi movie in a time when computers were becoming more and more prevalent. When children were playing with tech that adults don't understand. Terminator reflects a societal fear that was topical. Avatar, on the other hand, isn't trendy. It reflects more on Cameron's age. He's no longer sensitive to societal changes and moral shifts. While his heart is surely in the right place, his words are no longer align with the need of modern America.

But that's just my personal thought on Avatar 2. Did you enjoy it? How full was your bladder by the time the credit rolls?

See you next week!