Speaker 1: Hello listeners. Before we get into this episode, we wanted
Speaker 1: to say something to raise awareness about a particular current event.
Speaker 1: Our guest Ali Noddy speaks about this at the end
Speaker 1: of the episode, but we wanted to stick it here
Speaker 1: at the top as well to make sure as many
Speaker 1: people here about it as possible. Right now, in Canada,
Speaker 1: in Winnipeg, police are refusing to search for the remains
Speaker 1: of four Indigenous women who have been murdered by a
Speaker 1: serial killer. The women are Morgan Harris, Rebecca Countois, Marcedes Myron,
Speaker 1: and a fourth unidentified woman. This speaks to the pervasive
Speaker 1: problem in Canada and elsewhere in the world of Indigenous
Speaker 1: women going missing, being murdered, and officials doing little to
Speaker 1: nothing about it. So we wanted to raise awareness about this.
Speaker 1: We've included more information in the show notes, and we
Speaker 1: encourage you to learn more about this and other issues
Speaker 1: that affect Indigenous people and communities. All right onto the episode.
Speaker 1: On the be Dol cast, the questions asked movies have
Speaker 1: women inum? Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands
Speaker 1: or do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zef invest start
Speaker 1: changing it with the beck Del Cast. Jamie Yes I
Speaker 1: see you, Caitlin, I see you. Do you want to
Speaker 1: mate for life with me? Yeah? Where's your tail at?
Speaker 1: Here is great to come and then we kiss Kis
Speaker 1: kiss under the tree, iconic moment in cinema for better
Speaker 1: or worse. People remember it, they really do. Hello and
Speaker 1: welcome to the Beck Dol cast. Oh my goodness. Here's
Speaker 1: one that has been a long time request, a long
Speaker 1: time coming, and an episode we thought we may never
Speaker 1: release because we were not convinced that the sequels are
Speaker 1: actually going to come out. And yet here we are,
Speaker 1: and here we are the Avatar episode. How you feeling, Caitlin,
Speaker 1: I'm nervous. I feel underprepared. Even though I did a
Speaker 1: lot of reading. There's truly so much to go through.
Speaker 1: And there's also like, there's like fifteen years worth of production, criticism,
Speaker 1: waves of different takes on this. But it's just been
Speaker 1: it's been a real journey, it really has, and I'm
Speaker 1: excited to get into it. We have. I think I
Speaker 1: think we should just get started. I'm like, I'm ready,
Speaker 1: I'm ready. You can breeze. Let's just breeze past. Look
Speaker 1: the show we analyze movies, but you know, figure, let's
Speaker 1: tell it must tell him. Let's tell him. Okay, um like,
Speaker 1: you're like fun this show. We're gonna be here for
Speaker 1: three hours. Buckle In um So analyzed movies through an
Speaker 1: intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechtel tests simply as just
Speaker 1: a baseline jumping off point to initiate a much larger conversation.
Speaker 1: What is the Bechtel test? Though Jamie Well I can
Speaker 1: tell you what it is. It is a media metric
Speaker 1: originally created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the
Speaker 1: Bechtel Wallace Test. Uh. She made it for her incredible
Speaker 1: comic dikes to watch out for, originally as a joke,
Speaker 1: but it is now kind of become a common media
Speaker 1: metric that we use on this show and also in
Speaker 1: the world. A lot of different versions of the test,
Speaker 1: but the one we use is this. To pass the
Speaker 1: Bechtel test, there must be two characters with names of
Speaker 1: a marginalized gender talking to each other about something other
Speaker 1: than a man for more than two lines of dialogue.
Speaker 1: Some things do it, a lot of things don't. And
Speaker 1: that's just kind of what it is. How did how
Speaker 1: did I do so well? We're off to a great start,
Speaker 1: and now is the time to get our guest into
Speaker 1: the mix. I'm so pumped returning guest. You know her
Speaker 1: from our episodes on Aquaman and Frozen two. She's an
Speaker 1: Anisha Nabe, writer, founder of the Ali Naughty Test formerly
Speaker 1: known as the Ala Test. It's Ali Naughty, welcome back.
Speaker 1: I'm back with my braided tails. Hell yeah, I got
Speaker 1: one for each of you. Welcome to the Three Timers Club.
Speaker 1: I told them I was like, I called DIBs on Avatar.
Speaker 1: Nobody else is allowed to do this. I have so
Speaker 1: much to say, and yes I did. You saw my
Speaker 1: Google doc had so much to say. I've seen forty
Speaker 1: two page google doc. I'm so we talked about this, uh,
Speaker 1: I think two years ago, like the first time you
Speaker 1: were on the show. En. Yeah, and the moment is here.
Speaker 1: Avatar two is come out. It's happening. I thought it
Speaker 1: would never happen, and it probably shouldn't happen. But we'll see.
Speaker 1: I hope it's good. James Cameron's pretty good with sequels,
Speaker 1: so we'll see. We'll see. That's true. Titanic too is
Speaker 1: a classic. Ever when he came back, when she woke up,
Speaker 1: she woke up? Yeah, So Ali, what is your your
Speaker 1: history relationship with Avatar? Oh so this is a history. Okay.
Speaker 1: So it came out like two thousand nine. I want
Speaker 1: to say I was probably around like eighteen nineteen ish,
Speaker 1: and it came out at an interesting time. This is
Speaker 1: obviously way before the Ali Naughty Test. The Alt Test
Speaker 1: was ever a discussion the way that it is now
Speaker 1: and the film itself was cathartic in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways for me that I've discovered that it really isn't now,
Speaker 1: But at the time in two thousand nine, I was like,
Speaker 1: I can't believe that there's a movie like this. As
Speaker 1: far as the Natives win, which I didn't see coming.
Speaker 1: Everybody else saw it coming. I'm like, no, we never win.
Speaker 1: Like this is gonna be Titanic level sadness because everybody's
Speaker 1: gonna die and it's pain, and that didn't happen. I
Speaker 1: did not expect the girl to live. Nay Terry did
Speaker 1: not expect that. I didn't expect her to like because
Speaker 1: and and I'll talk about this later, but like in
Speaker 1: a lot of movies, when the native female character falls
Speaker 1: in love with the white male character and he ultimately
Speaker 1: ends up betraying her, she usually like takes his side
Speaker 1: like no, no, I love him and we can work together.
Speaker 1: And I was hoping that that wouldn't happen. I was
Speaker 1: afraid it was going to happen. It did not happen.
Speaker 1: I'm like, ah, what is this movie? Right? So then
Speaker 1: I get online and so many people like hated it,
Speaker 1: just did not like it. They're like, it's pocahontast space,
Speaker 1: it stands as with wolves in space. It's white guilt,
Speaker 1: it's liberalism, it's you know, just all of this stuff.
Speaker 1: And I knew something in it was kind of rooted
Speaker 1: in anti Native racism. I just didn't have the words
Speaker 1: for it. And obviously, like as the years have gone by,
Speaker 1: I found the language to like kind of point out
Speaker 1: what exactly like these criticisms which aren't wronged but also
Speaker 1: are very yes. So then I almost kind of like
Speaker 1: the Avatar out of spite in a way, just because
Speaker 1: I'm like, screw you, guys. I like this movie. But
Speaker 1: I'll be honest, after rewatching it and especially rewatching it now,
Speaker 1: I didn't like it as much. And I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I know everything that's kind of I know everything that's
Speaker 1: wrong with it, but I still liked it. In spite
Speaker 1: of it. But I'm like, you know, after Rhymes three
Speaker 1: Young Gules and Reservation Dogs and Rutherford Falls and Wendell
Speaker 1: and Wild and all of these indigenous films usually made
Speaker 1: by indigenous people. Um, I say with full confidence that
Speaker 1: if Native creators were given the same the same amount
Speaker 1: of power and opportunity as James Cameron, they could do
Speaker 1: it just as good, if not better than. Avatar would
Speaker 1: probably be something you'd never see before, right, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what I think. Yeah, I mean absolutely, it's always where
Speaker 1: does the money go and who gets the opportunities? Yes,
Speaker 1: exactly that. So that's my very complicated history with Avatar.
Speaker 1: I love it, Jamie, what about you? What's yours? It's
Speaker 1: a disaster kind of it's all over the place of
Speaker 1: like I feel like you've been witnessed to it, and
Speaker 1: in large part, Caitlin, like, I saw this movie in
Speaker 1: high school, um, along with I think the rest of
Speaker 1: the world. It seems like I saw this movie in
Speaker 1: three D. I remember, Like I just wasn't. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess like people don't maybe because the show has
Speaker 1: been on for so long, like I was originally your
Speaker 1: co because I just like I didn't know a lot
Speaker 1: about movies and didn't have like a huge passion for
Speaker 1: them growing up. So I saw it because it was
Speaker 1: like compulsory, it felt like, and I was like, I
Speaker 1: liked it, Sure, that was fun. And then as time
Speaker 1: went on and Ali you were alluding to this, there
Speaker 1: was like just there's always the shifting discussion around what
Speaker 1: this movie meant culturally, what it meant about you, if
Speaker 1: you liked it versus you didn't. Like I feel like
Speaker 1: it's just flip flopped a million times. Um. I think
Speaker 1: there was a huge chunk of time where they were
Speaker 1: like Avatar like has been forgotten, like lost to time,
Speaker 1: and you know, like why everyone saw this movie but
Speaker 1: no one can remember a thing that happens in it,
Speaker 1: which like I was like, well, I don't remember. And
Speaker 1: then I think sometime around the Lockdown, I took on
Speaker 1: a shreky in appreciation of Avatar, where it did seem
Speaker 1: like a lot of people uh with with like time
Speaker 1: on their hands, like got back into Avatar kind of
Speaker 1: like spitefully and ironically where they're like, well, I remember
Speaker 1: what happened in Avatar, and and I was I was
Speaker 1: kind of like I was kind of doing that for
Speaker 1: a while because I was you know, lockdown mental illness.
Speaker 1: I don't really know, like I can't really speak to it.
Speaker 1: I know it was happening. I know I bought a
Speaker 1: lot of books in because there was I think actually
Speaker 1: the video that like got me back into wanting to
Speaker 1: understand more about the movie. Because I rewatched the movie,
Speaker 1: I still like, I don't know, I feel like my
Speaker 1: opinion on the actually the movie itself has changed for
Speaker 1: a lot of the reasons you're describing Ali Like, I
Speaker 1: think that a lot of the there's a lot of
Speaker 1: of course, like extremely valid criticism of this movie that
Speaker 1: we need to talk about. And then there's also a
Speaker 1: lot of like overly simplistic comparisons that you're describing that, Um,
Speaker 1: I think you're interesting to discuss. Like, but it's it's
Speaker 1: it's very it's a very movie movie. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's like a blockbuster where it just kind of washes
Speaker 1: over the movie. That feels like a movie. Would you
Speaker 1: say that the movie it feels like like a movie.
Speaker 1: It's what I would say, um, a movie with blue cats.
Speaker 1: It's oh god, I just dude, fox cats a cat
Speaker 1: does James Caeron, Like, I it's really I'm always going
Speaker 1: to give James Cameron a chance to impress me, and
Speaker 1: he's such a weird man, Like I just don't like.
Speaker 1: The things that he really commits himself to are baffling
Speaker 1: to me, and I'm excited to talk about it. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I kind of came all the way around
Speaker 1: because I saw a YouTube video by a creator named sideways.
Speaker 1: Uh yes, right, so I think maybe we talked about
Speaker 1: you about. It's this incredible video that they made about
Speaker 1: how the Avatar score was composed and then kind of
Speaker 1: uncomposed of like all of this work and resources that
Speaker 1: James Cameron um and the production put into like creating
Speaker 1: a unique, very specific NAVI culture and then they basically
Speaker 1: used none of it and they got like overwhelmed, and
Speaker 1: then they're like, um, let's do a pretty standard James
Speaker 1: Horner score and that will basically be in So I
Speaker 1: got more interested in the production side of the movie
Speaker 1: because there was a lot more thought and intention that
Speaker 1: went into it than I would have guessed based on
Speaker 1: what the movie is like. So ultimately I would say
Speaker 1: the movie feels like a movie. Um. And I I
Speaker 1: still I mean, I am kind of excited to see
Speaker 1: the second one can't lie like I, you know, so Gurdi,
Speaker 1: we were playing a teenager. I've been trigued. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but there's a lot of problems. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Yeah, my relationship with Avatar is fraught, but
Speaker 1: you know, so is mine. All right, well what's your
Speaker 1: relationship with Avatar? So I saw this in theaters I
Speaker 1: think twice. I was in my early twenties at the time,
Speaker 1: and I loved it. I was like, this movie rules.
Speaker 1: I know you loved it. Whoa Asterix At the time.
Speaker 1: I was like, damn, this movie is awesome. It's so
Speaker 1: good James Cameron, he's done it again. And then like
Speaker 1: some weeks passed and people were like, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess I liked it, but was it that good?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. And I was like, well, I don't know,
Speaker 1: was it? And then more weeks passed and people are like,
Speaker 1: maybe that movie actually kind of sucks, and like the
Speaker 1: same thing that you were talking about Alie is about
Speaker 1: and you jam me like and then I was like
Speaker 1: seeing all these things on this social media of the time,
Speaker 1: which was Facebook, people being like, it's just it's fern Gully,
Speaker 1: you know, James Cameron ripped off fern Gully, he ripped
Speaker 1: off Disney's pocahon Is it's blah blah blah. And then
Speaker 1: I also remember a very specific criticism that so many
Speaker 1: people were like the things called unobtainium. That's so ridiculous,
Speaker 1: and it's like, first of all, it's I think, intentionally
Speaker 1: on the nose. Secondly, have you seen some some of
Speaker 1: the elements on the periodic table are called there's an
Speaker 1: element called einstein Um, like they have some ridiculous names.
Speaker 1: Like Also, it's like everything about this movie is extremely
Speaker 1: on the nose, like right, it's not trying to be subtle,
Speaker 1: so like it's not really James Don's thing. People being
Speaker 1: like unobtainium that's so like that. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: a valid criticism. But then I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess it is kind of like pulling from stuff
Speaker 1: and maybe it isn't as good as I thought. And
Speaker 1: I was like young enough that I was like too
Speaker 1: easily influenced by other people's opinions. Still, so I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: reminds this movie it's not good. And then a decade passes, over,
Speaker 1: a decade passes, I don't watch the movie again until
Speaker 1: three days ago, and then I watch it again. I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: I was right the first time. This movie rules. But
Speaker 1: with the caveat that, there are right. With the caveat that.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of issues with it, which we
Speaker 1: are about to discuss. But from a just like kind
Speaker 1: of strictly narrative standpoint, I'm like, James Cameron, he did
Speaker 1: it again. He can tell a dam cinematic story, does it?
Speaker 1: He kind of always does it. There's a fun James
Speaker 1: Cameron thing that I noticed on this one was because
Speaker 1: there's just like a lot of good killing the bad
Speaker 1: guys moments towards the end of this movie. But the
Speaker 1: most the closest thing to the propeller moment Titanic is
Speaker 1: when the guy gets crushed between the two steel boxes.
Speaker 1: You're like, why he's a sick oh, and then that's
Speaker 1: what you get, colonizer. A lot of good colonizer kills.
Speaker 1: It was pretty exciting so many that's why so many
Speaker 1: white people did not like it. Let me tell me,
Speaker 1: oh my god, because this movie. I mean, I only
Speaker 1: lived in one small country in Europe, you know, so
Speaker 1: I can't say that this applies outside of the US. Everywhere.
Speaker 1: But the movie made so much money for a reason,
Speaker 1: and I'm pretty sure it's because the bad guys in
Speaker 1: Avatar are so American codd Like you don't see American
Speaker 1: flags or anything like that, but there's no British people
Speaker 1: and there's no all the white people have American accents,
Speaker 1: except for Sam Worthington, who's really I love million can't
Speaker 1: make an Australian guy sound American. Tell you there was
Speaker 1: one part where he is like, your life comes down
Speaker 1: to one moroment, and you're like, it just made them
Speaker 1: Australian because they still have a history of colonialism anyway.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and I think that's why, because the Americans
Speaker 1: lose in this one. Like I feel like the rest
Speaker 1: of the world kind of has a very at least
Speaker 1: my experience in Finland, they have a very Disney Princess
Speaker 1: cowboys and Indians understanding of Native history and Native people
Speaker 1: as far as Native American I should say, even if
Speaker 1: it's not as blatantly racist over there, there's still elements
Speaker 1: of it where it's like, oh, but you know, we're
Speaker 1: sympathetic kind of, you know, we're way more sympathetic, and
Speaker 1: we'll play the Indian in our games more than the Cowboy,
Speaker 1: you know that sort of thing. So to have a
Speaker 1: movie like this where the cowboys lose to the Indians,
Speaker 1: I can absolutely see and they sign the Americans packing.
Speaker 1: I mean, of course the rest of the world loved
Speaker 1: this movie. Of course, of course the white Americans hated it.
Speaker 1: It made two point nine billion dollars. Bill yawns, Billy,
Speaker 1: I always forget and get mad again. It's like, there's
Speaker 1: people have accused James Cameron of ripping off a million
Speaker 1: different stories in this, but there's also just like so
Speaker 1: much of James Cameron ripping himself off to for like
Speaker 1: that moment at the end. It reminded me so much
Speaker 1: of like when Mr. Is May survives and you get
Speaker 1: one shot on like this motherfucker lived, and they do
Speaker 1: the same thing with like the bad guy that's not
Speaker 1: the colonel. What's his name? Yeah, yes, yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know that the character's name. I know the Parker Parker
Speaker 1: when the colonel gets into the like large robot thing,
Speaker 1: that's what Ripley does at the end of Aliens, Like yeah,
Speaker 1: like Dave's Cameron's using his own playbook to do. Oh
Speaker 1: that scene is so I'm like it's so weird. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I like, it's a good movie. There, I forgot. I
Speaker 1: haven't seen in a couple of years, and I think,
Speaker 1: you know whatever, your brain kind of trains you to
Speaker 1: expect the worst in every movie, especially when you do
Speaker 1: this show for six where the hosts of the back
Speaker 1: to cast. Yes, but I always feel myself clenched up
Speaker 1: where I'm like, he's not gonna let na Teri kill
Speaker 1: the colonel. Izzy, He's gonna let's he's gonna let's sull
Speaker 1: kill the colonel. He let's say Terry kill the colonel.
Speaker 1: And it's so exciting, and the whole theater cheered and
Speaker 1: it was awesome. The catharsis good job movie. We're gonna
Speaker 1: have so much fun. Let's take a quick break and
Speaker 1: then we'll come back to recap the movie. So we'll
Speaker 1: be right back, and we're back. All right, here's the recap.
Speaker 1: I had to gloss over some details and I even
Speaker 1: like leave out certain characters just because there's like so
Speaker 1: much and the movie is almost three hours long, so
Speaker 1: bear with me. But um, here we go. Better not
Speaker 1: cut out my friend Dr mac a k, the guy
Speaker 1: from Dragged Me to Hell. Wait, who is his name,
Speaker 1: Dr Max? It's Dr Max Ptel Oh, yes, Um Deelippe
Speaker 1: Row who's also in inception playing a very solar character.
Speaker 1: Kind of this is he was on kind of an
Speaker 1: unprecedented run in two thousand nine and ten and then
Speaker 1: I think James Cameron kidnapped him and um, he is
Speaker 1: stuck in Pantora forever forever. At least he's living off
Speaker 1: the royalties for the rest of his life. Truly, he's chilling. Okay,
Speaker 1: So we meet Jake Sully played by Sam Worthington, and
Speaker 1: we get his backstory. He is a marine who became
Speaker 1: disabled during battle. He's now paralyzed from the waist down
Speaker 1: and he has been approached with an opportunity to go
Speaker 1: to a far away planet called Pandora and do something
Speaker 1: we don't quite know what yet because his twin died,
Speaker 1: which I feel like is very glad used over that
Speaker 1: he's actively mourning his brother. His brother died like four
Speaker 1: minutes ago. Yeah, I know that. They just cremate him,
Speaker 1: like right in front of him. I'm like no, and
Speaker 1: he's just like damn dude, and he's like, we need
Speaker 1: you for science, and he's like he's Okay, these cans.
Speaker 1: He's like, all right, sleep it off science in the morning.
Speaker 1: And also no one cares that he just lost his
Speaker 1: twin brother, like weavers, like, um, okay, what are you
Speaker 1: doing here, you loser? I need your brother. Oh yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: So then Jake arrives on Pandora and he learns about
Speaker 1: the planet. It's dangerous wildlife and it's indigenous population called
Speaker 1: the Navvy, who are tall, blueskinned humanoids. Uh, your cat
Speaker 1: like the cat cat features with cat features. Jake meets
Speaker 1: Norm and the two of them are going to be
Speaker 1: avatar drivers. So basically, scientists have spliced human and NAVI
Speaker 1: d NA to create these avatars that Jake and Norm
Speaker 1: and other people will remotely operate by hooking the people
Speaker 1: up to these avatars via a like neural link, which
Speaker 1: is why they wanted Jake for this because he has
Speaker 1: the same DNA as his brother. They originally built this
Speaker 1: avatar for his brother, but it'll still work with Jake,
Speaker 1: and that always messes me up because it's like they
Speaker 1: do nothing with that. It's like if it's his brother's
Speaker 1: d n A. I mean, this whole movie is about
Speaker 1: accessing memory and accessing like history and stuff have them.
Speaker 1: They never did anything like that where he enters his
Speaker 1: brother's avatar and elements from like his blood memory or
Speaker 1: something like that is still there so he can feel
Speaker 1: his thoughts or something. They never do anything with it.
Speaker 1: That's such a good point. I've never thought about that, right,
Speaker 1: because it's like that would fit into the theme of
Speaker 1: the movie. And Jake's always like underdeveloped, but it's not
Speaker 1: like you don't know anything about it. Damn. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: NATII and the deleted scenes has a sister who died,
Speaker 1: and these guys never bond over that, Like you both
Speaker 1: lost your siblings like recently, and that's not something you
Speaker 1: guys would talk about during your forced fucking romance. And
Speaker 1: you would also think that, like I don't know that,
Speaker 1: like Jake might. I don't know, Like Jake doesn't feel
Speaker 1: culpable enough for any of this the entire movie, when
Speaker 1: it is like, so his fault a lot of the
Speaker 1: like most of the time. But it was like also
Speaker 1: on top of that, his brother would be so disappointed
Speaker 1: in him for like it sounds like his brother was
Speaker 1: a very like, well liked ethical scientist who would be
Speaker 1: probably devastated to learn that his brother like Mick fucked
Speaker 1: his entire like up on such unprecedented scale. Truly, they
Speaker 1: be doing that. Um okay. So then we meet the
Speaker 1: head of the Avatar project, Grace Augustine played by Sigourney Weaver. She,
Speaker 1: like we mentioned, is not thrilled with Jake being there
Speaker 1: because he's not a trained scientist. But Jake being there
Speaker 1: was Parker self Ridge's idea. That's Giovanni Ribisi. And then
Speaker 1: we learned why people have come to Pandora. It's to
Speaker 1: collect parentheses steal an extremely valuable element slash mineral called unobtainium.
Speaker 1: And Parker's whole thing is that he'll stop at nothing
Speaker 1: to obtain this unobtaini um um, yeah, James Cameron does
Speaker 1: the classic thing of like capitalism is one guy and
Speaker 1: the military industrial complex is also another guy. It's not
Speaker 1: subtle storytelling, but you know, but it's also right, like
Speaker 1: it's also correct, which is the worst part. So obviously
Speaker 1: the nov don't want them to do this. So right now,
Speaker 1: the humans are trying to find a quote unquote diplomatic
Speaker 1: way to colonize the Navy and steal their resources. So
Speaker 1: then Jake gets neural linked to his Navy avatar for
Speaker 1: the first time. He gets acclimated to his new body,
Speaker 1: and the movie telegraphs to us that it's exciting for
Speaker 1: him because his in his human body, he's paralyzed from
Speaker 1: the waist down, but in his navy body he can
Speaker 1: walk and run, and he really takes to his new
Speaker 1: body very quickly. This is interesting because there is absolutely
Speaker 1: some able is um for sure in this movie. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about that. Yeah. Yeah, there's a really wonderful line though,
Speaker 1: because obviously people with disabilities are not I hate to
Speaker 1: say not a monolith, but that's the only thing that
Speaker 1: came to mind. You know, there's many different types, uh,
Speaker 1: and it's different for each person. So there was a
Speaker 1: quote when I was doing my research where a woman
Speaker 1: who was able bodied and then couldn't use her legs
Speaker 1: anymore and as in a wheelchair, said that the scene
Speaker 1: where he goes from his wheelchair into the avatar where
Speaker 1: he's walking and playing basketball and running, it's really touching.
Speaker 1: She's like, I had a spinal cord injury in a
Speaker 1: car accident when I was five years old, so it
Speaker 1: gave me chills. I'm in a wheelchair for twenty years.
Speaker 1: I can't even remember what it was like, and he's
Speaker 1: just stretching his legs out and it must have felt
Speaker 1: just so like the ultimate stretch. And then other people
Speaker 1: were like, uh no, this is actually quite awful. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a whole conversation to be had around that. And
Speaker 1: I saw similarly like mixed responses um and ultimately the
Speaker 1: actor should have been a disabled actor exactly, a disabled actor,
Speaker 1: a good actor. You know, there's a lot of part
Speaker 1: your not a white actor, a lot of choices could
Speaker 1: have been made differently. I think, yeah, we'll get into
Speaker 1: the conversation around disability a little later. But I was
Speaker 1: interested that there was such a kind of diversity of
Speaker 1: opinion because what was hitting for me And it's like,
Speaker 1: I'm able bodied, Like I don't have a voice in
Speaker 1: this conversation really, but but I you know, there are
Speaker 1: constant insults thrown Jake Sully's way. They are generally from
Speaker 1: characters we are not supposed to like. So it's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's it's it's a it's an interesting one,
Speaker 1: it's complicated, and from characters that we do like it,
Speaker 1: even Grace At sometimes that's yeah, she's saying some ablest
Speaker 1: slurs at him. Yeah, it's like, okay, Grace smoking a
Speaker 1: cigarette in the lab. Oh yeah, She's like, where's my
Speaker 1: goddamn cigarette? What's wrong with this picture? That was iconic,
Speaker 1: that was great. You don't need a sig you need
Speaker 1: but her able ism was disappointed and consistent too. It
Speaker 1: like became like a term of endearment. It seems like, yeah,
Speaker 1: really gross. Um. So back in his Jake body, he
Speaker 1: meets Trudy. That's Michelle Rodriguez. She's a pilot who will
Speaker 1: bring the avatars into the wilderness so they can do
Speaker 1: their science uh and colonizing. Um. Jake also reports to
Speaker 1: Colonel Quaritch his whole thing is science people are losers.
Speaker 1: Military people are awesome, And I want you to spy
Speaker 1: on the Novi and find out their weaknesses so I
Speaker 1: can kill them more easily. I love this bad guy.
Speaker 1: I know I shouldn't, but I love this bad guy.
Speaker 1: He's such a ham He's so campy. He seems camping, cartoonish.
Speaker 1: But also I feel like there are people like this,
Speaker 1: oh for sure. So just like this, in any other movie,
Speaker 1: he would be the hero. James Cameron just made him
Speaker 1: the bad guy this time, but changed nothing like this
Speaker 1: would be Arnold in the Goddamn Jungle looking for the Predator.
Speaker 1: This could be any action hero in the eighties. It's
Speaker 1: the exact same character. He's just bad this time and
Speaker 1: it's Stephen Lange and he's just so fucking perfect and scoofy.
Speaker 1: It's very good casting. Stephen Lange really seems like he's
Speaker 1: having the time of his life being the worst man ever.
Speaker 1: And I mean the same with Giovanni Ribisi's character, where
Speaker 1: you're like, he's just fucking despicable and it's so like
Speaker 1: played up, and then when they're in the same room,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, it's the most evil room in the world,
Speaker 1: and you're reculing there are people that are those people
Speaker 1: are just like this do you have on ABC? Is
Speaker 1: interesting though, I feel like his character would have been
Speaker 1: this one dimensional, you know, sort of comic book character
Speaker 1: like Stephen Lane, but he um. I think the actor
Speaker 1: gives it a nuance where he's like conflicted, where it's like,
Speaker 1: because you even see it in the movie sometimes where
Speaker 1: he's like he'll give like a heavy sigh, We're going
Speaker 1: to kill these people and well they're not people, they're
Speaker 1: cats in a tree. Whatever. They can go to another tree.
Speaker 1: But we're gonna kill babies, you know. So it's like
Speaker 1: you kind of like see the mental gymnastics he's doing,
Speaker 1: or like the you know, the things that he has
Speaker 1: to do to justify his choices, which does make it
Speaker 1: worse because he still Yeah, yeah, not to brag or anything,
Speaker 1: but I saw Giovanni Ribis getting ice cream in my
Speaker 1: neighborhood one time. Wow. All I did was see Taylor
Speaker 1: Lawton or screaming at a moon juice. It's not fair.
Speaker 1: I met Scott McNeil a and he told me I
Speaker 1: was beautiful. Hell yeah, okay, I do. That was Piccolow
Speaker 1: from Dragon Ball Z and all of my nineties heroes
Speaker 1: hell yoh okay. So, Jake, Norm and Grace in their
Speaker 1: avatars go into the forest. They encounter some big, scary animals.
Speaker 1: One chases Jake and he gets separated from the others
Speaker 1: and lost in the forest. Then he encounters a navvy
Speaker 1: woman Natieri played by Zoey Soldanna, who saves him from
Speaker 1: the animals who were swarming him. But she's really pissed.
Speaker 1: She's like, those animals didn't need to die, but because
Speaker 1: you were careless and flopping around like a baby, I
Speaker 1: had to kill them. And he's like, Oopsie, well how
Speaker 1: about you teach me to be better at this? And
Speaker 1: she's like, no, you suck. But then the seeds of
Speaker 1: the Sacred tree float down and surround him as if
Speaker 1: to say he's special, He's the chosen one. I know,
Speaker 1: there's so many chosen one shots. And then I've kind
Speaker 1: of always forget that. It culminate in like and also,
Speaker 1: Jake Sully can kind of talk to God and she
Speaker 1: listens to him. What God answers to Jake Sully, what
Speaker 1: are you talking about? Atlantis Morrissette would never talk about. Also,
Speaker 1: Zoe Seldana just like one thousand percent, just embodies this
Speaker 1: character like she's the best. She's the best actress in
Speaker 1: the movie. I love, like just the physical performance, the
Speaker 1: way she moves, the way she the way she hisses
Speaker 1: like a cat. Yes, she's so good. They said that
Speaker 1: she was a former ballet dancer, so she was able
Speaker 1: to do like all the stunt work and stuff like yeah,
Speaker 1: because she was in that movie that we covered and
Speaker 1: it was called Center Stage. Yes, yeah, that was like
Speaker 1: her big debut. Yeah, I forgot that she was Yeah,
Speaker 1: Jews dance trained man. So he sail. Donna also on
Speaker 1: a hot streak because she's also in the Star Trek
Speaker 1: movie this year and Guardians of the and yeah, like
Speaker 1: she's queen a sci fi she's in a lot of
Speaker 1: space movies. Yeah, she's She's also in the Britney Spears
Speaker 1: classic Cross Crossroads. Yes, I did not know that true story.
Speaker 1: I feel like I feel like DNA would prefer it
Speaker 1: that way. It's not a very good movie written by
Speaker 1: Shonda Rhymes though. Okay, So Natieri takes Jake to Home
Speaker 1: Tree where the Navi live. We meet her father. Yes,
Speaker 1: I know that with him as soon as I saw him,
Speaker 1: Like he just has a very distinct looking face, even
Speaker 1: before I even knew he was in the movie. It's
Speaker 1: like as soon as it was like, okay, native coded characters,
Speaker 1: they need a chief there. He is beautiful man. Yeah yea.
Speaker 1: So he's the clan leader. And we also meet Natieri's mother,
Speaker 1: their Mowatt, played by cc H pounder Um. She's there
Speaker 1: like spiritual leader the Sahik. She's incredible. She is the
Speaker 1: best looking one. I love her design. Her design is awesome.
Speaker 1: First of all, that was so Mowatt is the only
Speaker 1: character in the film that passes the Ali Nati test,
Speaker 1: oh because she never falls in love with a white
Speaker 1: man and she doesn't die and all that other good ship.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so she Uh. Usually in stories like this,
Speaker 1: there is never a chief's wife, like there's usually the
Speaker 1: chief's daughter, the Indian princess type, but you never see
Speaker 1: like the spouse of the chief, which is interesting because
Speaker 1: a lot of Native society is not all but many
Speaker 1: are matrilineal, so the bloodline usually follows the mother, so
Speaker 1: you never really see a character quite like this anyways.
Speaker 1: But then she just her design is beautiful. I just
Speaker 1: love how every aspect of this character. You look at
Speaker 1: her and it tells a story. I by that she's
Speaker 1: the chief's wife, that she's the spiritual leader. Um, the
Speaker 1: fact that she's bilingual suggests that she probably tried to
Speaker 1: be diplomatic and then realized there's no salvaging this. So
Speaker 1: you know, it's just such a really interesting I wish
Speaker 1: we saw more of her and less of Jake. I
Speaker 1: like less of Jake on the whole. I hope that
Speaker 1: the second movie really runs with the whole concept of
Speaker 1: less Jake. The trailers tell us anything, though, I feel
Speaker 1: like he's in the movie a lot sid Founder. I
Speaker 1: didn't because I'm like, I don't know anything about linguistics.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm just a baby. I'm seventeen years old. You're
Speaker 1: Jake Sully flopping around in the forest. So that's that
Speaker 1: I'm not that bad. But but um in in that
Speaker 1: sideways video that sort of unpacks how you know, this
Speaker 1: movie invested in building an entire language, kind of Elvish style,
Speaker 1: and like hired a dialect coach to teach each actor
Speaker 1: um how to speak Navi and speak it correctly. I
Speaker 1: guess C. C. H. Pounder is like the m v
Speaker 1: P of speaking Navy in a way that it was
Speaker 1: like very authentic and convincing. And there's like a whole
Speaker 1: sequence of like how she I don't know, it's really
Speaker 1: cool cool anyway, shoutout C. H. Pounder. Hell yeah, shout out. Okay.
Speaker 1: So most of the nov are hostile towards Jake, understandably
Speaker 1: they see him as an outsider. But Ma Watt says
Speaker 1: that Jake Sully should learn their ways because she's like
Speaker 1: she interprets the will of a wa, which is their deity.
Speaker 1: So Mo Wat's like, Okay, you can learn our ways
Speaker 1: and NATII, you're going to be the one to teach him,
Speaker 1: which she's not thrilled about. Back in human world, everyone
Speaker 1: is thrilled that Jake has gotten so close to the
Speaker 1: Navy grace for like science and anthropological reasons. And Parker
Speaker 1: because under the Navy palm tree is one of the
Speaker 1: largest obtanium deposits on the whole planet um and so
Speaker 1: he's giving Jake three months to convince the Navy to
Speaker 1: move so that they can come and steal the unobtainium.
Speaker 1: Otherwise bulldozers will go in and destroy the place. So
Speaker 1: back in Avatar body, Jake begins to learn the culture
Speaker 1: and customs of the Navy. Also, they call themselves omata kaya,
Speaker 1: so I'll like probably use those words interchangeably from now on.
Speaker 1: Although they refer to themselves, they never referred to themselves
Speaker 1: as the Navy. Is that correct. I think it's part
Speaker 1: of their language. Yeah, Because there's a scene where she's
Speaker 1: yelling and I here not be I wonder if it's
Speaker 1: like their word for like people maybe or something, because
Speaker 1: I think is the name of their clan, their clan, Okay,
Speaker 1: because I think other yeah, other like regional clans are
Speaker 1: referenced later on when they're building their the army against
Speaker 1: against Mr. Military. Yes, Stephen Lan, Yeah, I love when
Speaker 1: Stephen Lan dies. It's so exciting. Okay. So, because they
Speaker 1: refer to themselves as amata kaya, all from this point
Speaker 1: on use that um to refer to them. So Jake
Speaker 1: learns how to ride this horse like creature, and Naterie
Speaker 1: explains that he needs to form a bond called sahlu
Speaker 1: with the creature, which is the like. So they all
Speaker 1: the Amakaya people have this long braid and at the
Speaker 1: end of the braid are these how would doc Yeah,
Speaker 1: tentacles more or less little like nerve endings. It's very um,
Speaker 1: You're just like James Cameron. It's what are you thinking
Speaker 1: about in that big old house? That's what he was saying.
Speaker 1: Can't girls and tentacles? I'm just saying, really, it's so funny.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I wouldn't even say that's him knowing his audience.
Speaker 1: I think that's him broadening his audience. So it's like, well,
Speaker 1: fuck the horse with your tentacle braid. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: how you create this meaningful bond with animals and trees
Speaker 1: and um, basically any living thing on Pandora. There's also
Speaker 1: this flying animal, the Akron, but he's not ready to
Speaker 1: form a halu with one of those yet, because this
Speaker 1: is like advanced stuff, advanced tentacle sex. He's not ready
Speaker 1: for its. It advanced hantai Hanti two one is yeah,
Speaker 1: but he is learning the language, he's learning how to hunt,
Speaker 1: he's learning how to see things from an omata kaya perspective.
Speaker 1: He learns about the deity Awa and eventually Natteri deems
Speaker 1: him ready to try to form this bond with an Ikron,
Speaker 1: which he successfully does. Also side note, there is an
Speaker 1: alpha version of the Akron, but it's very very rare
Speaker 1: for anyone to bond and fly with one, so just
Speaker 1: put a little pin in that. It's like the guy
Speaker 1: Fieri iron like. It's got flames on this side like
Speaker 1: it's the cool He's very big, you can tell because
Speaker 1: he's got flames. Oh, speaking of cat like creatures, Ali's
Speaker 1: cat just showed up. Heard the call ah Piku, I
Speaker 1: too would like to learn about the cats, the fellow
Speaker 1: dragon fucking cats. Okay, so Jake and Naterie they fly
Speaker 1: together and also they flirt together. Nobody asked for this,
Speaker 1: and yet I'm kind of rooting for them. There I
Speaker 1: said it, you weren't. That was I was honestly brave
Speaker 1: to say, because no one else did. I feel like
Speaker 1: at every turn, you're just like Nigeria can do better
Speaker 1: so much among these faceless navi that do we know
Speaker 1: that it's such a large population, Like, surely, surely someone's
Speaker 1: here that isn't Jake Sully. But I feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: in in the in the real world, we often end
Speaker 1: up with the Jake Sullies of the world. Told me
Speaker 1: about it. You never think it's going to be you.
Speaker 1: The worst part is that the guy she's hooked up with,
Speaker 1: the one who is going to be the next clan leader,
Speaker 1: his name Suite. Those two they're like betrothed. I guess
Speaker 1: they become a mated pair eventually, but you don't really
Speaker 1: see them interact much at all, Like they really don't
Speaker 1: have much of a relationship, which is unfortunate because the
Speaker 1: actor is super hot, and yet they give my man
Speaker 1: this fucking atrocious hairline and these tiny ears and these
Speaker 1: any bodies small nipples. I want to like you, but shit,
Speaker 1: I mean, las Alonzo is gorgeous. They did him so dirty.
Speaker 1: They didn't pretty dirty, I don't. I mean, there's like,
Speaker 1: I think the element of Jak and Dyteri's love story
Speaker 1: that worked for me, although I was like a little
Speaker 1: unclear on what the Navvy mating practices work because it
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, they referenced that you would be betrothed,
Speaker 1: you didn't have a say in who you married. But
Speaker 1: then it's like, I guess they just didn't really go
Speaker 1: into it. I'm sure it's in one of my many
Speaker 1: Navvy guide books that I have back in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: but I am not there right now, so I couldn't
Speaker 1: consult my my small avatar library that I manically purchased
Speaker 1: second hand. Please don't judge me, okay, um, but I
Speaker 1: think that the element of the Jake and Naterry love
Speaker 1: story that worked for me was like her choosing Like
Speaker 1: that was cool, That's what I liked to Yeah, and
Speaker 1: even Jake Sully was like and she must choose me
Speaker 1: because he's an Australian. She's like she already has kiss
Speaker 1: You're right, Yeah, that's the part. I like, let's fatantical
Speaker 1: six then, but yeah, Jake is a romantic partner? Is um? No?
Speaker 1: Thanks pass? Okay, So back in human world. Jake is
Speaker 1: having an identity crisis because he has gotten so immersed
Speaker 1: in the Omakayah way of life that he feels that
Speaker 1: that's his real life and him as a humans like
Speaker 1: a dream. Basically, they say he stopped showering. You're like, Jake, Yeah,
Speaker 1: get it together, man, Seriously. He is then officially made
Speaker 1: a member of the Oma Takaya, so he is now
Speaker 1: one of them. Can I just say this takes place
Speaker 1: over three months? I know this motherfucker becomes the best navvy,
Speaker 1: the best Indian ever in three months. I don't want
Speaker 1: to hear anybody complain about Ray from Star Wars ever again,
Speaker 1: ever again? Where was that energy for Jake? Selling? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I found that hard to believe, both that he could
Speaker 1: master a language in three months and like just like
Speaker 1: master all of the culture and customs, and that the
Speaker 1: Alma Takaya people would so readily accept him in such
Speaker 1: a short amount of time. I was like, nothing adds
Speaker 1: up here, No disconnected natives, Like obviously not all natives
Speaker 1: are the same, but so many disconnected natives who are
Speaker 1: displaced because of colonization, residential schools, foster care, or just
Speaker 1: some growing off the reservation like there's such an anxiety
Speaker 1: when it comes to reconnecting to your own people that
Speaker 1: the fact that this dude who has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with any of these people and has no history with
Speaker 1: any of these people can just walk right and be
Speaker 1: like oh yeah. There's so many gross moments, like especially
Speaker 1: once he becomes immersed in like o Mentakaya culture, like
Speaker 1: where he repeatedly is like I need to speak and
Speaker 1: it's like, Jake, you don't, like you've just got here
Speaker 1: my man, Like really shouldn't? That, I would say is
Speaker 1: my biggest beef with this movie. Yeah, Jake is really
Speaker 1: taking up quite a bit of space for being a guest,
Speaker 1: for being a new, like a new random white guy
Speaker 1: that is actively ruining everyone's life, Like yeah, fucking Jake Sully.
Speaker 1: But he's one of them now. And um he gets
Speaker 1: to choose a mate and he chooses nay Tieri and
Speaker 1: she's like, I choose you back, and then they kiss
Speaker 1: and have tentacle sex under a tree. It's kind of hot.
Speaker 1: It's confusing, you're corny. James Cameron knows how to make
Speaker 1: a sex scene that will even if you don't like it,
Speaker 1: it's going to stick with you. It's good, you're gonna
Speaker 1: be thinking about it. I remember when I thought that
Speaker 1: scene was so weird when I saw it for the
Speaker 1: first time, and then I a couple of years later,
Speaker 1: I started playing mass Effect and the Love of my
Speaker 1: Life is this cricket looking dinosaur, fucking alien man with
Speaker 1: a very nice voice, So it's not weird. Yeah, his
Speaker 1: pictures in there. If you want to check your the
Speaker 1: Google duck like I do. I do want to check
Speaker 1: Wait what page? Page twenty the very top is the
Speaker 1: Love of my life? Oh my god. Okay, he's kind
Speaker 1: of hot, adores you. It's kind of got a Mr.
Speaker 1: Darcy vibe to like, he's complicated, but I can get
Speaker 1: through to him. His code name is Archangel. Oh my good. Okay.
Speaker 1: So Jake and Nati are smooching and they fall asleep
Speaker 1: together and the next morning a huge bulldozer comes crashing
Speaker 1: into the tree where they're at and Naterian Jake have
Speaker 1: to run away. Colonel Quaritch and Parker, the two big
Speaker 1: bads of the movie, realized that Jake is trying to
Speaker 1: sabotage their mission, and they are piste and they're about
Speaker 1: to go back in guns blazing, and Jake is like stop,
Speaker 1: let me talk to them and see if I can
Speaker 1: negotiate something here. A detail that I didn't really think
Speaker 1: about that I appreciated on this uh one was that
Speaker 1: Grace knew the whole time, like she was able to
Speaker 1: figure out very I feel like a lesser script would
Speaker 1: have been like and she had no idea because women
Speaker 1: can't brain. But I like that she figures out because
Speaker 1: that is like logical, Like he is a marine first,
Speaker 1: um so, and he's around the two most evil people
Speaker 1: ever all the time, and so she's like, oh, I
Speaker 1: need to get him out of here because like I
Speaker 1: need the information he can get me. And of course
Speaker 1: he's going to go with these guys because that is
Speaker 1: like his kind of degree or whatever. Yeah, he hates
Speaker 1: science and he's not he's he's refused to mourn his brother,
Speaker 1: so he's kind of a loose cannon. He forgot all
Speaker 1: about his brother. Yeah, never hear about him ever? Again,
Speaker 1: what was his name? Even do we ever? Commy? We
Speaker 1: do learn his name? Tommy Sully? Horrible, horrible, pouring one
Speaker 1: out for Tommy Sully tonight, Jeeves, just why not Sullivan?
Speaker 1: Why not? Anyway? Shout out to your character Sully though
Speaker 1: from Santa University. I it's look, he's coming back this
Speaker 1: year because it's you're the Sully, Thank you so much?
Speaker 1: All right, so so bad guys are about to go
Speaker 1: back in, guns blazing, and Jake's like, let me talk
Speaker 1: to them, so he goes back in. But NACKTII is like,
Speaker 1: what you knew this would happen? I trusted you and
Speaker 1: you betrayed us. Favorite scene in the movie. Favorite scene
Speaker 1: I talked about this and Frozen too, but I'll say
Speaker 1: it again. Uh, this was the point in the movie
Speaker 1: where I was like, Okay, this can only go one
Speaker 1: of two ways. If it goes one way, I hate
Speaker 1: this movie and it is the worst thing ever made.
Speaker 1: If it goes the other way, I love this movie.
Speaker 1: It's the best thing that's ever been made. I feel
Speaker 1: differently now. The stakes are very high, but literally, like
Speaker 1: I said earlier too, it's all like in movies like
Speaker 1: this and stories like this, especially with a character like this,
Speaker 1: it's you know, oh, well, we can reach something peaceful
Speaker 1: because I love him and he loves me, and love
Speaker 1: saves love consol racism, and it doesn't. So what it
Speaker 1: is is you knew this was happening, and We're gonna
Speaker 1: lose our home. People are going to die, and we
Speaker 1: trusted you. You shouldn't even be here and we've already
Speaker 1: trusted you. And Zoey sell Donna's emotional just rage in
Speaker 1: that scene was so good and I'm like, good, you
Speaker 1: fucking kill his ass, like yeah, and she leaves him
Speaker 1: for dead because she leaves dead. I love that she
Speaker 1: leaves him for dead. Perfect because they tie Jake and
Speaker 1: Grace up to a tree knowing that the bulldozers like
Speaker 1: on its way and like missiles are coming, so leaves
Speaker 1: him for dead. The military shows up to fire at
Speaker 1: home Tree, but then Moa is like, you know what, Jake,
Speaker 1: if you are one of us, help us, So she
Speaker 1: sets him free conflictive feelings about the home tree is destroyed.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely devastating. I'm crying. And Natieri's father is killed
Speaker 1: among others in this attack. Someone brought up how despite
Speaker 1: how anti military and anti imperialist Avatar tries to be,
Speaker 1: they did kill the only native actor in the movie.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you're not wrong. That scene was sad, though
Speaker 1: I love with study and Zoey's performance again just so
Speaker 1: sad because Jake Sulley is once again trying to insert
Speaker 1: himself into one of the most personal moments one can have,
Speaker 1: and it's I think one of the things that has
Speaker 1: I don't I mean, I don't remember how I felt
Speaker 1: about anything when I was seventeen. Probably incorrectly it's safety,
Speaker 1: but I do think that the movie obviously there's a
Speaker 1: shipload of stuff calling on. It's like we're approaching the
Speaker 1: climax of the movie. But wish that they took more
Speaker 1: time to dwell on that loss, because we lose this
Speaker 1: amazing character. It is this really really moving, well performed moment,
Speaker 1: and then we kind of don't revisit it, and it's
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously everyone's in crisis, but it's like it
Speaker 1: would have been nice to see, you know, like her
Speaker 1: mother's reaction, to see the community's reaction. But we get
Speaker 1: way more airtime to like we have to save Grace,
Speaker 1: which is like, sure, Grace is a great character, but
Speaker 1: why are we focusing on a white lady we've known
Speaker 1: for like a couple, you know, months, versus like our leader, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like your parent that like your parents. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I could not like having lost a parent. I promise
Speaker 1: I won't cry anymore. But having lost a parent, Like
Speaker 1: there's no forgiving someone if they get your dad killed,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Like how I get it,
Speaker 1: Like I get it as well, like find out later
Speaker 1: with the Toroka and everything and the story and but
Speaker 1: even so, I mean two things can exist at once, man,
Speaker 1: and you killed my dad. You know, I'm I fuck this,
Speaker 1: fuck you because I didn't mention this, and yet I
Speaker 1: don't think. But Jake Selly has been feeding information about
Speaker 1: like the tree, the home tree, to Colonel Quaritch, So
Speaker 1: he's like gathering this intel that he's now able to
Speaker 1: use against the Omakaya people in this attack. So he's evil.
Speaker 1: So then Jake finds Nteri in the rubble as she's
Speaker 1: mourning the death of her father. She wants nothing to
Speaker 1: do with him. She's like, get away, never come back.
Speaker 1: Then the military bad guys pull the plug on Jake
Speaker 1: and Grace and so they wake up in their human bodies.
Speaker 1: They put them plus Norm in a holding cell. But
Speaker 1: Trudy remember her, she's in the movie. She she would
Speaker 1: the equip about every forty minutes, and you're like, um,
Speaker 1: she breaks them out of prison and they get in
Speaker 1: Trudy's ship and escape this military base, and they head
Speaker 1: to the Tree of Souls, which is the amatokaia is
Speaker 1: most sacred place um where they have relocated and Jake
Speaker 1: needs to prove his worth to be able to rejoin them,
Speaker 1: so he forges a bond with the Alpha Akron, the
Speaker 1: the one that has like spinners on the wheels. I
Speaker 1: just kept thinking it was like the coolest car ever.
Speaker 1: He's got a spoiler on the back. Yeah. Um. So
Speaker 1: Jake shows up with the torok at the Tree of Souls.
Speaker 1: He pulls up, he pulls up. Yeah, he kind of
Speaker 1: tokyo drifts into the I mean, if we have Michelle
Speaker 1: Rodriguez of the movie and everything exactly. Um, and everyone
Speaker 1: reveres him now and Nati is like, maybe you're okay
Speaker 1: again instant forgive nous. Yeah. And then during the escape earlier,
Speaker 1: Grace was shot, so the Omakaya tried to save her
Speaker 1: by transferring her consciousness permanently to her avatar her Oatcaia body,
Speaker 1: but she's too weak and she dies. But she dies
Speaker 1: at peace. Yes, it's a really good scene. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very touching, for sure. It's nice. And I also like,
Speaker 1: again it just like I feel like a lot of
Speaker 1: movies would have not had the courage to kill her off,
Speaker 1: especially like a big but it's like, no one can
Speaker 1: die in franchise movies now because not now. But James
Speaker 1: Cameron is not shy about killing people off. So oh,
Speaker 1: get yeah, you're we're about to see a lot of
Speaker 1: colonizers get squished. That Jake gives the biggest, dumbest speech,
Speaker 1: but ID it's cringe, but I dig it. Yeah, it's cringe,
Speaker 1: but I dig it. And the reason I dig it
Speaker 1: is because this is where the Pocahonas and space Trope
Speaker 1: just goes to die. Because again, you know, especially with
Speaker 1: a character like this, a story like this, it's always
Speaker 1: our love can save the day and peace and understanding,
Speaker 1: and this is no, we are beyond that. Now we
Speaker 1: have to fight. Now they need to fucking leave. And
Speaker 1: that never happens in movies like this, where it's like
Speaker 1: pieces not an option. We are hell and gone from diplomacy.
Speaker 1: You have to fucking go. And you never see this
Speaker 1: in like movies about indigenous people, let alone movies about
Speaker 1: indigenous people by non indigenous people, like especially rich white
Speaker 1: dudes in the film industry. So yeah, because it's them
Speaker 1: trying to rewrite history. To be like, no, we it
Speaker 1: was so peaceful when we came here and colonized people
Speaker 1: and murdered them. Yeah. One of my one of my
Speaker 1: grandma's was a princess, was anobby. She plugged her tail
Speaker 1: into my dad, did she though? Yeah, that that's a
Speaker 1: very James Camerony moment. And it's also like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like I always truggle with Like, I totally agree with you, Ali,
Speaker 1: and I think it's like it is a really unusual
Speaker 1: subversion in a movie of this scale to to do.
Speaker 1: And then it's also like why Jake Sully, like of
Speaker 1: all people, when he's like, this is our land, It's
Speaker 1: like it's our our land, not your your say this
Speaker 1: is your land, Jake, you just got here. It would
Speaker 1: have been cool if he said this is your land.
Speaker 1: I don't know. So yeah, So Jake is rallying the
Speaker 1: Oma Takaya to launch an attack against the humans or
Speaker 1: the sky people as he calls them as if he's
Speaker 1: not one of them, but um, Colonel Quaritch and the
Speaker 1: humans are planning a preemptive counterattack with their you know,
Speaker 1: more advanced weaponry and their aircrafts and missiles and all
Speaker 1: of that. So Jake goes and pray is to Awa
Speaker 1: for help. The Awa scene with it's just Jake Sally
Speaker 1: is like so embarrassing all the time. So he goes
Speaker 1: to Awa to pray essentially, And I did think it
Speaker 1: was kind of funny how that scene and where Natia
Speaker 1: comes in and she's like, yeah, that's like not how
Speaker 1: this works, and Jake's like, oh man, well it was
Speaker 1: worth a dry and then she's like, okay, let's go
Speaker 1: to bed. That's like the scene, but then it ends
Speaker 1: up working like but then, yeah, God is listening to
Speaker 1: Jake Sally, I think not. I think not. Atlantis morsets
Speaker 1: in the tree like all right, okay, just this once.
Speaker 1: Let's hear this Australian guy out. Let's see. So the
Speaker 1: next morning, the humans come to the mountains with you know,
Speaker 1: their heavy firepower, but the Alma Takaya have the hometown
Speaker 1: advantage and they have Jake as Turuk makto um because
Speaker 1: he's on the big pterodactyl with flames on the side convertible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he is in charge and there's a long battle
Speaker 1: and eventually it seems like all hope is lost for
Speaker 1: Jake and the tie and the Amatacaya and Trudy who
Speaker 1: shows up to help, and Norm, who's fighting with them,
Speaker 1: has a gun. It's silly. It's like, why are we
Speaker 1: letting Norm have a gun? He's not contributing. Come on,
Speaker 1: Norm's an indoor kid, Like, what's he doing here? So
Speaker 1: Quarich is headed towards the Tree of Souls to destroy it,
Speaker 1: but then the big animals from earlier in the movie
Speaker 1: come charging in and they drive out the bad guys.
Speaker 1: Seems as though Awa has answered Jake's prayer, and so
Speaker 1: the Almatacaya get the upper hand and there's a final
Speaker 1: showdown between quar Rich and Jake and the Tiri and
Speaker 1: they defeat Karrich and a Ti gets like the killing blow.
Speaker 1: Two killing blows were also forgotten on the re release
Speaker 1: that she gets. She gets him twice just to be sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so satisfying. I love it when the James Horner
Speaker 1: that she pulls up. It's good. The movie feels like
Speaker 1: a movie when I'm watching. That's so good. And then
Speaker 1: the Alma Takaya send the humans home and the movie
Speaker 1: ends with Jake's consciousness being transferred to his avatar to
Speaker 1: make him permanently one of the Alma Takaya the and
Speaker 1: so let's take another quick break and we will come
Speaker 1: back to discuss and then we're back. Okay, Ali, where
Speaker 1: would you like to start a preference? Where do we begin?
Speaker 1: There's so much, there's so much to say. Uh, okay,
Speaker 1: how about we begin with any questions you might have
Speaker 1: for me? Well, so we already we touched on a
Speaker 1: lot of the criticisms that I think we're going to
Speaker 1: have against this movie already during the recap. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, for me, the big thing is, you've got
Speaker 1: this like white guy who like appropriates the body of
Speaker 1: an indigenous person comes in. He's flopping around and they're like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: You're the chosen one though, and it doesn't make sense,
Speaker 1: but he's the chosen one. He doesn't have imposter syndrome
Speaker 1: for one single second, which I guess is very white
Speaker 1: guy of him. He has a very inflated ego about
Speaker 1: the whole thing. Yeah, but yeah, it is. It is
Speaker 1: like a white savior top to bottom. So the question,
Speaker 1: so my question is what in a in a movie
Speaker 1: with a similar premise where you know, like white capitalist
Speaker 1: colonizers come in and are trying to colonize and steal
Speaker 1: the land and still the resources of Indigenous people. What
Speaker 1: is a version of this story or what changes would
Speaker 1: you make or do you think could be made to
Speaker 1: eliminate the issues that we see in Avatar? Okay, So
Speaker 1: I've thought about this a lot, because a lot of
Speaker 1: the issues stem back to Jake, like massively, for all
Speaker 1: the reasons that we suggested, I feel like, even if
Speaker 1: if nothing else were to change about the film, and
Speaker 1: it would have been the exact same movie and the
Speaker 1: exact same steaks and everything as problematic as it was,
Speaker 1: if someone like Adam Beach or Anthony Mackie or a
Speaker 1: character of color, specifically a disabled and preferably an Indigenous
Speaker 1: actor playing Jake instead, I feel like it would have
Speaker 1: had more gravity. As much as I like Sigourney Weaver's character,
Speaker 1: she's so sympathetic to the knobby that I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: but scientists, unfortunately, are not that sympathetic to Indigenous people.
Speaker 1: They're the ones that are stealing their remains and putting
Speaker 1: them in the Smithsonian against people's wishes and stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: or conducting the research to prove that you know, Sami
Speaker 1: people aren't human enough or not as advanced enough as
Speaker 1: like Swedish or Finnish people. You know, so if you
Speaker 1: were going to have that character like the Scientists character,
Speaker 1: if she were indigenous, if she were played by Tantu
Speaker 1: Cardinal or even Irene Bedard Roads go back to Pocontas,
Speaker 1: or even like if you wanted someone sassy but smart
Speaker 1: and you know, still had that ferocity. Even Jennifer Pademski
Speaker 1: would have been perfect in that part. I think, be great.
Speaker 1: She would have been great. She's hilarious and she's badass,
Speaker 1: because I think that that would have been an interesting
Speaker 1: subversion because her school in the movie. That was another thing.
Speaker 1: And Connor Beard was talking about this on TikTok. He
Speaker 1: was talking about how Avatar has many problems. He's from
Speaker 1: the Lumbi tribe, and he said specifically that the school
Speaker 1: being used as a positive in the film is kind
Speaker 1: of toned off, if not really offensive, because residential schools
Speaker 1: were so bad too native children and they aren't in
Speaker 1: this movie. And I feel like that was probably just
Speaker 1: to bridge the communication error, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: like or the conflict or you know, it's like we
Speaker 1: need we need to be able to talk to these people.
Speaker 1: They need to be able to blah blah blah. But
Speaker 1: like what if it was Tantu Cardinal and she was
Speaker 1: teaching them a nish nabe mowen instead of English or
Speaker 1: along with English. So it's like, you know, we can
Speaker 1: communicate a little more privately and not in a language
Speaker 1: that would like front you off in front of the
Speaker 1: real bad guys or something, you know, because then that
Speaker 1: would be subversion. That would also be kind of decolonizing
Speaker 1: that sort of premise of the school if you were
Speaker 1: going to have that, because if they want to come
Speaker 1: in and like actually engage in some kind of diplomacy,
Speaker 1: why is it, oh, we have to teach you English
Speaker 1: so that you can communicate with me versus and to
Speaker 1: be fair grace like does no Navi And like the
Speaker 1: other sidecientists seemed too as well. And I wonder if
Speaker 1: that was just almost a choice to be like, well,
Speaker 1: we don't want to have too much of the movie
Speaker 1: in a language other than English, because that Holly Mr.
Speaker 1: Hollywood thinks that that tends to put off American letters audiences,
Speaker 1: So like we have to as much as possible have
Speaker 1: the nov or have the omata kaya speak English. So
Speaker 1: I wonder if like that's just how they justify But
Speaker 1: then but like to have it be like they set
Speaker 1: up a school to teach Indigenous children English, Like you said, Ali,
Speaker 1: the historical parallels to that are atrocious, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like the filmmakers considered the implications of making that choice.
Speaker 1: That was like something that popped for me this time
Speaker 1: where it's like the there's no like even even with Grace,
Speaker 1: because I feel like Grace is and the science and
Speaker 1: you know, Norm, Dr Max, etcetera. Are are all presented
Speaker 1: pretty uncritically as good guys. But on this rewatch specifically
Speaker 1: like with Bechdel goggles on your like this actually like
Speaker 1: the movie should be far more kind of interrogating what
Speaker 1: it is they're doing, because it's like Grace is also
Speaker 1: appropriating an Indigenous body, Like she's doing that consistently, and
Speaker 1: the ethics of that are not questioned, um by any
Speaker 1: of the characters in the movie. It's like, because she's
Speaker 1: not giving information to the kernel, it's made to seem like, well,
Speaker 1: so what she's doing is above board. But it's like
Speaker 1: if if she's starting you know, the equivalent of a
Speaker 1: residential school on Pandora, there's no reciprocity where it's like
Speaker 1: the nov don't have an opportunity to to you know,
Speaker 1: it all takes place on Pandora because that is where
Speaker 1: the humans interests lie is like mining these natural resources.
Speaker 1: And Grace is absolutely complicitly in that, Like she knows
Speaker 1: that to the point where she is able to, you know,
Speaker 1: predict that Jake is going to leak information to the
Speaker 1: colonel and she gets them out of there, which puts
Speaker 1: a band aid on the problem. But she's still aware
Speaker 1: of exactly what's happening, and she's you know, she has
Speaker 1: like some quips and she's she you know, doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to agree with it, but she she's participating. She's a
Speaker 1: willing participant and that is not really interrogated at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. I agree. And uh, my friend Aaronnach, who's wonderful, Uh,
Speaker 1: they have a really wonderful YouTube channel. We were talking
Speaker 1: about this because I was sharing my notes and I
Speaker 1: was trying not to share my deeper notes, just more like, oh,
Speaker 1: look this funny thing I said, you know, while I'm
Speaker 1: doing research. But they said, they're like, I think this
Speaker 1: film is so forgettable because it almost does something worthy
Speaker 1: of note and then went, well, how can we make
Speaker 1: a white guy the hero and the weirdest way possible?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, yeah, that's the biggest failing of this
Speaker 1: film is that Jake is in it, just because it
Speaker 1: feels like Natari should be the hero. Absolute like if
Speaker 1: you're going to have the school and stuff like that
Speaker 1: in it, I mean, like, why couldn't it begin with
Speaker 1: nat Terry being a student in the school and then
Speaker 1: seeing her sister be murdered like they say happens in
Speaker 1: the deleted scenes and stuff, and then becoming disillusion and
Speaker 1: disenfranchised with this idea of diplomacy, you know, because there
Speaker 1: is no diplomatic way to forcibly relocate people that's genocide.
Speaker 1: Like that's exactly I love. I mean, I love what
Speaker 1: you're talking about in terms of casting native actors um
Speaker 1: on the human side of the conflict, because that doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: And I feel like that problem scales up to what
Speaker 1: you were discussing at the beginning of the episode, which
Speaker 1: is like that would be an incredible, like I think,
Speaker 1: a far more impactful way to tell this story and
Speaker 1: also probably not a story that James Cameron has any
Speaker 1: business writing. And so it's again, it's like a resources
Speaker 1: thing of like, you know, who is getting the opportunities.
Speaker 1: James Cameron's using his own playbook to try to tell
Speaker 1: this story, but he's limited and what he can do,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's very outsider's perspective. And the way
Speaker 1: that Dances with Wolves was um but but to Dances
Speaker 1: with Wolves credit the native characters in that movie are
Speaker 1: flushed out way more than the Navy are in Avatar.
Speaker 1: It's like when I watched Dances with Wolves when I
Speaker 1: was very young. I really liked the movie because there
Speaker 1: was kind of a Catharsis of I don't like Kevin
Speaker 1: Costner and I don't really look like Kevin Costner, but
Speaker 1: to see someone who kind of looks like me being
Speaker 1: accepted in a group of people who look like my dad,
Speaker 1: you know, was kind of like really special. And especially
Speaker 1: with the stands with the Fisk character. But even then,
Speaker 1: it's like Graham Green's character, who is a holy man
Speaker 1: in that movie. He's hilarious, he's wonderful, he's dignified, he's
Speaker 1: open to communication, but he's also like, you know, why
Speaker 1: is this guy rolling around on the ground with like
Speaker 1: that thing on his shirt? And then the other native
Speaker 1: character whose name I forgot, but he's very much like
Speaker 1: this dude's fucking crazy. Let's leave, you know, and I'm
Speaker 1: not afraid of you. You know, like the time spent
Speaker 1: in the village, what those characters are more sympathetic and interesting.
Speaker 1: You really don't get that an avatar, no matter how
Speaker 1: sympathetic or understanding they're trying to be, because like, does
Speaker 1: NATTERI have brothers and sisters? Does she have friends? Does
Speaker 1: she have anties? Like you just nothing know so little,
Speaker 1: to the point where like her parents are important characters,
Speaker 1: but I only mentioned each of them like twice in
Speaker 1: the recap, and I so like they're just they're not
Speaker 1: that They're pretty secondary honestly to this story. And it's
Speaker 1: really only Naterie who we get any real insight into.
Speaker 1: And despite Zowey Sodanna's incredible performance, we still don't get
Speaker 1: that much about her backstory, about her life. We know
Speaker 1: a little bit about what is in store for her future. Um,
Speaker 1: she's going to take over the role as like spiritual
Speaker 1: leader for her mother, but like, we don't know that much.
Speaker 1: And then speaking of speaking of indigenous actors playing characters,
Speaker 1: so the actors who play the Alma Takaya characters. Um
Speaker 1: of the ones who get speaking roles, they're mostly black actors,
Speaker 1: except with one exception of West Study, who plays Naterie's father,
Speaker 1: A Tookan. He is an actor of the Cherokee Nation.
Speaker 1: But it seems to me and correct me if I'm
Speaker 1: misinterpreting this, but it feels like a lot of the
Speaker 1: imagery and iconography they're pulling from as far as just
Speaker 1: like cultural things, historical things about the Alma Takaya seem
Speaker 1: to be pulled from indigenous people of Northern America, So
Speaker 1: it feels weird to not cast more Native Americans in
Speaker 1: those roles. And if they're playing a character that's not
Speaker 1: even human, you know, like if it's going to be
Speaker 1: indigenous coded, then there's so many indigenous people that you
Speaker 1: could reach out to. You could cast Sami actors, you
Speaker 1: could cast Maudi actors or why. It could be the
Speaker 1: whole spectrum of indigenous people, But it would be nice
Speaker 1: to see them as humans. Took Well, that's the thing.
Speaker 1: Is like on top of that, it's like, how often
Speaker 1: like people of color in general, but you know, specifically
Speaker 1: Indigenous Americans are Indigenous people in general, are like other
Speaker 1: in I mean, this is like a pretty aggressive mothering
Speaker 1: of I don't know. Yeah, we're curiously science fiction. Yeah, yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: especially since colonizers use language and rhetoric against indigenous people
Speaker 1: to justify killing them and stealing from them. And one
Speaker 1: of the ways they do that is to reduce them
Speaker 1: or liken them to animals, and so to make the
Speaker 1: Almatya have animal features, pentacle porn cats. This is the mark,
Speaker 1: just a bit the other thing. Okay, so even back then,
Speaker 1: the thing that makes me just cringe the most, it's like,
Speaker 1: you you've got cat people, I know their native coded
Speaker 1: Why are they leallying? I mean, I know there's an
Speaker 1: actual word for it. I just forgot what it is.
Speaker 1: But it's where I'm going to move away from my mic. It's, yes,
Speaker 1: why why are they doing that? They're cats? Right, like
Speaker 1: they're cats. They should be saying even the even that
Speaker 1: thing that they do that, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like it's yeah, I I saw a lot of criticisms
Speaker 1: around the battle cries that seemed kind of like randomly
Speaker 1: and offensively selected for the Omedicaiah, And yeah, I haven't
Speaker 1: seen an effective argument against it, Like it just seems
Speaker 1: like that was a straight up offensive, lazy, shitty choice.
Speaker 1: It just made me. I was like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: first time I saw it too. Every time I see it,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, why are you doing that? That's so strange.
Speaker 1: There's a whole montage where it's like just that over
Speaker 1: and over and over and over and and and then
Speaker 1: the context of that scene is that Jake Sully is
Speaker 1: randomly the general now like that was. He just shows
Speaker 1: up on his large pterodactyl and he's like, I'm the captain.
Speaker 1: We're left to think that, like there is some collaboration
Speaker 1: going on between Jake and Suit, but it seems like
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, Jake is in charge
Speaker 1: because Jake like walkie talkies ton A ri at the
Speaker 1: peak of the action, it says that's an order. I
Speaker 1: was like, dude, you don't. You're not stop, You're not
Speaker 1: in charge. You just got here. You can't make an order.
Speaker 1: And I mean, speaking of cat like features of the
Speaker 1: Oma ta Kaya people, there's I think a whole conversation
Speaker 1: around their character design. I mean, there's like a lot
Speaker 1: of things to unpack as far as like lack of
Speaker 1: body diversity, costume design, skin color, just like everything that
Speaker 1: encompasses the character design of the Navy or the Ama
Speaker 1: ta kaya. So friend of the show, I just want
Speaker 1: a quickly shot. Friend of the show Janish Meeting has
Speaker 1: pointed this out for years, is the lack of body
Speaker 1: diversity in avatar characters. And it's also um because she's
Speaker 1: the funniest person ever, like turned it into a bit
Speaker 1: um where she's like, I'm going to get cast as
Speaker 1: a Navy and the game's gonna change, but like she's
Speaker 1: she was the first person I heard talking about that,
Speaker 1: because there already think so many like problematic elements to
Speaker 1: the way the Navy are designed that that sort of
Speaker 1: gets overlooked a lot of the time. Well not only that, um,
Speaker 1: elders play such an important role in indigenous community. So
Speaker 1: the fact that we don't really see like an elderly
Speaker 1: navvy character, you know other than the terries parents or
Speaker 1: you know, like not everyone in a society like this
Speaker 1: is a warrior, you know, So what do they look
Speaker 1: like when they're not in like peak shape all the time.
Speaker 1: And what about the warriors who um, you know get
Speaker 1: hurt or get injured or are disabled or something, what
Speaker 1: they're a bad hunt and the dinosaur thing bite your
Speaker 1: arm off, right, We don't see any of that, and
Speaker 1: it would have been interesting to see Jake like interact
Speaker 1: with some of those veterans you know. Actually, right, so
Speaker 1: many like overlaps between Jake and Navy culture that just
Speaker 1: just goes completely unexplored by this, uh, by this movie, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, as far as like just the body type,
Speaker 1: every single Navy person has the same exact body type,
Speaker 1: so they all have frog butts. Theyll frog butts. There's
Speaker 1: not a booty to be found. Well, I think that that,
Speaker 1: Like I kind of wonder. I've watched a lot of
Speaker 1: behind the scenes features on this movie in the past,
Speaker 1: and I like, I know that it's kind of tricky
Speaker 1: because in some ways, I want to say that they're
Speaker 1: almost animated characters. I know that it's motion capture. So
Speaker 1: it's like it's either animation trips we've talked about before
Speaker 1: where it's like very rigid two body types available, which
Speaker 1: I think does kind of carry through this movie, or
Speaker 1: it's a casting issue and they only cast to body types.
Speaker 1: So either way, it's you know, a fucking wash and
Speaker 1: you know, like it just I don't know, it doesn't
Speaker 1: just like reinforce um rigid stereotypes we see all the time.
Speaker 1: It also like lessons the richness of Pandora because you're
Speaker 1: just like completely ali, like what what are other people
Speaker 1: up to? Like it? Can't they appear to be thriving?
Speaker 1: You would think there are other things and elements of
Speaker 1: this culture that just are like not referenced or explored
Speaker 1: at all. And don't cants always have like that, you know,
Speaker 1: belly fat that like flops the run and they famously
Speaker 1: have eight nipples, So why don't they Alma Takaya have
Speaker 1: eight nipples? They just have tentacles nipples on the nipples scales, um.
Speaker 1: And then as far as and this is something I
Speaker 1: think we've touched on in different episodes in the past,
Speaker 1: but there's a pretty um a precedent has been set
Speaker 1: somewhere along the line that in sci fi and fantasy,
Speaker 1: especially because these are the genres where you would usually
Speaker 1: have like non human human like characters. So in this case,
Speaker 1: the Novi, the Alma Takaya have blue skin. And this
Speaker 1: is something we see a lot where um, you know,
Speaker 1: like humanoid characters who are coded as indigenous, they're coded
Speaker 1: as people of color in general, they will have blueskin,
Speaker 1: green skin, purple skin, some skin color that does not
Speaker 1: exist on humans, and um, just like kind of further
Speaker 1: others these characters who are coded as people of color.
Speaker 1: And I noticed that this is something that happens a
Speaker 1: lot in sci fi, where even if they cast like
Speaker 1: an actress of color, they usually cast her as an alien,
Speaker 1: like even um Star Trek, which is pretty diverse anyways.
Speaker 1: And I'm referring to like the J. J. Abrams movies
Speaker 1: because I am not a tricky how Dare You? Also
Speaker 1: starring Zoe's Seldonna, but this time she gets to actually
Speaker 1: have her actual skin, Carna skin. But but Sophia Botella,
Speaker 1: I think that's how you say her name. And the
Speaker 1: third movie is an alien with white skin, but she
Speaker 1: looks awesome and she's great, but you know, like it's
Speaker 1: not her also, but it's always held Donna, and like
Speaker 1: Guardians of the Galaxy has green skin, and uh, I
Speaker 1: love costume and makeup designs and stuff like that, especially
Speaker 1: when you're making monsters like Doug Jones is a fucking
Speaker 1: g and I love how Boy and everything, but it
Speaker 1: is a trope I've noticed like a lot, even in
Speaker 1: Star Wars. It's like you get Lupetea n Ago when
Speaker 1: you make her that ugly little alien. God do it.
Speaker 1: I will never get over that. I just like you
Speaker 1: did what with that casting decision? You did nothing, nothing
Speaker 1: with the casting decision, the most beautiful, talented person and
Speaker 1: you did what there. I was, Yeah, I don't even
Speaker 1: give a shit about Star Wars particularly, but I was
Speaker 1: enraged to fight that. I would also be curious to
Speaker 1: hear what listeners think on that issue, because I don't know.
Speaker 1: I've seen that point made about Zoe Salbanda's career quite
Speaker 1: a bit of like her too biggest or you know,
Speaker 1: I guess best remembered roles. Although there are those crossheads
Speaker 1: people out there, those cross roads cross the cross Heads
Speaker 1: from hell. Um, Okay, two SIPs of Miller Lite and
Speaker 1: I'm I'm cooked. Um. But yeah, I like I I
Speaker 1: think that that is like absolutely no accident. And I
Speaker 1: wish that sci fi were at a place where, like
Speaker 1: you know, sci fi can be like in a really
Speaker 1: amazing place to explore like more diverse world. If you
Speaker 1: have diverse voices, they're also behind the camera, which is
Speaker 1: not really happening in Avatar. And I think the you
Speaker 1: always run the risk of racial stereotyping anytime you code
Speaker 1: non human species as an existing group of actual people.
Speaker 1: I think Frozen two and even Avatar The Last Airbender
Speaker 1: do this better, where it's like, yes, they're coded as
Speaker 1: Inuit or they're coded as Sammy, but they're not you know,
Speaker 1: their water tribe, their Nothaldra, you know so, but they're people.
Speaker 1: You know, they're like actual human characters, even if the
Speaker 1: tribe or the races is not. I hope I said
Speaker 1: that correctly. No, I know what you mean. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: this wouldn't be as much of a concern if in
Speaker 1: these genres you had white actors also playing like, you know,
Speaker 1: blue skinned aliens, like it wouldn't be And then and
Speaker 1: that there was no specific like racial coding attached to
Speaker 1: any any of the characters. It's just like, this is
Speaker 1: just a person, like a doctrine with purple right, Doug Jones.
Speaker 1: Doug Jones, folks, he's a sexy fish, the sex. But
Speaker 1: because the trend tends to be that only bipoc actors
Speaker 1: are cast in these roles where their skin is a
Speaker 1: is you know, some color of the rainbow, and their
Speaker 1: character is coded as like another race. It's also because
Speaker 1: it's generally by like white writers and directors that are
Speaker 1: making that decision. Like that is a huge element of
Speaker 1: I don't know, like it does Like the way James
Speaker 1: Cameron is doing it seems like a trophy, overwrought, like lazy,
Speaker 1: kind of pretty offensive like storytelling trope, Like it's not
Speaker 1: he's not doing anything new here. Yeah, it would have
Speaker 1: more gravity if it was by a writer who was
Speaker 1: Indigenous or otherwise marginalized, right, I think. And then as
Speaker 1: far as the costume design goes, Um, I'm curious about
Speaker 1: your thoughts on this alley, But the nov across the
Speaker 1: gender spectrum of the nov, they're all like pretty scantily
Speaker 1: clad as far as their costume goes, Yes, the two
Speaker 1: body types are scantily clad. You can see all of
Speaker 1: their blueskin basically. And there is definitely another media trend
Speaker 1: where Indigenous women we see this time and time again
Speaker 1: are hyper hyper sexualized in meat. Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: exactly if that's what's happening here. I'm just so I'm
Speaker 1: just curious to your thoughts. So, um, this is kind
Speaker 1: of okay. So if you talk to one Indigenous person
Speaker 1: who've only talked to one Indigenous person. So this is
Speaker 1: just me personally. UM Connor Beard on TikTok, who's from
Speaker 1: the Lumbi tribe. I think I mentioned him earlier. He's
Speaker 1: doing a series of TikTok videos about Avatar and racism
Speaker 1: in it and tropes in it that are anti Indigenous,
Speaker 1: and I can co sign on most of them. I
Speaker 1: think he makes really good points. But he released and
Speaker 1: I say this respectfully. Um, he released a recent TikTok
Speaker 1: talking about how avatar uh fetishizes and sexualizes Native women,
Speaker 1: and I get it, but I don't agree entirely because, UM,
Speaker 1: I personally have a rule where if male and female
Speaker 1: characters are wearing the same costume, the costume itself isn't
Speaker 1: inherently sexualized. UM Like, Black Widow and Captain America are
Speaker 1: basically wearing the same unitard. It's just Black Widow was
Speaker 1: filmed differently, you know, So it's not really the costume
Speaker 1: that's the problem. UM. Like, someone I forgot who it was.
Speaker 1: I think it was a pop culture detective was talking
Speaker 1: about how Cora in tron Legacy is sexualized and I
Speaker 1: did not agree with that either. I'm like, she's wearing
Speaker 1: the same thing everybody else is wearing, and she's never
Speaker 1: really objectified by the camera, because there's a difference between
Speaker 1: like a character just being really sexy on the screen
Speaker 1: and the filmmakers and the filmmaking actively sexualizing that character.
Speaker 1: I watched that same TikTok um from Connor Beard, and
Speaker 1: he points out that in the screenplay for Avatar. So
Speaker 1: this makes me kind of think that James Cameron is
Speaker 1: actively sexualizing especially n No. I hate reading I hate
Speaker 1: reading James Cameron's writing. It's so stressful. Do you remember
Speaker 1: that thing from Titanic where she falls under his welcome weight.
Speaker 1: I will never stop thinking about the phrase welcome weight
Speaker 1: written by a fifty year old man. I just can't
Speaker 1: even Okay, what did he say? What did you say?
Speaker 1: I at least it translates well to strain, But he's like,
Speaker 1: I don't even think it's like an unpopular opinion to
Speaker 1: say that James Cameron is like a pretty bad writer.
Speaker 1: He's just got he's got a lot of chops where
Speaker 1: he's got a lot of chops. And then he also
Speaker 1: writes the movie he and then he writes what we're
Speaker 1: about welcome here? Okay, sorry, sorry, So This is for
Speaker 1: Naterie's character introduction, which in a screen generally has a
Speaker 1: little bit more detail um about like the character visually,
Speaker 1: like what the character looks like. So quote, Jake passes
Speaker 1: under a tree limb invisible to him, draped on the
Speaker 1: limb like a leopard. Is a striking, navvy girl. She
Speaker 1: watches only her eyes moving. She is life as a
Speaker 1: cat with a long neck, muscular shoulders, and nubile breasts.
Speaker 1: And she is devastatingly beautiful for a girl with a tail.
Speaker 1: Oh my, Jim, So do they ever mentioned the size
Speaker 1: of Jake's dick and he's going into his aftar body
Speaker 1: because not that that's telling exactly. Yeah, where's the reciprocity.
Speaker 1: Jim's going to horny jail? Again, there's one more sentence
Speaker 1: that is upsetting. In human age, she would be eighteen,
Speaker 1: so she is young, young young Jake Sully is what
Speaker 1: in his thirties, mid to late thirties, probably he could
Speaker 1: be a strong c W thirty one, you know, Dad,
Speaker 1: So that it is creepy. So like I I because
Speaker 1: I think that that is a really good rule of
Speaker 1: thumb that you're describing alley of like if there is
Speaker 1: because it's also like you, like James Cameron writes creepy.
Speaker 1: We've discussed it on the show before. It seems particularly
Speaker 1: pointed in this in this example, because he's you know,
Speaker 1: like writing about an Indigenous woman who's eighteen like man,
Speaker 1: there was like a lot of I'm glad that there's
Speaker 1: like a diversity of opinion on this, because I do
Speaker 1: think that, like the movie does not objectify Naterie the
Speaker 1: way that that couple of sentence run would imply that
Speaker 1: it would based on how creepy he's being. I didn't
Speaker 1: feel that creepiness in the camera or in the film language.
Speaker 1: I think that that is like, in spite of the
Speaker 1: fact that he's like a creepy writer, he's not a
Speaker 1: creepy filmmaker, which is, you know, an oversimplification. I'm sure
Speaker 1: he's had his creepy moments, but and he's made like
Speaker 1: R rated movies too, So if he really wanted to
Speaker 1: be creepy, he could have really been creepy and his
Speaker 1: other But but then on the other hand, it's I mean,
Speaker 1: I know that we sort of have spent a lot
Speaker 1: of this episode unraveling, like the way that like comparing
Speaker 1: Avatar to disney Spokehontas is a vast oversimplification, but because
Speaker 1: it's like the nav characters are like somewhat animated or like,
Speaker 1: I don't know how to describe motion capture really, but
Speaker 1: she looks more like a cat than a person, So
Speaker 1: it's not it doesn't I feel like Pocahontas like Disney's Pokehonas.
Speaker 1: Even Shell or Shell from the Road to Eldorado. I
Speaker 1: think that's way more offensive than the Terry because I
Speaker 1: would say that that is hyper sexualized and objectified more
Speaker 1: than nay Terry, because I also don't think that nudity
Speaker 1: is inherently sexual either, And the really the only time
Speaker 1: Nateri is ever like sexy on screen is when she's
Speaker 1: having sex, which you know, hopefully kind of the best
Speaker 1: time to be sexy is during sex. Wow, yeah, kind
Speaker 1: of weird if you're not. And even during the weird
Speaker 1: tentacle sex thing. I mean it's more romantic than sexy. Um,
Speaker 1: I guess yes. But like a worse example of this
Speaker 1: would be in Terrence Malix film The New World, where
Speaker 1: Koreanka Kulture, who is fourteen years old, is way more
Speaker 1: sexualized with her to grown male counter counter stars co stars,
Speaker 1: co stars, that's the word that counter stars. Yes, so
Speaker 1: fourteen year old Koreanka culture with that, Christian Bale and
Speaker 1: Colin Farrell, And excuse a blame, I still have not
Speaker 1: been able to bring myself to watch that one because
Speaker 1: everything I hear about it is just disgusting. She's beautiful
Speaker 1: and she's wonderful, but god, baby girl, I'm sorry. I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry, ugly ass bitch like Terance Bald, what do
Speaker 1: you do that, you fucking evil? One last thing, I'm
Speaker 1: and then then I promise I'll stop dragging Connor. But
Speaker 1: there was one more line that he says in that
Speaker 1: TikTok where so it's a line where NATII tells him,
Speaker 1: you know you're Alma Takaya now and you can make
Speaker 1: your bow from home tree and you can choose a woman,
Speaker 1: and he, you know, Jake's like, already chose, but this
Speaker 1: woman must choose me, And Connor feared makes the argument
Speaker 1: that Jake is the one being progressive and the yes
Speaker 1: the one being primitive. And I think that this is
Speaker 1: where context matters, because the Navy, with all other problems,
Speaker 1: are very egalitarian, and I don't think the women are
Speaker 1: just like, oh, you only exist to be chosen by
Speaker 1: these dudes, you know, because then why would there be
Speaker 1: women warriors? And I think it's also cousny Terry's engaged,
Speaker 1: so he's like, hey, do you want to come with me?
Speaker 1: Or you know, I know who I've chosen, but do
Speaker 1: you choose me? And I don't know. It's like I
Speaker 1: didn't think that was Yeah, I don't know. I hear
Speaker 1: you on that, like I mean, and I think that
Speaker 1: like the best. I mean, you said it yourself. Like
Speaker 1: the fact that she is engaged is not really harped
Speaker 1: on by the movie, which I appreciated because that's like
Speaker 1: a really annoying trope to like get in the mire of.
Speaker 1: But it's like it makes sense that it would be
Speaker 1: sort of like tacitly brought up in that conversation, because
Speaker 1: be weird if Jake didn't try to tacitly acknowledge like that,
Speaker 1: it's sort of him the way that Jack Dawson is
Speaker 1: like do you love him? It's just a simple question,
Speaker 1: do you love the guy or not? And Rose is like,
Speaker 1: this is not a suitable conversation. But but Jack was
Speaker 1: being being very rude. Jack was being a little devil
Speaker 1: in that conversation because he was being agro and not
Speaker 1: to hand it to Jake Sally, I don't do it
Speaker 1: and I hate to do it, but but you know,
Speaker 1: Jake doesn't get agro about it. It's like a it's
Speaker 1: a conversation. It's not like cornering you in the gym
Speaker 1: of the Titan. I'm just merely pointing out that James
Speaker 1: Cameron keeps writing more or less the same scene over
Speaker 1: he loves, he loves this one movie that he writes.
Speaker 1: And UM, my last question as it relates to the
Speaker 1: character design of the Alma Takaya, is I wasn't sure
Speaker 1: if James Cameron was referencing any specific into genius culture
Speaker 1: or cultures or nations with the Alma Takaya or is
Speaker 1: he just sort of like treating indigenous people as a
Speaker 1: monolith and like just kind of making several aesthetic references
Speaker 1: and kind of lumping them all together. And like, I
Speaker 1: don't know what's your thought on that A bit of
Speaker 1: column A and column B, Like it feels very outsiders
Speaker 1: perspective because it is when I first saw the movie, Um,
Speaker 1: it felt like I don't know if you've ever seen Apocalypto,
Speaker 1: but it kind of reminded me of that where it was.
Speaker 1: I assumed, since they're in a rainforest and the nab
Speaker 1: don't wear a lot of clothing, that it was probably
Speaker 1: inspired by a South American or Mesoamerican indigenous culture. I
Speaker 1: haven't found anything that suggested that. What I have found was, um,
Speaker 1: a lot of inspiration is from Maudi people from New
Speaker 1: Zealand and even in U the trailers for the Way
Speaker 1: of Water, I noticed that a lot of the facial
Speaker 1: tattoos on some of the New nav characters looked very
Speaker 1: much like the same ones from Polynesian cultures. Yeah, from
Speaker 1: what I've heard of and and read a little bit
Speaker 1: about the second movie, it seems like Cameron takes that
Speaker 1: direction a little more decisively in the second movie. How
Speaker 1: effective it is or how respectful it is, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but that I was. I was going through like old
Speaker 1: features trying to see if there was because there's so
Speaker 1: much written about certain elements of production. But that was
Speaker 1: not something I was able to really find. And I
Speaker 1: know that there is this tendency. Um. We were talking
Speaker 1: about this with Olivia Woodward a while ago about just
Speaker 1: like this tendency to take so many unique indigenous cultures
Speaker 1: and just like lump them all into one vague, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of trophy interpretation, which I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: really what I mean. I I just kind of struggled
Speaker 1: to find information on what he was doing. Right well,
Speaker 1: when I first saw the movie two thousand nine in
Speaker 1: the theater, there were several scenes five like major events
Speaker 1: in the film that I think mirror actual historical events
Speaker 1: in like a broader Native American history. So obviously invading
Speaker 1: Pandora is any It could be Columbus, it could be
Speaker 1: the British, it could be the French, it could be
Speaker 1: leif Ericson, you know, like any invasion colonialism, you know
Speaker 1: that's happening. Um. Obviously, there are elements that are probably
Speaker 1: inspired by Pocahontas and Jamestown and the Powetan nation interacting
Speaker 1: with the settlers, especially since John Smith, when he was kidnapped,
Speaker 1: was accepted into the tribe as kind of like a
Speaker 1: honorary member to like, you know, build diplomacy. The image
Speaker 1: of Pocahontas, like resting her head on him and saving
Speaker 1: him is kind of more of like an initiation, kind
Speaker 1: of like she's his godmother to compare it to anything. Uh,
Speaker 1: don't quote me on that one, since I'm not from
Speaker 1: those tribes, but that's my understanding of it. Any big
Speaker 1: massacre scene, but you know, a home tree getting destroyed
Speaker 1: felt like it could have been wounded me. It could
Speaker 1: have been sand Creek. It could have been any attack,
Speaker 1: any massacre really, and then you have the trail of
Speaker 1: tears afterwards. Were forcibly relocating indigenous people, um any death march,
Speaker 1: any long walks, you know. I was and again it
Speaker 1: was like it was just hard to find any like
Speaker 1: hard confirmation, But I kind of assumed that that was
Speaker 1: what Cameron was trying to reference, even in the a
Speaker 1: that Giovanni Ribisi's character was talking about it like oh,
Speaker 1: it's not a big deal. It's like a relocation. It's
Speaker 1: not like I was like, Okay, this is kind of
Speaker 1: clearly mapped on peacefully negotiate their relocation. It's like, there's
Speaker 1: no peaceful negotiation forcibly relocating. But the last one, which
Speaker 1: surprised me, and I'm happy that it ended like this
Speaker 1: was I feel like the final battle in Avatar, like
Speaker 1: the big climatic, awesome battle, felt like it was a
Speaker 1: big allegory to the Battle of a Little Big Horn
Speaker 1: or the Battle of Greasy Grass where the Lakota sue
Speaker 1: and the Cheyenne one a battle against General Custer and
Speaker 1: the U. S Army, and um, they did that because
Speaker 1: Custer thought that he was going to ambush them and
Speaker 1: murder all of them. And no, there's five thousand of
Speaker 1: us and you're dying today. And the person who shot
Speaker 1: him off of his horse was a woman fun by
Speaker 1: Buffalo calf road woman. So that pleases me. I didn't
Speaker 1: realize that's that's amazing. Yeah, she's the one who shot
Speaker 1: him off of his horse and probably delivered the killing blow.
Speaker 1: And afterwards the other women took like little needles or
Speaker 1: whatever and poked out his ear drums. And that's where
Speaker 1: the phrase, uh, that's where the phrase see what happens
Speaker 1: where you don't listen comes from. A So it sounds
Speaker 1: to me like James Cameron is pulling not only from
Speaker 1: like a design point of view of the of the
Speaker 1: Alma Takaya, but also from just like narrative events in
Speaker 1: the movie Avatar. He's pulling from a lot of different nations. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, allegory in storytelling is like you know that
Speaker 1: tends to happen where like you're you might be kind
Speaker 1: of referencing something it's an allegorical probably be weirder if
Speaker 1: you didn't pull from actual history. Like, it's not inherently
Speaker 1: negative that he did that, right, it's just the mess.
Speaker 1: It's just that, And it's the outsider's perspective that I
Speaker 1: think is really Yeah, and uh, well, I mean Indigenous
Speaker 1: people globally have a lot of shared experiences with colonialism
Speaker 1: and racism and environmental oppression and damage also, so I
Speaker 1: can see how kind of blending it together because it
Speaker 1: all kind of blows together makes sense. I feel like
Speaker 1: it probably could have been done a little more ethically,
Speaker 1: and the way to do that would be the higher
Speaker 1: native writers to write about the allegory. Um what else?
Speaker 1: Another thing I would change is that a fangirl Gene.
Speaker 1: I hope I'm pronouncing her name right. I think it's
Speaker 1: pronounced gene, but I think it's also pronounced jean j
Speaker 1: e a and n e f jean. Oh my, please
Speaker 1: don't kill me, fangro Jean. Anyway, she uh was talking
Speaker 1: about how she kind of likes and dislikes Avatar in
Speaker 1: the same way as I do, but she's like Jake
Speaker 1: should not have been allowed to stay period if he
Speaker 1: was going to, And I feel like that would have
Speaker 1: lended itself to the story a little bit better and
Speaker 1: the sincerity of the character where they're like, listen, we
Speaker 1: appreciate your help, but you put us in this situation,
Speaker 1: so at the end of all things, you can't sit
Speaker 1: with us anymore. So if it would have, at the
Speaker 1: very least it should have and he should be okay
Speaker 1: with it, if he's as good as he thinks he is,
Speaker 1: then that would have been like, that's fair, Okay, you
Speaker 1: don't get to stay with us. Yeah, I fucked up.
Speaker 1: I'll see myself out. Yeah, I will say your brother's funeral, Jake, Yeah, jeez,
Speaker 1: I will say. Um. This is my hot take is
Speaker 1: that I think, not that his story is good, not
Speaker 1: that his redemption arc is good, but all things consider,
Speaker 1: Jake's redemption arc is more satisfying or better than a
Speaker 1: redemption arc for like Kylo Wren, for example, because at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, even though Kyleo Wren or
Speaker 1: even Darth Vader turned from the dark side and do
Speaker 1: the right thing at the last moment, they die right
Speaker 1: after and they don't undo all the damage that they did.
Speaker 1: They may have stopped or prevented more damage, which good,
Speaker 1: but they never face the people that they hurt. They
Speaker 1: never like face any repercussions or consequences for the harm
Speaker 1: that they've caused. So, Jake, even though it's not great,
Speaker 1: he's still it has to prove himself if he's going
Speaker 1: to show his face again. And when he does the
Speaker 1: right thing, eventually it's like his friends die, people get hurt.
Speaker 1: He can never go back to his planet again. He
Speaker 1: can never you know. So there's a whole lot at
Speaker 1: stake that, you know, a lot of sacrifices that was
Speaker 1: made for him to do the right thing. He does
Speaker 1: have to do a lot to actually have a redemption.
Speaker 1: But he like centers himself so consistently throughout it that
Speaker 1: he's like I'm the boss now, and you're he's like
Speaker 1: or like yeah that it's I mean, which is maybe
Speaker 1: like realistic, super macho white male behavior, but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the fact that he's like, Okay, I like, I totally agree.
Speaker 1: It's good that he recognizes that he can't just like
Speaker 1: something has to be done to try to mitigate this tragedy.
Speaker 1: That is in a huge part his fault, but his
Speaker 1: ocean is like I have to be the lead captain
Speaker 1: of And then he's rewarded by being like, Okay, you're deaf.
Speaker 1: You're one of us again, and you're permanently one of us,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna do this like spiritual ceremony to make
Speaker 1: you shud be back on a trial basis at very
Speaker 1: least like for real. It's like you're answering for crimes
Speaker 1: against right. Hey, here's another question I have for you, ali, Um.
Speaker 1: Throughout the movie, there's a lot of emphasis on the
Speaker 1: Alma Takaya's connection to the earth and this like spiritual
Speaker 1: connection to the wildlife the floor and the fauna, and
Speaker 1: obviously pulling from you know, indigenous culture in the connection
Speaker 1: that indigenous people have with the earth. But the movie
Speaker 1: introduces this like kind of sci fi fantasy element to
Speaker 1: that with like the tentacle angling network and then yeah,
Speaker 1: and and I'm just curious about your thoughts about that
Speaker 1: and what implications you think that has good or bad
Speaker 1: or neutral. Okay, this is why Natives need to make stuff.
Speaker 1: Kim Natives the same budget, and we will make something
Speaker 1: better than Avatar. I promise. I promise, Um, because I
Speaker 1: mean to James Cameron's credit, he's been an environmentalist activists
Speaker 1: since like high school, so there are good intentions there.
Speaker 1: He Um said in an interview very recently. I think
Speaker 1: it was like James Cameron breaks down his most iconic
Speaker 1: roles or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, he Um was
Speaker 1: talking about like as he was making Avatar, He's like
Speaker 1: Indigenous people were reaching out and saying, you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff that's happening in your movie is
Speaker 1: happening in real life in our community. So there were
Speaker 1: things like UM and even Sophia yanoku'sa Sami activists UM,
Speaker 1: when she gave her TED talk about mining companies in
Speaker 1: Lapland in Sami territories and the damage that had done,
Speaker 1: she said that Avatar felt like that, Like she definitely
Speaker 1: resonated with the damage that's done to these um ecosystems
Speaker 1: and these sacred territories and everything, and how Avatar has
Speaker 1: a happy ending, but in real life, we're still fighting
Speaker 1: in Lapland, and the same can be said in like
Speaker 1: Brazil and Standing Rock, West Uotan and all these other places.
Speaker 1: And when you think of like just the spiritual aspect
Speaker 1: in Pandora, I mean it's a movie, so they kind
Speaker 1: of have to ham it up. But I mean people
Speaker 1: are not like usually in indigenous cultures or the way
Speaker 1: that we believe in these things. People are not at
Speaker 1: the top of the pyramid and then everything is beneath us.
Speaker 1: Indigenous people tend to be stewards of the land who
Speaker 1: believe that we are actually part of an ecosystem. And
Speaker 1: as much as we need the land, the land also
Speaker 1: needs us to take care of it. And the land
Speaker 1: is very much as alive and as sentient as people
Speaker 1: and as animals. So I see what he was trying
Speaker 1: to do. Uh, he's just kind of it's just kind
Speaker 1: of out of his element because he's not part of
Speaker 1: the community. You know, there's like a something lost in translation.
Speaker 1: I guess there's a disconnect because it's so very outsider's perspective,
Speaker 1: and it's a good idea. I mean, I do like
Speaker 1: the idea of you know, like you can plug your
Speaker 1: tail into the willow tree and here your ancestors singing
Speaker 1: and stuff like. That's beautiful, but not when they're aliens, right,
Speaker 1: It's almost to me it reads is like um an
Speaker 1: outsider's perspective looking at Indigenous spirituality and being like it's
Speaker 1: so mystical, it's so magical, it's almost science fiction, and
Speaker 1: then like so as to be alien and then just
Speaker 1: like leaning into that and then putting it in a movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and in a way that kind of dehumanizes
Speaker 1: indigenous people that you're trying to be sympathetic towards. Anyways,
Speaker 1: and the deleted scenes. There's a really awesome deleted scene
Speaker 1: where Jake, before he becomes one of the people, undergoes
Speaker 1: a vision quest. I guess I don't know if you've
Speaker 1: seen that. I have not seen that scene. Now. Yeah, it's, um,
Speaker 1: it's an incomplete deleted scene and they must have ran
Speaker 1: out of money because the CG isn't there. But it's
Speaker 1: where he like, um, it's when he tells core Rich
Speaker 1: or Stephen Lane, you know, I have one more thing
Speaker 1: I have to do and then I'll be one of
Speaker 1: them and blah blah blah. And then it cuts to
Speaker 1: nay Terry putting the war paint on um and then
Speaker 1: he goes into like this chamber and Moat is like
Speaker 1: lighting the incense and the herbs and stuff, and like
Speaker 1: this beetle or whatever, like he eats a worm and
Speaker 1: then this beetle like stings him on the back of
Speaker 1: his neck or whatever, and he has a vision quest
Speaker 1: and when he survives it, they're like, oh, well you're alive,
Speaker 1: so let's all hug and touch each other. But there's
Speaker 1: a scene where he's talking to Grace before he does it,
Speaker 1: because she's like, dude, you cannot do this because actual
Speaker 1: navvy have died doing this and we have no idea
Speaker 1: what an avatar is going to do. But it's Jake
Speaker 1: and he has his plat armor, so he'll be fine.
Speaker 1: But the chosen one he can't die. Yeah, he's God,
Speaker 1: he should I should have died in the first second
Speaker 1: when he goes in as an avatar when those like
Speaker 1: rhinoceros like animals are like plowing him over, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he should have been done for I found I found
Speaker 1: it so frustrating. How like anytime n Teria was about
Speaker 1: to bail on him, which was constantly because he sucks,
Speaker 1: Like there's a sign from the from Pandora from Awa
Speaker 1: that Jake's a really cool guy. You're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: in what way? But anyway, So the thing is he
Speaker 1: tells Grace what he's doing, then he goes They don't
Speaker 1: even have a word for lie. They had to learn
Speaker 1: it from us. I'm like, dude, what, In my opinion,
Speaker 1: it dehumanizes Indigenous people when you say something, even if
Speaker 1: it's meant to be flattering, Like they don't have a
Speaker 1: word for lie. You know, they don't even lie. That's
Speaker 1: the other side of the coin, for there's no word
Speaker 1: for thank you and doth racky. You don't know what
Speaker 1: I mean. It's like it's another form of just degrading.
Speaker 1: They cannot possibly comprehend the concept of x y Z
Speaker 1: or that like an indigenous character would not be capable
Speaker 1: of lying, like the full spectrum of being you know, alive. Yeah, ridiculous.
Speaker 1: I found it interesting. I looked into James Cameron's first
Speaker 1: round of interviews for this movie and then his current interview.
Speaker 1: It does seem like I mean, I'm just like, I
Speaker 1: guess I'm just interested in how avatar to works out
Speaker 1: for him. But in the first one I was curious
Speaker 1: of like how explicitly he was, how explicit he was
Speaker 1: and saying like where his influences were coming from, because
Speaker 1: this was something he started working on in the nineties,
Speaker 1: like during the production of Titanic. He was it is
Speaker 1: very nineties environmentalists Captain planet E right, and we were like,
Speaker 1: I see the intent, but the follow through is But
Speaker 1: he said, like, I was surprised at how open he was,
Speaker 1: A like being influenced by movies like Dances with Wolves,
Speaker 1: movies like Lawrence of Arabia in terms of a movie
Speaker 1: I like. He He references Princess Mononoke uh several times
Speaker 1: as another inspiration, but he does kind of explicitly say like, yeah,
Speaker 1: these you know, very white savior sympathetic colonizer stories are
Speaker 1: like ones I was pulling from when I was making
Speaker 1: this and and so there's that I just wanted to
Speaker 1: share and you can tell, and you can tell, and
Speaker 1: Precess Mononoke does it so much better, just does it
Speaker 1: so much better. And it also features an indigenous main
Speaker 1: character because Ashitaka is Amish. Love it my indigenous king.
Speaker 1: But uh, okay, so elephant in the room. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about the comparisons may between this movie and Pokehonas, because
Speaker 1: that's usually how everybody dismisses the film. It's Pokehonisan space.
Speaker 1: Oh and James Cameron also says that he mapped early
Speaker 1: plots about Materia onto. He says the Pokehontas story. But
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, what do you even mean when you
Speaker 1: say that? It sounds like he's he's referring specifically to
Speaker 1: the Disney version of it, because the real version of
Speaker 1: that story, you're fifty years old. Yeah, so um so
Speaker 1: to begin, I mean, obviously, the reason I haven't stepped
Speaker 1: up to do a Pokehonas episode is because I'm not
Speaker 1: from her tribe and there's a lot of insight that
Speaker 1: I cannot provide that someone from her tribe would. But
Speaker 1: you know, obviously, the way I look at it, when people,
Speaker 1: you know, try to dismiss it as Pokehonisan space, I
Speaker 1: always say, I'm like, Pokehonas is an actual person who
Speaker 1: saw heard and terrible things happened to her, So she
Speaker 1: deserves more respect than that. And these stories are not
Speaker 1: the same, you know, like full stock. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: the same way that people make fun of Elizabeth Warren
Speaker 1: and call her Pocahonas, And it's like, you know, you
Speaker 1: can criticize both this film and Elizabeth Warren for numerous
Speaker 1: valid reasons, but you can do it without being racist,
Speaker 1: and you can do it without using an abused child
Speaker 1: as a punchline. But the other thing is is that
Speaker 1: the story of pokeahon Is how it like, actually not
Speaker 1: even the story of Pocahons, but the romanticized account of
Speaker 1: Pocahonas that people are very familiar with that was used
Speaker 1: in this movie and the Disney movie and everything is
Speaker 1: much older. And it says there's this article and it's
Speaker 1: called the pocona Is perplex and it says that it
Speaker 1: was um Originally there was this old Scottish ballad. It
Speaker 1: was called like Lord Bateman and the Turkish King's Daughter,
Speaker 1: and it was this really well known ballad in Europe
Speaker 1: at the time where an English adventurer goes to a
Speaker 1: foreign land and meets like the sultan's daughter or an
Speaker 1: African king's daughter or something, and she's beautiful and when
Speaker 1: he's in a dungeon and he's about to die, she
Speaker 1: saves him and then they fall in love. He goes
Speaker 1: back to his homeland and she goes after him and
Speaker 1: shows up on his wedding day and they love each
Speaker 1: other even though she's darker. And people who read John
Speaker 1: Smith's accounts of his stories in the New World, we're like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, it's that story John Smith. And Pocahonas
Speaker 1: is like Lord Bateman and the Turkish king's daughter would
Speaker 1: be like, you know, oh my god, it's like Jack
Speaker 1: and Rhose from Titanic, you know, like it was that level.
Speaker 1: So that's what started the whole thing. So there are
Speaker 1: elements where, you know, like you can compare the two,
Speaker 1: but it's not the Pocahonta story specifically, because that is
Speaker 1: a very different story. When people were, you know, criticizing
Speaker 1: Avatar for ripping off or seemed to be ripping off
Speaker 1: so much from Disney's Pocahontas, and I remember like fern
Speaker 1: Gully being a thing too that everyone was like, it's
Speaker 1: ripping off a fern gully. And yeah, as I was
Speaker 1: watching the movie this time, I was like remembering that criticism,
Speaker 1: but I was thinking, well, no one was talking about
Speaker 1: how this movie is just pulling from a lot of
Speaker 1: historical events, like in history. Yeah, yeah, his history, like,
Speaker 1: but that was never part of the mainstream conversation about
Speaker 1: this movie. And yes, as we've discussed, James Cameron did
Speaker 1: not handle certain things in this movie well, but people
Speaker 1: were so hung up on similarities to existing movies. But
Speaker 1: it's like a lot of what happens in Avatar, there's
Speaker 1: a very clear historical precedent of colonizers stealing land and
Speaker 1: committing genocide against Indigenous people for capitalist gain and for power,
Speaker 1: and that not being part of the conversation about this movie,
Speaker 1: I feel like speaks to what you were saying earlier,
Speaker 1: like at the very beginning of the episode Ali as
Speaker 1: far as like people finding reasons to not like this movie,
Speaker 1: and that it felt very steeped in like anti indigenous racism,
Speaker 1: and the colonizers are very clearly presented as the bad
Speaker 1: guys in this movie, which is not true of Disney's
Speaker 1: Pocahontas other than it's like I think again, it's like
Speaker 1: colonization the one guy and all the other guys are great,
Speaker 1: and one of them is Christian Bail and you're just like, well,
Speaker 1: what the fuck? And the guys in that movie are
Speaker 1: terrible and they're never held account bowl for all of
Speaker 1: singing about killing Indians and stuff like that. So it's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this guy is worse than you because this is your
Speaker 1: John Smith's friends. So if you work nice, you know,
Speaker 1: and and Avatar doesn't do that right right. I yeah,
Speaker 1: it didn't register for me certainly at the time, but
Speaker 1: I I I think that the the original backlash to
Speaker 1: I mean, like whatever, it's problematic on so many levels,
Speaker 1: and I know that word is overused, but first of all,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, it doesn't bode well for James Cameron
Speaker 1: if he's being criticized for ripping off a famously historically
Speaker 1: abysmal children's movie. That's not great to begin with. But
Speaker 1: I also feel, yeah, it like speaks ill of the
Speaker 1: general audiences at the time and of film criticism, or
Speaker 1: at least you know, prominent film critics at the time,
Speaker 1: which we've talked about a million times always skew white guys,
Speaker 1: and the the implication there is like, well, we've already
Speaker 1: had a movie that talks about colonialism. We don't need
Speaker 1: more where you're just like, no, like not to say
Speaker 1: that Avatar deals with it anywhere, approaching perfectly, but for
Speaker 1: the conclusion to be like imperialism and colonialism and racism
Speaker 1: against indigenous populations is like, what, we have that movie,
Speaker 1: we don't need another one. It's like, well, okay, I'll
Speaker 1: go fund yourself. No, yeah, well I noticed that back then,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure it hasn't gone away. But back then,
Speaker 1: when I was like spite liking it, the white reviewers,
Speaker 1: like on YouTube and on different um platforms, we're criticizing
Speaker 1: the film, and the biggest thing that kept going if
Speaker 1: they didn't just outright dismiss it as dancers with wolves
Speaker 1: in space or Poconisan space, they would say things like
Speaker 1: white guilt, and you know, like, oh, well, what am
Speaker 1: I supposed to do? You know, And it's like Hollywood's
Speaker 1: making these movies where I'm supposed to feel bad for
Speaker 1: being a white guy, and all of these white guys
Speaker 1: in this movie are the bad guys. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: if that's your takeaway from it and not the anti
Speaker 1: indigenous like racism in the film, even if it is,
Speaker 1: you know, not nearly as bad as it has been
Speaker 1: in the past, but it's still problematic, Like you have
Speaker 1: a bigger problem with not being the good guy this time,
Speaker 1: when you know, there's so many other problems with the
Speaker 1: film that you could be talking about that, you know,
Speaker 1: Indigenous people have even talked about, like I like the movie,
Speaker 1: but lots of Indigenous people don't, for like many valid reasons.
Speaker 1: And it's like none of those reasons that I've heard
Speaker 1: Indigenous people complain about have ever been said by any
Speaker 1: of like those reviewers from the past at all because
Speaker 1: they just weren't even thinking about it. It's like their
Speaker 1: ego was just so fragile. There the hell of this
Speaker 1: movie was vaguely critical of me and I hate fire.
Speaker 1: You're just like still at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: it's like, I mean, this movie was made by a
Speaker 1: fabulously wealthy white guy, like and the other thing. Um,
Speaker 1: because I used to think back then, I used to think, Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe the bad guys are a little too on the nose,
Speaker 1: maybe they're too cartooning, maybe they're you know, not subtle enough.
Speaker 1: Until Standing Rock happened, and that really I'm like, rewatching
Speaker 1: this in a post Standing Rock era, post Missing and
Speaker 1: Murdered Indigenous Women era, I'm like, this is exactly how
Speaker 1: these people think, you know, Like this is how they talk.
Speaker 1: So let's see. There's a couple quotes from the movie
Speaker 1: that really stood out to me. Um. The first one's
Speaker 1: Joe Bonny Rubus's character when he's talking to Jake about
Speaker 1: relocating them, and he says, look, kill the Indigenous looks bad.
Speaker 1: But there's one thing that shareholders hate more than bad press,
Speaker 1: and that's a bad quarterly statement. Yes, that is like yes,
Speaker 1: that's not a cartoon villain. That's how it works. That's Enbridge,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. That is Oca, you know,
Speaker 1: the Oca crisis for people who don't live in the
Speaker 1: United States, is every mining facility in sami Land, you know,
Speaker 1: in Lapland. And that's how they think. That's that's how
Speaker 1: it is. There's a quote from I think it's in
Speaker 1: Jake's voiceover, so it shouldn't be him who says this.
Speaker 1: It should probably be material who says this. But the
Speaker 1: quote is something like, you know, make them the enemy
Speaker 1: and you can justify killing them, which is what has
Speaker 1: happened all throughout history when genocides have happened. Is like again,
Speaker 1: rhetoric and mental gymnastics are used to justify by killing
Speaker 1: entire populations of people. And you see that happening in
Speaker 1: the movie where like the Omanakaya people are referred to
Speaker 1: are like references being roaches and you know Blue Monthly
Speaker 1: and yeah, anti indigenous slurs are used several times. Their
Speaker 1: intelligence is insulted, like it's just all these things to
Speaker 1: dehumanize them and make them the enemy to justify killing them.
Speaker 1: And I found the line while a line from the movie.
Speaker 1: It says, it's grace telling him these are people in
Speaker 1: Giovanni Ribisi's character says, no, they're fly, fly bitten savages
Speaker 1: that live in a tree. All right, look around. I
Speaker 1: don't know about you, but I see a lot of trees.
Speaker 1: They can move. So I said, you know, this is
Speaker 1: genocide and action. You know, granted they're not human, but
Speaker 1: you strip them of their humanity and it becomes easier
Speaker 1: to kill them. And then in colonial terms, like this
Speaker 1: is something I don't a lot of people understand when
Speaker 1: you talk about colonialism, and you know, white imperialists coming
Speaker 1: to America, for example, in America is huge, Like the
Speaker 1: continent of North America is gigantic, the United States is massive.
Speaker 1: That is a lot of land that was stolen, you know.
Speaker 1: So anyways, it says, you know, like let's not even
Speaker 1: break it down. Let's break it down to like it's
Speaker 1: not even an entire continent. Let's say it's your house
Speaker 1: and someone comes to your house and they're like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: why don't we just share your house? You know, like
Speaker 1: we want to live here, We're here, I brought my
Speaker 1: whole family. Let's just live in your house. I mean,
Speaker 1: what do you tell them do you say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: here's the room set up for you, or do you
Speaker 1: tell them get the funk out of my house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, no, we're not sharing our home with you.
Speaker 1: You have to fucking get out of my house. Even
Speaker 1: in the event where okay, okay, we'll leave Home Tree
Speaker 1: and we'll go someplace else, they're not going to stop
Speaker 1: at Home Tree. They're going to obliterate them, absolutely, because
Speaker 1: they immediately switched and threatened to kill, like we're threatened
Speaker 1: to the next Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like that's
Speaker 1: the other thing I mean, like, again, Turtle Island is massive,
Speaker 1: The United States is massive. That is a lot of trees.
Speaker 1: They had a lot of natives moved to and look
Speaker 1: what happened, you know, and it's it's so heavy. It
Speaker 1: was almost good, except it's sucking Jake, right, take Jake
Speaker 1: out of the story. I think that there was also
Speaker 1: a time where I felt like the storytelling was too unsettled,
Speaker 1: which is like also kind of ridiculous when you show
Speaker 1: up a James Cameron movie you're like, well, well, I
Speaker 1: don't know what I expected, but but I think that, yeah,
Speaker 1: like that those elements have aged very very well, and
Speaker 1: in the movie's favor. And it's also like the politics.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was not on every front, but in
Speaker 1: terms of anti military industrial complex, and I had to
Speaker 1: go back and like look up, like there were specific
Speaker 1: terms and events connected to the Iraq War that James
Speaker 1: Cameron was referencing through this that I just did not remember.
Speaker 1: Um is unobtainium oil, not your fucking mind. But uh
Speaker 1: but I thought that, Like, I mean, the politics of
Speaker 1: this movie and what it is against is pretty clear,
Speaker 1: and like the I think the metaphor and the characters
Speaker 1: that they used to make those politics clear is very
Speaker 1: very muddled, and bajillion mistakes are made, some of which
Speaker 1: we've discussed, some of which we still have to discuss.
Speaker 1: But I mean, it's like the politics of this movie.
Speaker 1: It's it's a you know, massively successful anti war, anti
Speaker 1: imperialist movie, anti capitalist corporation. Yeah, And ironically the movie
Speaker 1: made three billion dollars three bill on Tall Wars And
Speaker 1: that's why people remember it. It's because it was so
Speaker 1: good at capitalism, not because it was like the best
Speaker 1: movie ever. You know. The sad thing is that it
Speaker 1: could have been. It just needed like it have been
Speaker 1: so much better, could have been because even James Cameron,
Speaker 1: like in the YouTube video I was talking about like
Speaker 1: his most iconic films or whatever, he said, He's all like,
Speaker 1: after I did Avatar, I was hoping to like do
Speaker 1: some more environmentalist activism and like Brazil and all these
Speaker 1: other places. He's like, but I decided to make the
Speaker 1: Avatar sequels instead, And I'm like, well, instead of ocean conservation,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, dude, you could have been doing actual
Speaker 1: good stuff. But he did say, he's like, you know,
Speaker 1: film is powerful and you can reach a lot of people.
Speaker 1: For sure, I completely agree, But also film productions, especially
Speaker 1: huge budget ones like this, in the environmental impact they have, well,
Speaker 1: I would be curious to know if James Cameron has
Speaker 1: made any strides in that direction. I'm always interested in
Speaker 1: that kind of side of filmmaking because there's there are
Speaker 1: like far less harmful ways to do it. And I
Speaker 1: wonder if, like, you know, given the politics of his
Speaker 1: movies and seems like his personal politics, whether that's something
Speaker 1: that has been addressed even remotely. I hope so, but
Speaker 1: it's like you just never know with a production like that. Right,
Speaker 1: The biggest concern I have with the sequel is that
Speaker 1: how many of the characters in the film in the
Speaker 1: sequel are actors of color, and how of them, how
Speaker 1: many are Indigenous? And that's like my biggest concern. It's like,
Speaker 1: if it's more white people and blue faces pretending to
Speaker 1: be Indians. I'm like, have we learned anything? It's been
Speaker 1: fourteen years or something like, it's been eighty four years
Speaker 1: and eighty four it's felt like eighty four years since
Speaker 1: two thousand nine. To be honest, Um, Um, can we
Speaker 1: talk about the able is um a bit more? Um?
Speaker 1: We touched on a lot of the things already, but
Speaker 1: I just want to make sure it has It's like,
Speaker 1: we give it some more time. So Jake Sulley uses
Speaker 1: a wheelchair. He seems to be paralyzed from the waist
Speaker 1: down from an injury he sustained in battle as a marine.
Speaker 1: As we mentioned, that character is not played by a
Speaker 1: disabled actor, which is a problem we come upon time
Speaker 1: and time again in movies. Um, Sam Worthington is able bodied.
Speaker 1: I read a lot of responses from disabled people about
Speaker 1: the representation we get on screen in this movie, and
Speaker 1: like we mentioned already, it seems to be pretty mixed
Speaker 1: across the board, where some people saw themselves in Jake Sully.
Speaker 1: They they felt represented by his character and you know,
Speaker 1: him being a disabled character. Others criticized him as one
Speaker 1: of many movie characters who is trying to quote unquote
Speaker 1: fix his disability, right right, He's like being incentivized by
Speaker 1: the kernel of like I will like it's implied like
Speaker 1: I will make you whole again. And that's something that
Speaker 1: is said to be appealing to Jake Sully at first.
Speaker 1: That and there are interpretations and I can see how
Speaker 1: you might interpret it this way where one of the
Speaker 1: main reasons he chooses to stay in his avatar body
Speaker 1: is that his avatar body is able bodied. And of
Speaker 1: course this, you know, perpetuates this idea that disabled people
Speaker 1: are you know, quote unquote incomplete, or that they have
Speaker 1: something wrong with them. Disabled characters and movies trying to
Speaker 1: again quote unquote fix their disability is is something that
Speaker 1: you see a lot, I think, especially in movie villains.
Speaker 1: Um A friend of the show, Kristin Lopez, wrote about
Speaker 1: this in The Hollywood Reporter when Tour Story four came out.
Speaker 1: So it talks a lot about story for but it
Speaker 1: references a lot of other movie characters where this is
Speaker 1: the case so there's you know, that criticism. But then
Speaker 1: other people were like, well, but no, that's not why
Speaker 1: he chooses to stay in his avatar body. There are
Speaker 1: other reasons. So there's just like seems like it's like
Speaker 1: an original like that that first sequence where when he's
Speaker 1: in the avatar body does seem like that is a
Speaker 1: big but it doesn't seem like that remains the incentive.
Speaker 1: I don't know, or or like not that it's even
Speaker 1: an incentive, right, because then he falls in love with
Speaker 1: a woman, and then he falls in love with the
Speaker 1: culture and he becomes an indigenous person. You know how
Speaker 1: when you can be a white person and then you
Speaker 1: become an indigenous person, you know when that always happened.
Speaker 1: So the point is there's a lot of nuances to
Speaker 1: this discussion, and I'd be as always, we're just curious
Speaker 1: to hear from our listeners who can speak from from
Speaker 1: a place of experience. Yeah, I mean, because it's I
Speaker 1: also read kind of a diversity of opinion there where. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, we have we have a protagonist who he sucks,
Speaker 1: but he is our our main our protagonists is a
Speaker 1: is a disabled person and you don't see that in
Speaker 1: movies really ever very infrequently. Yeah, But on top of that,
Speaker 1: you have many of the common trophy issues with disabled characters,
Speaker 1: beginning with the fact that Sam Worthington is not a
Speaker 1: disabled actor, and it kind of goes on from there.
Speaker 1: I would be really curious to hear listener perspective on
Speaker 1: on that because I think the movie, like the movie
Speaker 1: doesn't really touch on it that much after the first act,
Speaker 1: and which I think is where the you know could
Speaker 1: could be seen us for the best, where James Cameron
Speaker 1: doesn't appear to have very much insight into that topic.
Speaker 1: But again, like who's telling the story, who is advising,
Speaker 1: and um, how does that bear out? And character for
Speaker 1: exactly exactly Jake, not like the other colonizers Sully. It
Speaker 1: seems like that choice was made in the story because
Speaker 1: when you're writing a screenplay. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: know this, but I do have the master's degree in
Speaker 1: screenwriting from Boston University. I would never bring it up
Speaker 1: on my own, but you make choices about your characters,
Speaker 1: especially a protagonist, to motivate and justify other things that
Speaker 1: will happen in the movie. So it feels to me
Speaker 1: like we need to get him from the start of
Speaker 1: the movie where he's a human white guy, to the
Speaker 1: end of the movie, he's gonna be uh member of
Speaker 1: the Alma Takaya people. What qualities or what things can
Speaker 1: we attribute to this character to justify that making sense
Speaker 1: by the end of the movie for him to want
Speaker 1: to permanently be an Alma Takaya person. And I feel
Speaker 1: like the only reason that he is a disabled character
Speaker 1: in the movie is to be like, well, that, well,
Speaker 1: that'll be one of the things that justifies him making
Speaker 1: this choice. I was about to say that because, um,
Speaker 1: one of the things now speaking also as an able
Speaker 1: bodied person, was that watching the film for the first time,
Speaker 1: I think another reason why I like Stephen Lane's character,
Speaker 1: even though he's the bad guy, was you know, he
Speaker 1: tells them, I look out for my own If you
Speaker 1: do this, I promise you you'll get your legs back,
Speaker 1: you know, And and he says, quote unquote your real legs,
Speaker 1: And it's like, you know, for me, you know who's
Speaker 1: not disabled or doesn't have a disability, I'm like, fuck, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know these things are aliens and your planets dying,
Speaker 1: So get your legs and do it and save the
Speaker 1: planet and go home. Hell. Yes, you know, and I
Speaker 1: feel like a lot of people probably felt the same
Speaker 1: way until you meet the nav and you realize that
Speaker 1: this is bullshit and he's colonizer and stuff. So at first,
Speaker 1: on paper, it makes sense. However, if that was the case,
Speaker 1: if it was do this for me, get your legs back,
Speaker 1: the downside should have been if you don't do this,
Speaker 1: you remain disabled. But there's no like lose lose He's like, okay,
Speaker 1: so I still have my body at the end, you know, so, well,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's implying that, like your punishment is that
Speaker 1: you stay disabled, as if being disabled is a punishment.
Speaker 1: So there's all these like yucky implications. And also it's
Speaker 1: like we've received no indication that like Jake Sulley is
Speaker 1: unhappy as like as a disabled man, Like that's not
Speaker 1: something that we ever hear him speak on in any like,
Speaker 1: it's just people are making that assumption about him, which
Speaker 1: is a very common, ablest thing to do. But it's
Speaker 1: like the story doesn't challenge it really, like they're like, well,
Speaker 1: of course this is true. Right at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the movie, he does make a comment where he's like, uh,
Speaker 1: they can fix it if you have the money because
Speaker 1: American healthcare in the future is still dogshit. So he
Speaker 1: is disabled because he broke But still it's like that
Speaker 1: should have been a bigger driving point if that was
Speaker 1: going to be the thing that motivates them to do
Speaker 1: the thing, right, I mean, yeah, it's like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: guess there's commentary on like the horrible state of of
Speaker 1: like American healthcare slash like veteran benefits, which is like
Speaker 1: still abysmal, But yeah, the the way that was handled.
Speaker 1: And then again, and I'm speculating here, but I think
Speaker 1: the choice was made to make him disabled to like
Speaker 1: narratively justify like him wanting to remain in this avatar
Speaker 1: body by the end of the movie. That's just like
Speaker 1: not the representation people. And I you know, I'm also
Speaker 1: speaking as an able bodied person here, but it's my
Speaker 1: understanding that people with disabilities want to see themselves represented
Speaker 1: on screen, I mean obviously far more than they already are,
Speaker 1: and in a way that just normalizes their experience rather
Speaker 1: than being some like justification for something else, some other
Speaker 1: narrative choice that's going to happen, And that's not what's
Speaker 1: happening in this movie. No, it's been like weaponized as
Speaker 1: a plot point, like it's just and like a lazy
Speaker 1: plot point at that, which is just like, I guess
Speaker 1: I can't say that the movie is necessarily above that behavior.
Speaker 1: Obviously we've been talking for two hours, but like, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. I would be curious to know, because I also, like,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't want to ignore disabled writers who
Speaker 1: who did enjoy how Jake Sally was characterized. Of course,
Speaker 1: I have one last, just quick thing that I want
Speaker 1: to touch on really quickly, harkening back to the romance
Speaker 1: between Jake and the tri um. Yeah, I want to
Speaker 1: talk about anterior in general, because praising her like and
Speaker 1: you know, in different places. But yeah, yeah, and so
Speaker 1: the thing I liked about the romance and it's really
Speaker 1: just that like he's like, I have chosen a woman,
Speaker 1: but she needs to choose me, and she's like, yeah
Speaker 1: I did already you goo. Um. So I liked that,
Speaker 1: Like she's given and like that just shows how how
Speaker 1: low the bar is for a female character being given
Speaker 1: agency in her own romantic life is something that I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh my goodness, that happened. I feel like we've really
Speaker 1: been handing it to James Cameron for doing that in
Speaker 1: a way that's like, yeah, that should just be kind
Speaker 1: of should just a standard. But you know in Titanic
Speaker 1: at a period piece, you're like, oh wow, women, I
Speaker 1: know choices back then. How subversive. Then it's like, why
Speaker 1: are the Navy monogamous? Okay? I I had the same thought,
Speaker 1: because she's like, and now we had sex one time
Speaker 1: and now we're made it for life. And and again
Speaker 1: I I don't I'm not an expert on this, but
Speaker 1: it's my understanding that like hetero monogamy is a very
Speaker 1: European Christian thing. And I'm not knocking monogamy or anything,
Speaker 1: but things like heteronormativity and the quote unquote gender binary
Speaker 1: and long term monogamous pair bonding, these are all constructs that,
Speaker 1: again from my understanding, a lot of communities around the world,
Speaker 1: including many indigenous ones, don't participate in because it's never
Speaker 1: been a part of their culture or cultural evolution. I
Speaker 1: am literally reading this book called Reclaiming to Spirits, and
Speaker 1: I'm like just a couple of chapters in, but they're
Speaker 1: already talking about like how all over the United States
Speaker 1: in general, like there are so much there's so much
Speaker 1: evidence of lgbt Q relationships and polygamous relationships, not even
Speaker 1: just like one man with multiple wives, which does happen,
Speaker 1: but like a man with multiple husbands. And so to
Speaker 1: see it like done like this in a movie that
Speaker 1: is about connection and about like you know, this network
Speaker 1: of people and stuff like that. Why would she just
Speaker 1: be limited to one person she would be in love with? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Why would this? Why would they? When that's such a
Speaker 1: construct of like like such a euro Christian centric construct.
Speaker 1: It's because he's a white guy, because James Cameron. Right,
Speaker 1: it's like it does feel like a James Cameron thing
Speaker 1: where it's like he is I don't even know, like
Speaker 1: I was like who even knows how conscious, like how
Speaker 1: hard he even thought about this, because it's just like
Speaker 1: that's what happens when you have like he's giving like
Speaker 1: he's giving the navi elements of the oppressor in a
Speaker 1: way that is like what what who and for what
Speaker 1: and what and then gives us the little peanut of like, well,
Speaker 1: but Nateria got to choose her partner that you have
Speaker 1: to marry after having sex with one time, and we're like, yes, girlfa,
Speaker 1: it's amazing. So I take it all back. I'm not
Speaker 1: rooting for their relationship. She just should have snagged the
Speaker 1: white guy and that that should have been Jake, Like,
Speaker 1: wait what, because oh, I just sucked a cat with
Speaker 1: my brain tentacle thing. The one moment with Jake and
Speaker 1: Ateri that I did like was when she finds him
Speaker 1: in human form and she's holding him and then they say,
Speaker 1: I see you and you're like everywhere she he sucks
Speaker 1: in all forms, but she accepts him in all forms. Wow,
Speaker 1: it's so nice, goddamn it. But no, Niteri in general,
Speaker 1: I love her. I think that they could have done
Speaker 1: more to characterize her. We don't know very much. She
Speaker 1: gets reduced to the relationship at certain moments, not all
Speaker 1: the time, because, like you were saying earlier, Ali like
Speaker 1: she is, like I think, realistically and like tactically and emotionally,
Speaker 1: most connected to her family and to Pandora. And when
Speaker 1: Jake Fox with her family, Fox with Pandora, he's cut
Speaker 1: out of her life. That totally makes sense. But there
Speaker 1: are sequences of the movie where they're on good turn
Speaker 1: like when things are going well. All we know about
Speaker 1: Nitti is in relation to Jake. When things aren't going well,
Speaker 1: She gets these character moments, but they're also in reaction
Speaker 1: to Jake more often than not because there's not Is
Speaker 1: there a scene in this movie where two Navy characters
Speaker 1: talk to each other and Jake or Grace are not there,
Speaker 1: Like no n test. It's when Naterie and her dad
Speaker 1: are talking to each other when he's dying. He tells
Speaker 1: her to protect but then Jake shows up, but then
Speaker 1: he's still bull dozes into the scene. Okay, let me
Speaker 1: touch your shoulder to comfort you, and she's like, get
Speaker 1: the funk away from me. You ask whole She loves
Speaker 1: to insert himself. You're like, dude, I do appreciate the
Speaker 1: um Naterius never framed as a damsel. She saves Jake
Speaker 1: several times, she saves her elf several times. She's a
Speaker 1: competent warrior guy. She kills the colonel that she should
Speaker 1: have been the hero, and she should have been and
Speaker 1: she should have been that if anything was going to
Speaker 1: like be the big motivator to unite the clans, it
Speaker 1: should have been like we lost home tree, this is
Speaker 1: what's at stake. I'm getting a fucking dragon and and
Speaker 1: I think that would have been more like that would
Speaker 1: have put her people in a better, like more comfortable
Speaker 1: place to have, Like yeah, that, why would it? Why
Speaker 1: would it be Jake? This movie should have been more
Speaker 1: like the movie Prey, where it's told from her point
Speaker 1: of view, where she is like the Ultimate Warrior, where
Speaker 1: she fights the aliens who came from the sky and
Speaker 1: kills their ass. I guess it's just one of them
Speaker 1: in Prey, but still still, yeah, that would have been great.
Speaker 1: That would have been better Jake. If Jake was going
Speaker 1: to do anything, he should have like sabotaged the base
Speaker 1: from the inside, yeah, while Matery was getting shipped done,
Speaker 1: because that would have subverted everything. I think like if
Speaker 1: that would have been like, Okay, our hero fucked up
Speaker 1: and he ain't ships, so now he's in jail and
Speaker 1: if he wants to contribute, he can do something with
Speaker 1: his own people inside of jail in kind of the base,
Speaker 1: and then he should have gone back to Earth. And
Speaker 1: it's like sorry for you that the Earth is basically
Speaker 1: like mad Max Fury Road. But whose fault was that?
Speaker 1: It's not our problem was that? Yeah, it's because humans
Speaker 1: fucked it up? Um? Is there anything anyone else wants
Speaker 1: to talk about? I feel like we've only scratched the service,
Speaker 1: but I just wanted to breeze through really quickly. A
Speaker 1: few other um women in the movie. We've talked about Grace,
Speaker 1: you know, like she's it's a Sigourney Weaver characters. At
Speaker 1: the end of the day, I'm like, nice, but I
Speaker 1: do think like it's worth kind of repeating that her character.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like, on the surface level, it's good that,
Speaker 1: you know, our highest most respected scientist is a woman
Speaker 1: who seems to have a lot of control, influence, respect,
Speaker 1: woman and stuff. On the other hand, she is ethically compromised,
Speaker 1: and no one ever wants to bring that up and
Speaker 1: complicit in genie. I do like her relationship with Jake, though,
Speaker 1: because you rarely see that mentor student relationships between men
Speaker 1: and women, where the woman is the teacher and the
Speaker 1: man is like her subordinate and there's like a genuine
Speaker 1: respect and camaraderie that I wish he would have had
Speaker 1: that with nay Terry. Also, yes, instead of whatever the
Speaker 1: fun because snag the white guy and then go get
Speaker 1: married it or don't get married, just fucking fuck monogamy
Speaker 1: and marriage. Just have just fuck. But yeah, I I
Speaker 1: that's a that's a good point. And also the like
Speaker 1: I feel like when there is a woman in the
Speaker 1: mentor role, the like Malemntee constantly brings it up of
Speaker 1: like I can't believe I'm learning from feel like I'm
Speaker 1: learning from my mom. But it's just like a and
Speaker 1: inherently respectful and like, I feel like this is these
Speaker 1: are elements of the James Cameron play a book that
Speaker 1: he's generally really good with the same goose. It's like,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty diverse team, the science team, and you
Speaker 1: also have again, she's like when the Michelle Rodriguez character
Speaker 1: is so underwritten and so underdeveloped that it's like, we're
Speaker 1: just gonna have her say fast and the furious lines
Speaker 1: in this movie. Um, but a very highly motivated character
Speaker 1: who has a whole arc about realizing that the military
Speaker 1: industrial complex is bad. Actually, but she is like she is,
Speaker 1: you know, without that character, uh, a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: Jake's return to Pandora would not have been possible, so
Speaker 1: the whole third act wouldn't have happened. So yeah, Trudy
Speaker 1: like is a very important character for someone with very
Speaker 1: little screen time. I wish that they didn't blow her up. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Trudy is what Giovanni Verese's character isn't because Giovanni Versi
Speaker 1: knows that something's wrong and he continues to do it,
Speaker 1: and Trudy knows that it's wrong, and she's like, fuck this.
Speaker 1: I didn't sign up for this, which we kind of did,
Speaker 1: but he did technically did. But maybe you didn't know
Speaker 1: exactly what you were signing up for because we can
Speaker 1: script people very very young and it's sucked up. Uh,
Speaker 1: but I did. I did generally like that character. Um. Again,
Speaker 1: very broad James camerony writing, but very easily could have
Speaker 1: been cast as a man and was not, which I
Speaker 1: think is again I feel like we're handing it to
Speaker 1: James Cameron for nothing, but most male otour directors don't
Speaker 1: do that. He did make Titanic, though, so we got
Speaker 1: to really hand it to him for a lot of stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: Shout out Norm kind of just for no reason. But
Speaker 1: I'm just like he was in Bones. He's a sweetie.
Speaker 1: He's a sweetie. Also complicit in genocide. Uh yeah. Norm
Speaker 1: originally in the deleted scenes, was supposed to be the
Speaker 1: Jake Sully character as far as like, oh well, we've
Speaker 1: got a scientist who's not threatening and maybe he's going
Speaker 1: to be the one to connect with the Navvy, and
Speaker 1: then Jake just steals his job and that's why he's
Speaker 1: piste off. And there's another deleted scene where Suite. It's
Speaker 1: after Jake hunts and is a successful hunter or whatever,
Speaker 1: and then they party and they're eating and drinking and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, and Sute is drinking and he and
Speaker 1: Jake get into like a drinking competition. He says there
Speaker 1: he's kind of drunk. He's like, I never thought a
Speaker 1: sky person would be brave. He's like, you guys fight
Speaker 1: far away and like those machines and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: you fight at a distance. I never thought one of
Speaker 1: them could be brave. And they had like a bonding
Speaker 1: moment and makes that fucking scene where he's like you
Speaker 1: made it with her like that much worse because it's like, dude,
Speaker 1: I thought we were broke and then you just And
Speaker 1: then they actually have a proper fight scene in the
Speaker 1: deleted scenes, and that one should have been good and
Speaker 1: that should have been in the re release and it's not.
Speaker 1: And I'm salty about it because he would have won.
Speaker 1: He would have won. They keep disrespecting my man, that
Speaker 1: entire fucking movie. Well, have we reached the end? I
Speaker 1: think we have what a journey, and yet I feel
Speaker 1: like there's still so much. Boy does this movie pass
Speaker 1: the back to test? Does it? Oh my gosh, I
Speaker 1: forgot to pay attention. Um, I can't. Really. There is
Speaker 1: a few that I flagged that I was like, maybe, like,
Speaker 1: there's a few close passes because like, Grace does speak
Speaker 1: to materies, like, but it's all is I don't think
Speaker 1: that it does. And now I have scholarly journal, Bechtel
Speaker 1: Test dot com up and the closest I can get
Speaker 1: to someone effectively making an argument because they're always talking
Speaker 1: about Jake. And the best argument I've been able to
Speaker 1: find was like, well, Grace talks to a what at
Speaker 1: the end window? I was like, well, that conversation doesn't
Speaker 1: even happen on screen, um, and she's literally telling Jake
Speaker 1: about it. So Jake ruins this whole movie. He also
Speaker 1: prevents it from passing the Bechtel test. Congratulations Jake Sully, asshole.
Speaker 1: Damn it. And Terry doesn't pass the Ali Naty tests. God,
Speaker 1: damn it, damn it, goddamn it, son of a bitch. Jake, Well,
Speaker 1: what about our nipple scale though scale of zero to
Speaker 1: five nipples, where we rate the movie based on looking
Speaker 1: at it through an intersectional feminist lens um, I would say, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: here we go. James Cameron, he had good intentions. I
Speaker 1: think with this movie. He tried. He wanted to tell
Speaker 1: a story about anti capitalism, anti colonialism, anti military industrial complex,
Speaker 1: and those messages are clear. However, when you dig a
Speaker 1: little deeper and you look at a lot of the
Speaker 1: implications of what's happening on screen, you realize that it's
Speaker 1: a white savior story about a white guy who fails
Speaker 1: upward into somehow being a part of this community. Which
Speaker 1: if this was a movie made by indigenous people, I
Speaker 1: don't think that would have ever happened like that would
Speaker 1: have never been written that way. That would have is
Speaker 1: not how that story would have panned out. It would
Speaker 1: have just been told from, you know, Natierie's point of view.
Speaker 1: Jake would have been eliminated from the story. In general.
Speaker 1: It would just be a story told from the omata
Speaker 1: Kaya people's perspective, and that would be the movie. So
Speaker 1: intentions good though they might have been, a lot of
Speaker 1: marks were missed as far as indigenous representation, as far
Speaker 1: as disability representation, and to some extent, I think the
Speaker 1: representation of women as well, because you could kind of
Speaker 1: easily make the argument that Niteria is presented as a
Speaker 1: plot trophy for Jake Sully doing the right thing, a
Speaker 1: prize to be one. She has more agency than that,
Speaker 1: though she does. But but again, if this movie, in
Speaker 1: our rewrite that we're going to do, um, Niteria would
Speaker 1: be which, first of all, it'll be on ice of ice.
Speaker 1: We'll find a way to work minions into the story,
Speaker 1: and Shrek will make an appearance. Obviously, minions would have
Speaker 1: worked for the current opinions, would have worked for the
Speaker 1: colonel for sure. Um, we're gonna do a rewrite. But no,
Speaker 1: the story should be Nati story like she should be
Speaker 1: the protagonist. Jake Sally didn't even need to be there.
Speaker 1: So with all of that in mind, I'll give the
Speaker 1: movie to two and a half. It's kind of where
Speaker 1: I'm at Nipples. I'll land on two and a half
Speaker 1: because at the end of the day, I still had
Speaker 1: a damn good time watching this movie. The movie felt
Speaker 1: like a movie. The movie feels like a movie. So
Speaker 1: I'll give one to Natie, I'll give one to mowat
Speaker 1: her mother, and I'll give my half nipple to Pandora mother.
Speaker 1: A wa um, I guess I'll made you there. I
Speaker 1: kind of want to dog into too. I don't really
Speaker 1: know why. I don't have a good reason to go
Speaker 1: with your guts, but I'm going on this one. That's
Speaker 1: what your braid tentacles are telling you to go with it. Yes,
Speaker 1: I just saw this really funny tweet while you're um.
Speaker 1: It's James Cameron standing at the avatar to Premier. It's
Speaker 1: just him standing in front of the words tar. And
Speaker 1: it's like even James Cameron had to see what all
Speaker 1: the fuss is about and went to see tar. Okay,
Speaker 1: moving right along, I'm gonna I think that again. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think that, like James Cameron expresses certain themes very
Speaker 1: effectively here in a way that you never see even
Speaker 1: really attempted in blockbuster movies. He's always been good with this.
Speaker 1: He's made, you know, entire movies that are explicitly critical
Speaker 1: of the L A. P. D Um. He is generally good.
Speaker 1: I think he could have been better in this movie, honestly,
Speaker 1: about putting women in prominent and um motivated and interesting
Speaker 1: action roles. Um, I don't think this is the movie
Speaker 1: where he does it best, but he does it to
Speaker 1: some extent. You know, he's doing the things that he
Speaker 1: does well well and then when he's out of his depth,
Speaker 1: it's very obvi this. Yeah, but but I think that
Speaker 1: like it's I don't know, my experience of this movie
Speaker 1: has been so kind of colored by the changing ways
Speaker 1: that we've talked about it in the thirteen years it's existed.
Speaker 1: It feels like it's been around for sucking ever. And
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, there's a lot to love
Speaker 1: about this movie that we've been encouraged not to love
Speaker 1: because of how just media in general seems to view
Speaker 1: indigenous stories and centering Indigenous characters in any way, shape
Speaker 1: or form. And that's not to say that this movie
Speaker 1: does it particularly well. So I don't know. I guess
Speaker 1: I'll go two and a half because that was mostly complimentary.
Speaker 1: Uh that said, it doesn't pass the Printles test, and
Speaker 1: you know, and only one character passes the alien Nati test, right,
Speaker 1: but not the not the main woman that you'd expect,
Speaker 1: not in a terry and um, you don't get really
Speaker 1: any you know, there's too much Jake Sully. You don't
Speaker 1: get any interior look into what the what the Omedicaia
Speaker 1: are thinking when Jake Sully isn't there, which is I
Speaker 1: think a huge missed opportunity. And that's like supposedly, if
Speaker 1: James Cameron wants to make a movie that effectively addresses
Speaker 1: you know, Indigenous issues and concerns and culture. Um, then
Speaker 1: why is Jake Sully always there? Is my two and
Speaker 1: a half napples. I'm giving one to a tie, I'm
Speaker 1: given one to Niteri's mommy, why do I have the
Speaker 1: Wikipedia page for tar Up? Oh, it's because of the
Speaker 1: um giving one to I'm not giving one to tar
Speaker 1: I'm giving one Tonteria, one to Moat, and I will
Speaker 1: give the last half twa perfect beautiful Okay. So if
Speaker 1: you were to ask me back when it first came out,
Speaker 1: I probably would have gave it four four nipples off
Speaker 1: four of them. But now you know, after enough time,
Speaker 1: and especially after talking and communicating with other Indigenous people,
Speaker 1: especially indigenous creatives, and now that I've seen better, I
Speaker 1: know that we could do better. And there's absolutely no
Speaker 1: reason why Indigenous people shouldn't be allowed to tell stories
Speaker 1: of the scale, you know, so I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: gonna give it three. I'll just commit and give it
Speaker 1: three because I did, and I did enjoy it. The
Speaker 1: stuff that I enjoyed I still very much enjoy I
Speaker 1: think it's beautiful, and I think like the special effects
Speaker 1: and everything, and the fact that the water wasn't real
Speaker 1: like blew my mind. The fact that it remotely holds
Speaker 1: up is so wild. I know it looks it looks
Speaker 1: so good and uh, but the Aliens. Now, as someone
Speaker 1: who smashes Aliens and Mass Effect act for three games,
Speaker 1: I wish that the Aliens were to that caliber of
Speaker 1: hot or at least because the characters in Mass Effect
Speaker 1: have a lot more to offer as far as like
Speaker 1: their own stories, their own histories, their own opinions on things,
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. It's a BioWare games, so you're
Speaker 1: allowed to go deep. You couldn't go deep in this one.
Speaker 1: And there were too many human characters, not enough navy characters.
Speaker 1: Jake should have had a couple navvy friends outside of
Speaker 1: Natterie and outside of his bromance with Sute, just to
Speaker 1: like kind of build on why he switches side so
Speaker 1: fast and feels this connection to these people instead of
Speaker 1: just like, well I'm here, I'm here and blessed by God,
Speaker 1: so love me God. But um, but yeah, so I'll
Speaker 1: still give it the three star, three stars, three nipples,
Speaker 1: three pasties. Um one's is gonna go to na Terry
Speaker 1: one is going to go to Mowat for passing the
Speaker 1: Alienati test, and then the last one is going to
Speaker 1: go to suite because he should at least have one
Speaker 1: regular size nipples because his are so small. On top
Speaker 1: of everything else wrong, I have to give my mad
Speaker 1: some dignity because he got almost done in this movie.
Speaker 1: He did have a great death scene, but that's not
Speaker 1: saying much. Yeah, well, Elie, thank you as always for
Speaker 1: being here. It's been an absolute delight. Three time or
Speaker 1: we love to see it. There is one last thing
Speaker 1: I want to shout out while I'm here though, This
Speaker 1: is very important. So um, this has taken place in
Speaker 1: Winnipeg right now in Canada, and since uh, we're talking
Speaker 1: about indigenous people, let's actually talk about the real ones
Speaker 1: that exist today. But there is a situation happening right
Speaker 1: now where the daughters of Morgan Harris, who is an
Speaker 1: Indigenous woman in Canada who was murdered by a serial
Speaker 1: killer along with four other Indigenous women. They believe that
Speaker 1: their bodies are in the the Prairie Green Landfill the RCMP.
Speaker 1: So the Canadian police told them that they believe that
Speaker 1: that's where the serial killer dumped their bodies, and they're
Speaker 1: refusing to investigate because they said that it isn't feasible.
Speaker 1: So there essentially telling these girls that they have to
Speaker 1: make peace with their mother staying in a dumpster and
Speaker 1: not getting a burial, and these girls are fighting to
Speaker 1: push back and search the landfill. So I really wanted
Speaker 1: to just raise awareness to that and get the word
Speaker 1: out there because I heard about it two days ago
Speaker 1: and it's just not making as much waves as it
Speaker 1: should be. So do you know, if there's any kind
Speaker 1: of go fund me or anything to support, I will
Speaker 1: definitely look it up and send it your way if
Speaker 1: I but we'll post it in the show notes if
Speaker 1: if well, at least link to a story for context
Speaker 1: as well. That's yes, sucking, unconscionable. I was seeing what
Speaker 1: you were posting about it, and yeah, I also did
Speaker 1: not hear about it before you said something, yep. So
Speaker 1: if we could do anything good, I mean, like Avatar
Speaker 1: is great, but people are going to go see Avatar too,
Speaker 1: and not enough people are talking about this. So I'm
Speaker 1: definitely yes, spread the word. Thank you for that. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Is there anything you'd like to plug as far as
Speaker 1: your own work, Well, I am kind of limiting my
Speaker 1: Twitter access, but I'm Ali Naughty on Twitter. I'm Ali
Speaker 1: Naughty on Instagram and TikTok. I'm back on Tumbler because
Speaker 1: I don't like so especially now, but I've been more
Speaker 1: active than on the Ali Naughty Tumbler account, which is
Speaker 1: still the Ala Test because that's how a lot of
Speaker 1: people know it. So I keep it there. And my
Speaker 1: sisters and I opened up a boutique, Darlings of our Mother,
Speaker 1: So check it out and buy some stuff. Very cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah wait, that's huge for me. Okay, I can wait. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll send that to YouTube. Come back anytime please. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Wonderful and uh you can follow us on Instagram and
Speaker 1: Twitter at Bechtel Cast and um. Speaking of Twitter, there's
Speaker 1: a pretty good tweet that we found. Oh okay, this
Speaker 1: is It feels like an end of the Daily Zeitgeist episode,
Speaker 1: like tweets you like, okay, but this was one that
Speaker 1: really just It's from the l A Times review of
Speaker 1: Avatar Way of Water, which is a quite good review.
Speaker 1: It's getting quite good early reviews. Folks. Um, we haven't
Speaker 1: seen it yet, but the critics are sa drav ing
Speaker 1: about the Way of Water. But this is from Justin Chang,
Speaker 1: the film critic over at the l A Times. Um.
Speaker 1: He references how Avatar Too is about Jake Sully being
Speaker 1: a loving father in the second movie, and then he says,
Speaker 1: and I quote, you could say he's a police Navy dad.
Speaker 1: It's so good, twitters. It's still horrible, but there are
Speaker 1: there are moments there, moments that was my moment that
Speaker 1: really meant a lot to us. Um. You can also
Speaker 1: follow us on Instagram, where I did not receive that information,
Speaker 1: but it is. You know, it's another platform where we're at.
Speaker 1: We're also going on tour reminder West Coast. You can
Speaker 1: find that in the link in our bios and the
Speaker 1: link in this description as well. We're going to be
Speaker 1: in l A, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle at the
Speaker 1: end of January into the beginning of February. More info
Speaker 1: about that at the link, and you can join our
Speaker 1: patrion ak Matreon. What the hell is that case, Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh. It's a place where you can get to
Speaker 1: bonus episodes of the Bechtel Cast, usually just Jamie and
Speaker 1: I hoof and goof and goofing, but we're also having
Speaker 1: awesome discourse and um and you get access to the
Speaker 1: back catalog of well over one hundred bonus episodes. So
Speaker 1: if you've run out of main feed episodes, scoot on
Speaker 1: over to patreon dot com slash Bechtel Cast. And it's December,
Speaker 1: so we're doing our cursed holiday movie round up. We
Speaker 1: have already released our Netflix original Lindsay Lohan Falling for Christmas,
Speaker 1: a movie where a little girl's Christmas, which is for
Speaker 1: Lindsay Lohan to fall off of a mountain. And we'll
Speaker 1: also be doing while you were sleeping. And I also
Speaker 1: I was getting excited today because January is the Pinocchio
Speaker 1: Wars episode and so we just we have a hell
Speaker 1: of a time over there. Joined the community, Joined, joined
Speaker 1: the movement that is the Matreon um. And finally, it's
Speaker 1: the holiday so if you're looking for gifts, last minute gifts,
Speaker 1: you can go to our store over at t public
Speaker 1: dot com slash v Bechtel Cast. We actually have some
Speaker 1: new designs just came out pretty fun feminist icon Paddington
Speaker 1: Shreky in which came up in this episode. It's cannon
Speaker 1: to the show is. And um, also just one that
Speaker 1: I kind of wanted to make for myself that we
Speaker 1: have referenced on the show, which is the Flobber Mambo.
Speaker 1: Bye Danny Alfman. So that plus classic designs including our
Speaker 1: holiday baby Grinch designs that over there get some gifts,
Speaker 1: uh and live your damn life exactly. And um, hey
Speaker 1: Jamie Ali, I see you. Bye bye m