Avatar review: military mistakes
Jan. 18th, 2010 08:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tagrynWe saw Cameron's Avatar in 3D over the weekend. It is a very visually spectacular movie, and worth seeing for that alone. Its even more enjoyable if you can turn your brain off for most of the final hour, especially if you have any idea of how a modern military operates, since its apparent that Cameron didn't bother consulting with anyone who actually does.
Some examples of holes in the plot:
* The Marines can't bomb/nuke the Hometree from orbit...why?
* Yeah, because a Marine task force leader will really allow his anger over someone stealing a single chopper to overcome him and lead him to run into a poisonous atmosphere to try and shoot it down himself. Because, we all know that lack of intellect and inability to control oneself is typical of leaders in the military, right? /sarcasm
* Why bother with bombing the "Tree of Souls"? The Hometree was toppled, and the minerals underneath are now mineable; the natives have retreated, and are doing some kind of "Ghost Dance" thing without further hostilities. That sounds like "mission accomplished" to me. Roll in the miners!
* Regarding the final battle: why do the Marines deploy infantry for a bombing run? When they can just fly over the Na'vi calvary, which have already demonstrated they can't knock down choppers? Its just providing more targets without contributing anything to the mission.
* Why do the Marines deploy infantry for a BOMBING run?
* Why do the Marines deploy INFANTRY for a BOMBING run?
* After the happily-ever-after ending...well, it assumes the humans will just stay away after the locals beat off a small force of choppers, one big helichopper, and a modified space shuttle. So, that's everything they have left? Really? Considering their Earth is dying, and the material they need to save the planet (and BILLIONS of people - JC glossed over that point) is ready for mining, you think they won't be back?
It reminds me of this passage from Dan Simmon's Hyperion, near the end of "The Consul's Tale", after a somewhat-similar overthrow of offworlders by natives living in concert with 'nature':
For the pathetic people keening over how Pandora is so much better than Earth, other than the obvious "its-just-a-movie-people", they're also missing that its exactly the technology they wish didn't exist that made the images they're seeing possible...and in a lot of their cases, even a century ago, many of them would have died by their current ages without the medical advances and other technology we have today. Further, for those romantics who wish they could live on Pandora, in all the visual fireworks they forgot that Pandora is an extremely hostile environment; one can be sure that even the Na'vi don't have particularly long life expectancies. To use another quote from Hyperion, "its a well-preserved ecosystem, but not one to take a stroll in."
Then again, my reaction to Edward Burtynsky's Oil exhibit when I saw it was "Wow, its great we have all this neat technology to enable us to have a standard of living that our grandparents could only dream of!" I think we could use a little more appreciation for the gifts our predecessors left us, and a little less pining for a utopia that never was.
Some examples of holes in the plot:
* The Marines can't bomb/nuke the Hometree from orbit...why?
* Yeah, because a Marine task force leader will really allow his anger over someone stealing a single chopper to overcome him and lead him to run into a poisonous atmosphere to try and shoot it down himself. Because, we all know that lack of intellect and inability to control oneself is typical of leaders in the military, right? /sarcasm
* Why bother with bombing the "Tree of Souls"? The Hometree was toppled, and the minerals underneath are now mineable; the natives have retreated, and are doing some kind of "Ghost Dance" thing without further hostilities. That sounds like "mission accomplished" to me. Roll in the miners!
* Regarding the final battle: why do the Marines deploy infantry for a bombing run? When they can just fly over the Na'vi calvary, which have already demonstrated they can't knock down choppers? Its just providing more targets without contributing anything to the mission.
* Why do the Marines deploy infantry for a BOMBING run?
* Why do the Marines deploy INFANTRY for a BOMBING run?
* After the happily-ever-after ending...well, it assumes the humans will just stay away after the locals beat off a small force of choppers, one big helichopper, and a modified space shuttle. So, that's everything they have left? Really? Considering their Earth is dying, and the material they need to save the planet (and BILLIONS of people - JC glossed over that point) is ready for mining, you think they won't be back?
It reminds me of this passage from Dan Simmon's Hyperion, near the end of "The Consul's Tale", after a somewhat-similar overthrow of offworlders by natives living in concert with 'nature':
The Hegemony did not wait eleven local years to return - the FORCE torchships were in orbit before five years had elapsed. Father watched as the rebels' hastily constructed ships were swatted aside. He continued to defend the Hegemony as they laid siege to our world. I remember when I was fifteen, watching with my family from the upper deck of our ancestral isle as a dozen other islands burned in the distance, the Hegemony skimmers lighting the sea with their depth charges. In the morning, the waves were gray with the bodies of the dead dolphins...That's the future that Pandora has to look forward to. Thanks, Sully!
For the pathetic people keening over how Pandora is so much better than Earth, other than the obvious "its-just-a-movie-people", they're also missing that its exactly the technology they wish didn't exist that made the images they're seeing possible...and in a lot of their cases, even a century ago, many of them would have died by their current ages without the medical advances and other technology we have today. Further, for those romantics who wish they could live on Pandora, in all the visual fireworks they forgot that Pandora is an extremely hostile environment; one can be sure that even the Na'vi don't have particularly long life expectancies. To use another quote from Hyperion, "its a well-preserved ecosystem, but not one to take a stroll in."
Then again, my reaction to Edward Burtynsky's Oil exhibit when I saw it was "Wow, its great we have all this neat technology to enable us to have a standard of living that our grandparents could only dream of!" I think we could use a little more appreciation for the gifts our predecessors left us, and a little less pining for a utopia that never was.
