CPUnk I write right. Right? Aye.

Problems I have with Avatar

[SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t seen Avatar, don’t read this]

By a strange set of coin­ci­dences, I’ve seen Avatar in 3D three times.

I believe the fol­low­ing things are wrong with the movie:

1 — Unob­tainium
Yes, it’s a great name — but I, for one, don’t care about a lit­tle chunk of hematite mas­querad­ing as “unob­tainium” (aka “ched­dar”) — I want me some float­ing rock and giant wood.  I’d so pay for the abil­ity to make a tree fort that floats 100 feet above my house — wouldn’t you?  Why are they strip min­ing the ground for that other bor­ing crap?  Now that those hip­pies have chased off the cra­zies — I say we go and grab us some peo­ple from the dog planet, go BACK to the cat planet and wreak some may­hem while we scoop up some of those right­eous float­ing mountains!

2 — Who is pay­ing for all of this, any­way?
Don’t tell me that “the cor­po­ra­tion” is pay­ing for it all.  I mean, come ON!  What com­pany, even Google, would pay to ship a jil­lion peo­ple across the uni­verse to grab some mate­r­ial from that planet, then be so cheap that they wouldn’t pay to repair the legs of ONE GUY who’s going to work for them in a crit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion on a crit­i­cal device  (dri­ving, btw, a multi-million dol­lar meat vehi­cle for them).

Also, what cor­po­ra­tion would pay a kwadzil­lion dol­lars to DEVELOP human/hybrid inter­face devices and then ship those suck­ers AWAY to some other planet?  Would you NOT pay for one of those here on Earth?  Would Bill Gates not pay for 10 of them, and then never be seen any­where except in his blue avatar body?  That’s like spend­ing bil­lions to develop the iPhone so you can ship it to five peo­ple on the moon — five peo­ple, btw, who are hated by their colleagues.

3 — Aywa
Ok, we all know that aywa is really an igno­rant amal­gam for Gaia, the earth god­dess pot-head god.  Duh.  But, let me get this straight — stu­pid tree wor­ship or not … you’ve now got a sys­tem by which a human per­son­al­ity can be trans­ferred into a carbon-fiber rein­forced gigan­tor body (with tail) and by employ­ing the organo-chemistry of this mys­te­ri­ous planet, essen­tially bring about immor­tal­ity?  Now — you’ve got a sys­tem like this, and you’re gonna let a hand­ful of stick-wielding cat peo­ple stop you from com­ing back with the full force and vigor of the human race to take over this immor­tal­ity planet?  Seriously?

Now, before you hippy up on me and start talk­ing about how aywa wouldn’t “let” you — we have a few bits of data in hand.  First, aywa doesn’t care about species — she’s will­ing to eat a human if its too wounded, or regur­gi­tate it into a fake lab-grown hybrid thing if its “healthy enough” (PS — for all dis­abled peo­ple every­where — thanks for equat­ing death of a dis­abled body to a good thing).

I, for one, would imme­di­ately sup­port the full col­o­niza­tion of that planet, and the hostage tak­ing of the cat peo­ple to ensure that aywa does our bid­ding while we gen­er­ate our avatars and become immor­tal… or … we could all cry because the tall geeks got our guns and go home.

4 — I want a chunk of Home­tree
I defy you to tell me that nobody was smart enough to con­sider that maybe peo­ple on Earth (espe­cially if Earth has now been “killed by man”) wouldn’t want to buy a big chunk of wood that’s 1,000cubic feet.  I’d SO buy that — and then carve an entire tree fort out of it, and put it on top of my other float­ing tree fort.  I’d also prob­a­bly hire a few cat peo­ple to be my ser­vants while I sat on my chair made out of fly­ing lizard skin on my wood and stone float­ing tree fort.  Who needs “unob­tainium” — give me float­ing castles.

5 — You can fly across the uni­verse but…
It takes you half the movie to make your way “through the jun­gle” to the point where you can start cut­ting down sacred trees?  Have you heard of AIR SHIPPING?  Put a bull­dozer in that big shut­tle, the one with the “freakin’ daisy cut­ters” — and drop it in front of Home­Tree — like five years ago … you’d get to the unob­tainium a LOT faster.

Btw — remem­ber the size of that super strip min­ing device — the com­puter ren­dered one that they see when they land?  What’s THAT made out of?  Where’d they get all the metal for that?  I mean — if you can build some­thing THAT size, couldn’t you just drive it through the jun­gle and EAT Home Tree?  What’s with the gun­play (besides over-macho noise mak­ing and the occa­sional oppor­tu­nity for “tough women” to say “b****”?)

…also, how STUPID is it for that idiot to be play­ing golf into a cof­fee cup when he’s SURROUNDED by 3D holo­graphic devices?  I mean, the tech we have TODAY is bet­ter than putting into a cup on an arti­fi­cial turf green.  Shut up already.

6 — VFR is eas­ier than instru­ment fly­ing
It works like this.  You go to learn how to fly an air­plane.  They squeeze you into one of those micro-Cessna dealies — and you take off.  You take lessons, learn how to take off, how to land — you learn how to fly around — and then even­tu­ally you get your (basi­cally beginner’s) license.  You know what you are at that point?  You’re VFR-rated.  You can fly using your EYES.  Con­grats.  Now, you get to train for hours and hours and hours to learn to be instru­ment rated on ONE PLANE.  You have to get your instru­ment rat­ing on each dif­fer­ent type of plane you fly.

But up in the “Hal­lelu­jah Moun­tains” (ever heard of those, hot­shot?), it’s oppo­site land.  Moun­tains fly, cats catch lizards to ride them — and mil­i­tary pilots can’t fly with their eyes unless they’re rough and tum­ble his­panic women who secretly love trees, man.

But it’s all cloudy …

Yes — it’s cloudy — but then it’s not … fly slow, watch out — and be care­ful — just like Pocoho… I mean Trudy Cha­chon the won­der pilot.

7 — More on unob­tainium
My folks, when they were dat­ing, used to smile at a type of story telling device they called “as you know…” — it’s the one where some­one at the begin­ning of the movie tells some­one else every­thing the audi­ence needs to know (i.e. “As you know, the ships have all sunk and we’re the only ones left — we need a strat­egy to sur­vive…”).  Usu­ally, this device is based on the con­cept that the recip­i­ent of the news is in on it — not that it’s being explained for the first time.

So — let me get this straight: Dr. Grace Augus­tine has “writ­ten the book” on exo-botony, has inten­tion­ally gone into cryo (thus ensur­ing her fam­ily will not see her for at least 12 years, but she doesn’t know that unob­tainium is impor­tant and needs to have it lec­tured to her by golf-boy the won­der cor­po­rate lacky?  Please.

8 — You’re a hippy, but in real­ity you’re a big­oted stink bomb
So — let’s see … Cameron’s sur­face mes­sage: Love the Earth, she’s your mother — all people’s should be treated as equals Quite pro­gres­sive, def­i­nitely.  Cameron’s REAL messages?

• If you are a peo­ple who ride horses or live off of the land, you’re basi­cally equiv­a­lent to ani­mals with tails
• If I come from a Euro­pean “first world” coun­try and say my name to a per­son of indige­nous sta­tus, they will invari­ably get my name wrong in a force­ful way, call­ing me “JJaaak­soolie”, because all of the sud­den, their ears don’t work
• If you men­tally enslave a crea­ture into becom­ing your “bonded for life” fly­ing horse — but need a big­ger one, don’t worry about toss­ing the first one — he won’t like, fail to rebond with his own kind, or die or any­thing — he’s just an ani­mal after all
• If you are an indig­i­nous ani­mal per­son, you are eas­ily swayed by the sim­plest jar­head through super­sti­tious por­tents like being able to ride a buck­ing rhino lizard-bird — I guess Cameron believes that all indig­i­nous peo­ples are just stu­pid and eas­ily swayed by sim­ple traditions
• If you are an indige­nous ani­mal per­son who can’t speak cor­rectly, uses and dis­cards ani­mals like hook­ers, and sleeps in a tree — you WILL be naked
• If you are the leader of an indige­nous ani­mal per­son who is just stu­pid, you will surely poke and drink the blood of peo­ple you’ve just met — because you’re just an ape cat person
• If you are an indige­nous peo­ple who can’t think for them­selves — even though you have fought for YEARS against an enemy that uses weapons of severe destruc­tion — you will remain loyal to your arrows and shoot them at tires, heli­copters and bull­doz­ers — because you’re just an igno­rant ani­mal person

In other words — pre­tend­ing to be “hip­pie cool” often hides some really deep-rooted big­otry, Mr. Direc­tor man.

Con­clu­sion
When we go back to Pan­dora, and we WILL — I promise … if Juras­sic Park could some­how dredge up a sec­ond film — these blue whack jobs are gonna get another visit from THE MAN!  But when we go — I expect either “Pan­dora: Revenge of Aywa” — where the crazy planet attempts to launch cats to Earth and they arrive in cen­tral park to take over Man­hat­tan by kiss­ing trees … or I expect “Avatarpit: Dis­as­ter on a Blue Planet” — our hero (insert deroga­tory sub­lim­i­nal ref­er­ence here to the way native tribes mis­un­der­stand Euro­pean lan­guages) JJJaak­sully, he goes to sleep one morn­ing and wakes to dis­cover he’s acci­den­tally poi­soned the Aywa mind­stream with all of his human thoughts about Nin­tendo and putting golf-balls.  Aywa starts dying just as the (inevitably evil, because good peo­ple never actu­ally DO any­thing) evil humans come back to rape and pil­lage the beau­ti­ful planet again.

The cat peo­ple turn on JJJ­JAaaa­ja­ja­jka­soolie, and he is out­cast (a loner, between worlds, walk­ing in ashes, alone — oh wait — there’s my fly­ing lizard!).

But when we go — I want SOMEONE to bring back some giant tree wood and a few tons of float­ing rock, please — I mean, COME ON!

PS — after you mind meld with a lizard bird, and then mind meld with it’s most sig­nif­i­cant preda­tor — does the first lizard bird go back to its tribe of lizard birds, or does it just wan­der the planet for the rest of its life, alone and out­cast?  I mean — it’s obvi­ous this is all about being good to nature — should we REALLY be mind-partying with any lizard bird that comes along and toss­ing them away like yesterday’s bad one-nighter?