Avatar (James Cameron film)

I mean we just saw Payakan literally body a navy, and it was fucking glorious.

But I'm not sure there's anything the Gaang could do if the RDA decided to have one of their ships do re-entry anywhere close to the Gaang's general vicinity.

Just bring in the Imperium of Mankind

They'll conquer Pandora before breakfast

Or they abandon their Emperor for Na'vi cheeks.

Uh not likely the Adeptus Astartes all had their sex drives suppressed from centuries worth of bio-modification

Maybe the Space Wolves, they are the only non-Chaos faction to engage in sexual gratification

All the other Chapters are staunchly chaste

Edited by slimcoder on Jan 24th 2023 at 4:51:35 AM

And then Unicron shows up and eats Pandora and all the tiny Imperium dudes.

Edited by Parable on Jan 24th 2023 at 4:55:57 AM

The Imperium of man wouldn't conquer Pandora.

The first wave of imperial guard would be sent in without oxygen masks and would die en masse.

The techpriests would be next, and they'd declare the RDA heretics for using unblessed machines and would fight them instead of the Na'vi.

A space marine chapter would be deployed, and they'd crush a few holdouts but then they'd get distracted by word of a chaos uprising on another planet and take off.

An inquisitor would declare exterminatus necessary, but then they'd be defeated in a 4500 points battle by a Adepta Sororitas Order who disagreed with the decision.

Then a League of Votann would get involved and set up several mining outposts which would mean future invasions would need to fill out 500 pages of paperwork to get started.

Edited by ShirowShirow on Jan 25th 2023 at 8:45:42 PM

Thinking about it, the Na'vi were almost defeated by the RDA in the first movie and had to be bailed out by a literal last minute Deus Ex Machina

So a concentrated military effort would mean the Na'vi would eventually lose, they can't really penetrated RDA vehicles in mass without God help

They're getting better at it. The climax of the first movie proved pretty clearly that the RDA wins in a head-to-head fight, which make sense because it was basically a massed cavalry charge with stone-age weaponry barreling headlong into masses of machine guns.

The start of Way of Water showed that the Na'vi are employing guerilla tactics now and stealing all the RDA hardware they can get their four-fingered hands on so they've started leveling the playing field even without the use of deity-mandated animal stampedes. If they can derail a train they can probably take out a tank too.

The fight against the whalers was a much smaller scale confrontation, comparatively.

Edited by ShirowShirow on Jan 25th 2023 at 8:44:23 PM

Then the tau come to reclaim but they are atack by eldar who insist the pandora is a maiden world then the dark eldar want to find out what is all about and suddenly every single gooddamn power in the galaxy is in pandora at once.

General Ardmore's briefing indicates that the Na'avi-RDA War has effectively stalemated, with neither side being able to decisively attack the other's main base without massive losses. The RDA has constructed a much more defensible forward operating base by clearing the forest around it, while the Forest Na'avi have sheltered in the Hallelujah Mountains where the flying rocks hamper human aviation and the magnetic anomaly disrupts electronic components.

It's implied that the only thing preventing the RDA from bombing or burning the Hallelujah Mountains from the atmosphere (as they did when they arrived), are Rules of Engagement imposed by their masters on Earth.

I know the scene is played for laughs, but I can't help but get annoyed that Jake refers to Spider as a pet.

In other words, I understand that Neityri doesn't want him due to prejudice, but Jake doesn't have the same excuse.

I'm pretty sure that even the Adeptes Astartes need oxygen to fight, and even if they do win they can get wiped out with Exterminatus. Then again, the Imperium's bureaucracy is worse than the DMVs - I wouldn't expect anything to get done for centuries, what with the hundreds of thousands of government departments and billions of workers and all.

Also, if you have them fighting against the main cast, there is a certain character (who I shall not spoil for those who still have not seen the film) who could wipe the floor with them by harnessing Pandora's power without blinking.

So they have an above-average Pysker/Daemon, nothing they never faced before

So, I've been thinking lately about this franchise's unique disconnect between its box office successes and its general reception online, or rather, its relative lack of a dedicated fandom or pop culture presence compared to other franchises, so I've drafted this YMMV entry to try and put it into words;

• Critical Dissonance: Of a sort. While film critics have given both movies overwhelmingly positive reviews and the films have both achieved tremendous success at the box office, the franchise as a whole does not really have much of a dedicated fandom or general discussion online. That's not to say they don't exist, but most of the discussion that is online is about their box office or declaring them So Okay, It's Average beyond the Visual Effects of Awesome and expressing confusion about this very topic, rather than any discussion of the contents of the films themselves. Promotional materials for The Way of Water rarely trended that high on Twitter and views for the trailers on YouTube were nothing particularly special compared to other big films like the Marvel Cinematic Universe or Star Wars. The crux of it is that the films seem to be more popular among general, casual audiences than dedicated film or sci-fi geeks, the types of people who are merely there to watch a movie and then leave the theater not thinking much about it until another one comes along. This video by The Film Theorists takes a look at the films' online presence and examines why that is in more detail.

Is this good, or should I change or add something? Or, I guess more specifically, is there a better YMMV trope that would apply to what I'm saying here? (I considered Opinion Myopia but it didn't quite feel right. Critical Dissonance also doesn't feel 100% accurate for what I'm going for but it's the closest I could think of) I also tried to make it come across as neutral as possible, so if it doesn't come across that way I'd like to know if I can fix it somehow.

Edited by lbssb on Feb 5th 2023 at 2:33:12 PM

Sounds like Mainstream Obscurity in reverse: everyone's seen it, no one talks about it.

Edited by MDLuder on Feb 10th 2023 at 5:37:37 AM

That part of the franchise never ceases to astound me.

I expect it to change eventually as the people that saw the first one as children grow up (I've already seen memes, something the first movie never had.) but so far it's still got a pretty muted online presence.

It's fascinating that they've created something normies can't get enough of like this. No other franchise has had ever had such a weird non-impact.

This is of course ignoring the microscopic cabals of uber-fans that, like, think they're Na'vi and shit.

Hell I just saw John Carter and aside from kind of wanting the blue guys to fight the green guys I noticed this film, one of the biggest box office bombs in history, has pretty much the same story arc as the first Avatar. I can't make sense of this black magic.

Better advertisements and a visual milestone?

James Cameron basically.

It should be noted that it's more accurate to say Avatar has the same plot as John Carter than the reverse.

John Carter is based on a book that is (to my understanding) basically the Trope Codifier for (among many other things) the Planetary Romance genre, which is what Avatar is.

Actually, what might be a good way of putting it is that Avatar is to the Planetary Romance genre what Star Wars is to Space Opera.

John Carter's so old he's actually the inspiration behind Superman, so it's not too surprising that the movie ran headlong into Seinfeld Is Unfunny-dom, as the story pretty much shaped most of modern science fiction and the tropes therin.

Even modern fantasy, too, D&D took inspiration from John Carter IIRC.

This website has now talked about John Carter more today than we did about Avatar this month I feel like that really illustrated the weird reverse-Mainstream Obscurity pithole this franchise lives in.

... Does NOBODY want to see the Green Martians and Na'vi duke it out like I do? Shit would be sick.

I guess the characters or plot really aren't that memorable

I mean the Puss in Boots Last Wish villains are incredibly popular, making waves all over the internet and that film only made a fraction of what Avatar 2's +2 billion box office

"Avatar is to the Planetary Romance genre what Star Wars is to Space Opera."

Is it though? Star Wars has several imitators. Are there even sufficient imitators for Avatar?

Edited by Afrovenator on Feb 10th 2023 at 12:24:06 PM

Ok, it's not really quite the same degree. I mean to say it's a sort of modernized reimagining of the old genre.