Chapo Trap House - 478 - World Tree Center (12/8/20)

Episode Date: December 8, 2020

After last week’s Cameron discussion we decided it was finally time to induct this film into the official Chapo Canon: it’s been a long time coming but here’s the AVATAR episode. Join us as we examine the most anti-imperialist blockbuster of the 21st century, argue that its subversiveness is precisely why this massive hit “made no cultural impact,” and explain how Avatar teaches us to shed our baby selves as we confront America’s role as the 9/11 do-er.

This is sad. Very sad only. Okay, okay, I'm sorry. Whatever I did, I'm sorry. Well, this is your fault. They did not need to die. My fault? They attacked me. How am I the bad guy? Your fault! Your fault! You're like a baby making noise don't know what to do. Okay friends, we are back.

And for today's episode, I think it is a continuation of the last one, Matt Felix and I sketched out. And in that episode, our most recent one, if you go back and listen to it at the end, I envisioned a scenario. I charted a course out of our sort of malaise, despair, darkness of living in a fading empire, choking out its last breath with everyone inside, wondering when the COVID is ever going to end, and if we're ever going to have anything better. And part of that, the roadmap that I sketched out here depends on analyzing a post-colonial text. A post-colonial text that, you know, previously we have asked on this show and others have too. What if Yoda was six feet tall and he smoked weed? What we will do for you today is pause at the question, what if Yoda was ten feet tall and interested in, instead of smoking weed, turning the arms, weapons and technology of the imperial death state against itself in an act of revolutionary violence and oneness with the world and the environment and the world trade? I'm talking, of course, about Avatar.

And, you know, we talked about it last week and we were so moved by it that Matt Felix and I had to go back and re-watch Avatar and share that experience with you because I do believe, I do believe like, you know, like sort of like the words of Franz Fanon, it does create, through movie magic, a popular, up until very recently, the highest grossing movie of all time, of which the point is basically that to become a real human being, you have to lay down your life in revolutionary violence against the state. So, to that end, we bring you Avatar, directed by James Cameron of the Dipset crew. Yeah, this is a movie I've talked about for a very long time that every time I talk about it, people always go, I don't get this bit. Yeah, the blue guys were funny. I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding. And I think Matt and Will were kind of kidding. Yeah, absolutely. Before this, they were like, oh yeah, the blue guys, I don't think they really knew if I liked it or not. But after this viewing, I have successfully Avatar-pilled them. Absolutely. I am blue-pilled. I am a blue man now.

Yeah, I just want to, so Avatar, it has a strange cultural place, right? Because it made, how much did it make in theatrical release? I have this in front of me right here. Hold on a second. It earned $3,537 million domestically. A record that was only beaten by its disgusting Tulpa Marvel Adventures affinity war. And I fucked that up. I was like, what, $3 billion? Sorry, it grossed over $2 billion worldwide. It's still amazing. $700 million in the US and Canada. Right, so this was a record that was only beaten by the Adventures. And what's weird about this movie is it didn't have the cultural purchase of the Avengers.

Like there's going to be no, you notice, I was thinking about Jamie Harrison. You know Jamie Harrison, the guy who ate shit to Lindsey Graham. Oh yeah, right. I was thinking about how in his Twitter bio he says, fan of Marvel. I did not know that. No Democrat. And I thought all about the Democrats who were like, oh, we're like the Avengers or even like Dan Crenshaw who loves Avengers shit. It's just soy monoculture bullshit. It's the safe thing to like, no one ever did that with Avatar. But you know what they did do with Avatar?

People's middle-aged fathers wanted to kill themselves to be alive and not be. People started questioning Empire. I remember my brother posted about this one. Posting about Avatar literally all weekend that my mom and dad called him on the phone. You know, he is like an adult with a job. They called him in like 2010 and were like, you have to see Avatar. And my mom who is like, I think like in her late fifties at the time was like, it's about capitalism, imperialism, power, racism. And then my dad just shouted in the background, it's about love.

It did have an amazing effect on people. It did have an amazing effect on people, but the media consciously did not want it to be memified. And it could be memified because it's too. You couldn't process like people like to point that out about Avatar. Oh, it had no cultural long-lasting impact. Well, what is the actual cultural long-lasting input pack of other big movies like The Revengers? It's just, it's memes. It's easily digested little pellets of like things that replace your personality.

The stuff in Avatar that's memorable, it's not like, you know, it's not guys in suits who do quips and do bants that you can repeat to your friends. Because Jake Sully is, as we'll talk about, sort of an intentional empty space in the middle of the movie. What the stuff that like is resonant, it can't be translated culturally. And so it just has to go away. Everyone saw it and everybody fucking loved it when they were watching it and they're lying if they say they didn't because it didn't make that much movie. It didn't make that much money. A total new, not licensed IP thing. Nobody saw, everybody didn't see that movie and was like, that sucked.

It's just that over time as they, you know, thought about it and nothing could stick because there was nothing in the culture to like pick it up and turn it into anything. Yeah, and you can't, you can't see Avatar and love it and cry. Like I did watching again. I cried during parts of it. I never cried during movies or anything. I've cried twice in my life. Once when I was born and the other time when I was watching Avatar. And you can't do that and then go on with your life.

You have to make a choice. You're like, do I love Avatar and the message of Avatar and the world of Avatar. And as we'll get into later, the world of Avatar is just love. We can live in Pandora. And then go Obama's Epic. Obama, who's not pulling out of the Pandora District of Afghanistan. Can you, can you like a marvel, even, you know, Avengers for all their liberal peons, they're so Kendall-esque, so shaved down, so smooth that even are full on reactionary like Dan Crenshaw can love them. But you can't do that with Avatar.

You can't be like, I love Avatar and I want Tom Cotton to be president. No, but both sides of the evil of Empire are represented as the bad guys in Avatar. Yeah, I saw something today on Twitter that said that Chris Evans' portrayal as Captain America probably did more to rehabilitate the idea of America as a good place in the world than anything else that's happened in subsequent time period. And you know what, there's probably some truth to that. But the guy said that, he thinks that's a good thing. He thinks that's a good thing, he thinks that's a good thing. And the message of Avatar is like, unlike the adventures, this idea that good people come together to fight on behalf of the values that we as Americans hold dear to ourselves. The message of Avatar is that if you are a good person, you need to come together and destroy America and literally lay down your life in a violent revolutionary struggle against the American state.

Avatar is telling you, you have to be Chelsea Manning. Like if you can't just trade your country. You can't be a cog in the machine and feel bad about it and that's enough. You can't be Martin Freeman, the soy CIA man from Black Panther. You can't do that. And you know what, I remember when Avatar first came out and it was phenomenally successful at the box office. We said, up until adventures, it was the highest grossing movie of all time. But I did remember when it came out, certain conservative critics were very angry at the movie because they were like, oh, I was looking forward to Avatar.

But then at the end, I couldn't believe that Hollywood has gotten to the point of anti-Americanism in which they would presume that the audience would be cheering to have these stand-ins for American GIs be annihilated in combat. I was there. They did. They did. People were standing up in the theater. People were standing up in the theater and rooting for the Viet Cong. Yes. In Chicago. The theater is all over the fucking country. They were doing that. And you know, when I first saw this movie, I thought it sucked. And I thought it was kind of an embarrassment to look back on it. And then I sort of ironically liked it.

And then I was like, yeah, there's something going on about it. But yes, Felix and just in James Cameron and his entire sort of canon of movies, which this very, very like fits into, you know, has convinced me that this movie is not just good, but maybe a masterpiece. Because like when I first saw it, I was like, I was like, oh, this is just dances with wolves. This is just a remake of dances with wolves or Pocahontas or something like we've seen this story. Oh, like, you know, like the white guy has a romance with a, you know, he falls in love with a woman from a different culture. And then like, oh, he sort of adopts it as his own. But I don't think that's really, I mean, that does happen in Avatar, but that's not really what's going on here, in my opinion. No, absolutely.

It's totally, it's completely different. It's completely different from Hollywood white savior movies about Native Americans, which, by the way, those movies, the point of those movies is they were made during America's Ascension as the sole superpower, but in a new American liberal culture. And that was, that is to say those movies were, no, we're the only superpower we deserve to be. We deserve everything we have, but we did some bad stuff. And all you have to do is feel bad about it for two hours in an air conditioned room and then go on with your life and you're a good person because you feel bad about it. And we'll throw in a bonus. We're going to make one of the good guys one of you. We're going to make him one of your fucking Scott's Irish idiot ancestors.

And he, he's not actually a white savior because he doesn't, he doesn't save anything. Avatar, Avatar is about a white savior, but it's totally different. It's totally different because Jake Sully, the hero of Avatar, he's a nothing. He's a nobody. He's, he's a cipher and people criticize this performance by Joel Edgerton, but it's really Sam Worthington. Same guy. That's how much of a cipher is. He's confusing with yet another stock Australian guy, like sort of tough guy, movie actor.

Exactly though, but that's like why it's brilliant. It's like, no, he would have to be someone who was on the surplus benefiting side of earth, but is still so alienated and literally chewed up and spit out, has lost his brother, has lost his familial connection, has lost his legs, his body. Yes. And is so devoid of characteristics and personality and anything like culture or affection because of the, because you could be given all this surplus, literally surplus from space, surplus from the heavens. Yes. And you can be nothing because it's not meant for you. Yeah. It's meant for the guy who owns the company, who processes the surplus. And he, he doesn't just, he's not a white savior who like, he's better at being indigenous than.

No, no, that's not the point. The point is he gives them the only thing that he can give, which is knowledge of how the empire works. That's what an act, that's actual solidarity. Actually, he actually helps them in the only way he can. And what's more, he completely sacrifices who he was in the empire. He doesn't go back. He can't go back. I mean, he, and that's the other reason he's not a fucking white savior.

He's not white. By the time he does the savioring, he's literally one of them. Actually, like you're talking about, oh, he's, he's a seven foot, he's a 12 foot tall blue man. He is. That's, that's, that's it. He's with them. He is as abject and as, uh, He is, he is part of the, he is part of the people.

He is, he is one of the, uh, omatakaya. Exactly. Because he gave, he gave himself up because he gave his life up literally. He gave his body, his body withers away at the end of the movie. His body goes away. There is no more Jake Sully anymore. He's in the V now. People get like rile about that because like, oh yeah, you're, uh, you're,

you're letting off, you know, uh, white people, you're letting off, uh, you know, the criminals of empire because this is after all, you know, what is this? This is a thing for all of these, you know, uh, fussy toddlers sitting in the global west to entertain themselves. Uh, but like you said, there's no feeling good because if you want to, if you, if you buy the end of the movie are rooting for the fucking Navi and you find anything cathartic about that moment at the end where he literally wakes up as a Navi, a full one for the first time.

Uh, you have to do that by having fully emotionally divorced yourself, not ironically, not through the gauze of history, but through the actuality of, of the American empire. All right. So let's get into, let's get into the movie itself because I mean, we refer to some of the elements of it, but I think by, you know, assessing out the details, I think if, if perhaps you're rolling your eyes at the case you're making here, I think, I think, I think describing the film

itself and some of the parts in it will hopefully begin to clarify where we're coming from here. So, uh, the movie begins in, uh, I believe it is the year 2154. It is in a, a future in which we have, uh, discovered a, uh, a, a resource rich, uh, densely forested moon of a gas giant planet in the Alpha Centauri system. And that we have been because we have depleted all of Earth's natural resources.

We have begun to mine this, uh, this sort of Eden-like planet for a, a rare Earth mineral or rare Pandora mineral called, uh, uh, unobtainium that we now, that is now like the, like oil, like petroleum on Earth is like this sort of engine of our global economy. And like this is our new, like sort of extractive, uh, form of capitalism. And, uh, the main character, Jake Sully, played by Sam Worthington is a former Marine who has been, uh, paralyzed in combat. He's a paraplegic, paralyzed by the way.

And the movie makes clear in a campaign fought in Venezuela. Yep. So once again, Cameron is, Cameron is telling you here, uh, this is the future of America. Yeah. This is where we're going. We got to march over the cold surface of the world to physically secure its resources as they dwindle.

And the end of that is not some fixing or getting it to anything new. It's, oh, shit, we've got to find another planet. We literally have to find another Earth to rape and pillage, to keep, uh, like, you know, our home planet to keep the system of, of capitalism going on our home planet. Yeah. Do you guys see that, uh, that like viral news story a couple of weeks ago where it's like, there's a comment worth 70 trillion zillion

dollars, uh, in the, in Milky Way or whatever. It's like, boy, if we could just get our hands on that baby, our problems would be over. Yeah. So like, and, and, and, and, you know, it is strongly implied as well that, that the Earth of 2154 is, is, is a husk. Yeah. That there is no more, there are no more trees.

There is no more nature on our planet because we've destroyed it all through the process of, yeah, like, um, extraction, capitalism, and exploitation. So we just have to find a new Eden and it's, and the undotainment there and take it. But the problem is the planet is habitat, inhabited by a humanoid species called the Navi. But the thing is the atmosphere of Pandora is a toxic to human

beings. We can't breathe it. We would, we need to be either inside in our, in the, in the sort of, uh, a mining town and military based facilities that we build as sort of beach heads to go out and, uh, mine this stuff. Um, but we have to like, you know, that's where masks, um, if you're out, like, you know, in the air of Pandora.

So the solution to that problem is that the company in conjunction with, you know, advanced scientists and academics have created a way to, uh, clone the bodies of the Navi and create a, a, like a sort of, uh, a keyed to an individual's specific genetic code, a, a sort of a, a Navi match for them through which, uh, through, through the magic of technology and science, you can sort of project your brain and consciousness into and have, and then, and then, and then, you know, you're, you're

now inhabiting the body of one of these, uh, 10 feet tall Navi people. And, but, but, but crucially you have free reign now to, to walk and exist in, in, in the, in the, in the space of Pandora. Right. And so like there's this, there's this, uh, uneasiness alliance here between a, a, a, a military, a military corporation, a private corporation that has, is, is also an arm of, uh, the,

the United States military. And they're, and they, and they use, you know, their own Marines, especially private security forces to help the securing of this mineral from this planet and fight any natives, any of the Navi people who would wish them to, uh, stop strip mining their planet. And the, and the crucial thing here with Jake Sully is that he was never meant to travel to Pandora.

He only goes to Pandora because his identical twin brother was a, like, you know, he was, he was the head. He was, he was the nerd. He was the guy who had spent his whole life training for this and studying Navi and, uh, you know, preparing to, um, inhabit his avatar on Pandora. Uh, he was randomly killed in some sort of like street mugging or something like that.

And because it's his identical brother, he has the same genetic code in like, you know, they've probably spent a trillion dollars creating this fucking avatar body for him. So they're like, well, we're not just going to let it go to waste. If you, if you're, he's a suitable candidate. Why don't you go like, you know, what are you doing here on earth? Just he's in his wheelchair and he just, his brother's dead.

He's got not, not a lot going on for him. So put him on the spaceship, put him in cryo sleep, six and a half year trip out to Alpha Centauri. Uh, he, and then like, you know, he, he wakes up, he wakes up from the six year dream and is now in a completely different world. And like, he gets off the shuttle. Like, you know, he rolls out there.

Initially, I mean, he meets the, um, the head of the avatar program on Pandora is played by Sigourney Weaver. She is Dr. Grace Augustine. And she is, um, kind of pissed that she has to deal with and like, you know, with the right guys, idiot brother who she, he views, she views as just a grunt and a moron. But like, she has to do it because he's the only one that can inhabit this body that like I said, they've

probably spent a trillion dollars cloning and growing in a vat. Um, and like to Felix's point earlier in the movie, or sorry, earlier in the episode here, uh, Sam Worthington, I'll say that again, Sam Worthington. See, see if that pings anything in your brain. I'm sorry, no. Shakes, shakes, shakes only Sam Worthington.

Uh, Guy Gordney, what? I'm sorry. Who is a just about like, he, he's sort of like, um, like the beginning of the character select screen before you add any attributes. Yes. Like that is Sam Worthington is like, as an actor. He's a default protagonist from a video game.

And the thing is like, he's not, he's not a terrible, he's not a terrible actor. It's not like the performance is like really grating. It's just, he doesn't have any like personality or charisma or like really any, anything about him that like connects with you or, or, or feels memorable or it's just like, and again, it's just like, who the fuck is Sam Worthington? Why this guy?

And that always pissed me off about the movie. Cause I was like, who is this fucking zero? I mean, like T2 had Arnold Schwarzenegger in it. You know what I mean? Aliens had the fucking, uh, Bill Paxton, Michael Bain, Paul Reiser, Sigourney Weaver. They had these great characters that you like, that you remember and you, you root for and you want to be like them.

But I think when Felix pointed out to me that because Sam Worthington and his character Jake Sely is such a cipher, I think that is actually intentional on Cameron's part in that, like you said, like he, he is a nobody. Like he, that he is the type of person that America produces. Yep. And that's, that, and that's an opposition to the protagonists in the Marvel movies where, oh, he's literally a superhero, but he sounds like me.

He makes the same references and has the same cultural palette as me. All of the stuff that, you know, this like just the shit that's like, I've picked up while rolling through life, you know, like a fucking, like a hot dog going under the, the refrigerator. Uh, it being reflected back to be literally out of the mouth of a fucking man god. And so it's like, it gives you this idea. Those movies get like culturally sticky and get memeable because they're telling the audience, hey, look at you, look at you.

Whereas Cameron's like, yeah, this is you dude. This is you. Yeah. You're boring. Like you don't have, you don't have quips. You don't have bands. You don't even have powers. Yeah. You're just a guy who, who, who fucking got blown up fighting for his country. And they, even though, and he says this in the first intro voiceover, even though the technology exists to your paralysis, he cannot get it. Because it's too expensive. Yes. No, that is, that is a very interesting and telling detail of this

is that Cameron does not miss a beat. Like he's like, you might think, oh, like, you know, uh, over a century in the future where we've, um, mastered, uh, intergalactic travel and terraforming of other planets and shit. Uh, we can't cure a spinal injury. And he's like, uh, no, we can, but only rich people can. That's what I love. Um, there, the, I saw someone the other day point out how,

or this Yasha Levine, how science fiction writers, um, in their depictions of the future, they do not depict poverty. Like it just like we lose the will to do that. Even amongst, we lose the, we, we lose the will for brutal, brutal surplus and a misery, even amidst other evil traits. And he put it out that Philip K. Dick was one of the only writers who would detail that, who would detail brutal class oppression, even in a future with inconceivable technological advancements.

And what I love about, I think the, the, the Jake's only, uh, spinal repair surgery problem is he repeatedly does this where Cameron's vision of this future is no, there's going to be untold technological advancement, but it's still this world. It's still America. And there's something with the design of the mech that we're going to get into later that perfectly signifies this. Yeah.

Because the dream that the, like the, what the lie we kind of tell ourselves with science fiction, if it's not, you know, like intentionally kind of challengingly transformative sort of like Star Trek where you're, you, you stipulate, no, this isn't our society. This is a post scarcity society blew up. Yeah. Like the point of Star Trek is this a birch. Yeah.

Like the point of Star Trek is that like all the technology, like, uh, you know, faster than light travel, replicators, teleportation or whatever are features of the fact that humanity has our human society has like advanced not just beyond the American nation state, but, um, yeah, like a post scarcity utopia in which because there isn't scarcity and like the surplus created by technology is like evenly distributed. Yeah. That we are capable to use that technology to explore the galaxy

and, and, and like, you know, and not at the expense of, you know, like Earth and Star Trek is just like an endless, like shanty town. Yes. Yeah, exactly. No, it's, it's, it's like, oh, we were able to distribute, you know, uh, resources across the, the planet equitably. And now, hey, let's go see what's in space. Let's see what's up there.

And, and what, yeah, like I said, what's interesting about Amistar is that like we are, we are exploring space. We were doing, doing probably like one of the most profound things human beings can do, discover life on another planet, walk on that planet, live on that planet. We are only doing it to just continue the merciless death drive of like, of capitalist accumulation. Yep. And that's because the, like I said, the, the saying that the, the,

or trying to get, I forgot the, the, the lie of science fiction that isn't explicitly utopian like Star Trek is that technological innovation by itself will lead to some sort of phase shift in human civilization. And, and Cameron is pointing out when it, no, we have, we've had 200 years of technological innovation, things have changed, but the basic structure has only intensified a process of extraction. Yeah, man. I see a lot of that shit on, on, on, on like, on, on globe Twitter.

Yes. They all, they all, they all, they all think they're like, oh, like, yeah, there's a lot of problems and like, oh, like maybe America isn't perfect, but you know what? With our innovation and like innate creativity, creativity, like there will be technological advancements that will just kind of solve these problems. The cotton gin will surely end slavery. Yep.

Like apparently we have the technology to use, to have like, basically every potentially pandemic virus have like early R and D prepared so that if one emerged, we could have a fucking vaccine in like three months. But that, that there, there's no money for someone else to make there other than the money you're paying scientists to help people not die. So. Yeah.

Yeah. It's F Murray Abraham and inside Lou and Davis. I will make it. I don't see a lot of money here. I will, I will make it less abstract. We have a million plus group of able bodied young adults who could safely provide food and water and every necessity for people during a lockdown and more than have the funding to do that.

That exists. They have, we have been, uh, tasking them during this pandemic with driving multi-billion dollar obsolete technology around the South China Sea and getting lost. Or having rocks thrown at them in year 25 of the war in Afghanistan. Yeah. And we have the technology like you're talking. We have the people.

We also have the technology in the form of, you know, stuff like the basic algorithms that power, you know, things like delivery services, but those only exists to, uh, lose money for giant speculative fucking venture capital firms that are pretending that they're going to build a fucking, uh, uh, driverless cars or whatever and are literally just pouring money down a giant toilet, uh, that ends with them getting a giant glass cube home to live in suspended animation and forever. Okay.

So like, I mean, now we bring up, uh, another character that's important to the movie, uh, the villain of the movie is, uh, Colonel Miles Quattritch played by, uh, Steven Lang. In, in, in the, in the movies, actually like very good memorable performance. It is a, it is a very good villain character and he is the portrayal of, of colonial, like imperial military management and violence. And like, you know, like, like he is, he is, you know, a, a former jar head, just like, just like Jake Sully, who is now in charge of security for this

private corporation and security means like, you know, he is there to, uh, man, manage and suppress the native peoples of Pandora. And, you know, like, and, you know, he, he's just sort of a, a swaggering, you know, like scar faced, you know, like, like hard bitten, uh, he is, he is someone who is hardened by the frontier and like, you know, he gives this spiel to these, to all the people when they first arrive on Pandora where he's like, make no mistake. Everything outside that wall wants to kill you and is my job to keep you alive.

I will not succeed. Look to your right. Look to your left. One of those people is going to be dead in the next six months. Dental school is very difficult. I expect a third of you to wash out. A lot of people like to get, uh, a lot of people like when we're trying to make fun of avatar, they will point out the, the, the first thing he says is

you're not in Kansas anymore and they roll their eyes. That's the fucking cliche. What do you think this asshole would say to those guys? That's how those assholes talk. That's how all like every fucking, yeah, every fucking jar head that goes on to like start a racist coffee company. Like they're all like that. Like the tagline to all their coffee is like, this isn't your gay dad's coffee.

It has a pork in it. So Muslims can't drink it. How about that? In the coffee commercial when they're firing a mini gun at a bag of Starbucks coffee, they'll just say shit like, say hello to my little friend. Yeah. You know, like, cause, yeah, cause you know, like that, that's how their brains work. Um, so yeah, so eventually, uh, Jake's only gets to, uh, port into his avatar,

into his avatar body. And, uh, the first thing he does is like the scientists are like, no, no, you have to lie down, you know, you know, you know, you're like your, your, your vitals are spiking or whatever. And he just feels his toes move and he runs out of the building because, you know, like he's experiencing for the first time in a long time, uh, mobility. He's like, he experiences the, the, this, this ecstatic joy of being in control of not just his body again, but this, this perfect like angelic 10 feet tall,

like, uh, like an angel basically. Yeah. He's like, he's reborn. Like he has capacities that, that earth, remember this capacities that earth, the earth society is preventing him from using like they took his legs by sending him to get blown up in Nigeria or whatever. By the way, all the countries they talk about them fighting in are ones where there's oil.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. In several campaigns in Nigeria and Jake Sully was a recon marine in the Venice, in the Venice whale like campaign. And then it's like, well, like, all right, you got us that oil. We have a society that can cure spinal injuries. Uh, good job getting us that oil.

Uh, what about my spine? Uh, who's new phone? Who's this? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, Jake Sully, we're going to do an awareness raising concert about Marines who lost their spines in Venezuela with the modus yahu hologram. Good luck, bro.

Okay. Now there's another important facet of this because I said like, um, well, in, in the, in the sort of corporate military colonial like imperial management of this mining project, there's sort of, there, there's sort of two nodes of it. There is, there's quadrants and his sort of private security. Like, and that's the thing, like they're not just private security. They are the official armed forces of like the United States or like global government at the time, but they are just contracting directly for a private

corporation. They're not just mercenaries. They are soldiers acting as mercenaries on behalf of a private company, but they're still technically in uniform. But the other half of that are the scientists. Sigourney Weaver's character. And like, there's another guy who has been sent to, to Pandora and like, he has his own avatar body waiting for him.

And he's, he's one of these nerds. You know, he's a nerd who's been like waiting for this his whole life. He went to school for this. He studied five years to learn the language and these are the PMC. Yes, exactly. Yes, exactly. And, and like the scientists think that they're different than the brutal Imperial machine who is funding all of their research.

And they look at all like, they look at all of this, like the perfect and wonderful opportunity to pursue their research. Like as they, as they see it, they don't see themselves as part of the same apparatus as, as these military assholes who they have to work under. And then like, I guess like the, the head of the whole operation is played by Giovanni Ribisi. And like, he's sort of, he, he's the corporate dickhead. He's like, he's the Paul Reiser character for aliens.

But like, if he wasn't like, yeah, but, but he is the shot caller on the base. Yeah. From the corporate. Yeah. Like Quattridge is technically under his command. Right. And it's, it's very telling that the first, the first scene you see with Giovanni Ribisi, he's in like the ops center.

He's in his command office or whatever. And what is he doing? He's fucking putting, he's playing golf. Yeah. It's the year 2154. He's on an alien planet. And what is he doing? He's practicing his fucking putt.

He's, he's on an alien planet with sites and flora and fauna, more beautiful and that the human mind could barely even process. Like just heavenly beauties. And he's like, when I get back to earth, they're going to wonder how my putt got so good. It's like, it's perfect. The PMCs are so perfect, but the range of the PMCs are so good because Giovanni Ribisi, he's sort of like, he's sort of like the McKinsey guy.

He's like, Hey, come on. All right. Silly scissors over. Stop fucking around with the blue bullshit. We got to get the bottom line going. But Sigourney Weaver plays like sort of a Samantha power type. Yes. And she, and in both, both her avatar body and her human body, she wears Stanford

T-shirts red hair. It's so he's, that is not unintentional. That is not unintentional, but it's like what's so great about it is like the PM, the PMCs who like think that they're better than the Marines or Giovanni Ribisi because they have an appreciation for this culture that they are just as well, raping and pillaging, just sticking their fingers in the open sores of this beautiful planet. They think they're better because they think when they go home, they're going

to like introduce Navi words into conversation and tell people the blue guys aren't all terrorists. And here's the most important part though. They think they're different than like the brutal military exploitation. But the thing is they and their research projects and their avatar program are the single most effective means of oppressing and exploiting the Navi people. They're USAID! Yes.

Because they set it up like we want to get this entertainment. These blue people are here. They're not high tech enough to stop us from taking it really. But they're good enough to fucking kill us real easy if they want to. And so it's like the best way to do this, the lowest cost way to do this is to get some fucking nerds in here who've read some books about these assholes and try to talk to them and then make them into the blue people themselves. And what do they do?

Offer them roads, offer them education. Everyone knows English in the Navi country in the village because they got taught by Sigourney Weavers. Like, okay, why are you doing this? It's not for the benefit of the Navi. They did not need anything. What you need is to feel good about the fact that you're destroying their fucking planet. And that's what everybody back home on earth has to feel like too.

So, I mean it gets going when like, okay, so Jake Sully in his avatar body, like eventually like, you know, he goes out into the bush. He goes out into the vast, like the Eden-like forests of this planet. And, you know, he's essentially there as sort of a bodyguard for Sigourney Weaver and the other nerd in their avatar bodies. And, you know, they're walking around out there and he has a gun. He's got a big ass gun as a Navi person. And, you know, he's walking around out there and he's taking in the sights

and it's all pretty cool. They got, oh, wow, here's a mushroom that's 10 feet in diameter. Here's plants that glow when you touch them. You know, here's a tree that's as tall as the Empire State Building. He's walking around out there and then eventually, because he's a dumbass and he doesn't, you know, know or respect the environment he's in, he has a run-in with a creature I believe on film they call a Thanator, which is basically like a sort of, I don't know, imagine a tiger covered in like, you know,

bulletproof plates and six legs. And he, you know, the tiger chases him through the forest. He gets separated from Sigourney Weaver and the other guy. And he's out alone by himself at night in this alien jungle forest. And while he's, you know, stumbling about, you know, being beset by, you know, there's another, there's sort of like a species of dog-like things that also have six legs. They're like, they're like dobermans, but wetter.

Yeah, very wetter, very sleek. And, you know, he, he's bumping around out there trying to survive. And who comes across him, but basically the princess of the, of one of the, the main village. Her name is Nyatiri, and she is played through Allmo Camp by Zoe Saldana. And, you know, she easily sees him because she's drawing a bead on him with her enormous bow and arrow, which is actually one of the, one of the cooler parts of this movie is that the,

the Navi's bow and arrows, because they're 10 feet tall, shoot arrows that, that are basically like being run through with a pool view. They are, they're enormous. And she's drawing a bead on him because she, they like, they, they, they understand what the Avatar program is. Yeah. They understand that like, just cause this asshole like looks like them, but he's still walking around with fucking like pants and fucking,

and an iPhone and shit, you know, like that he, they understand that like, this is a, this is a, this is a false body being possessed by a demon. And she rightly understands that if you see one, you should kill it. Yes. But in, you know, kind of a corny way, like as she's drawing a bead on him with the arrow, like she sees this sort of, this, this ethereal spore floating on the air, like sort of dancing through the air that, that lands on the tip of her arrow, right at the decisive moment.

And she, she, she interprets that as a sign from the deity that they worship, Ewa, which is, Ewa represents this kind of a, this biological network that, that, that connects all living things on Pandora, like from, from, from the giant mushrooms to the trees, to the wet dogs, to the fucking, the mega tiger. And she like, she pauses. And then like, she saves him from the wet dogs. And then he's like, thanks.

Hey, hey, it was pretty cool. Right. And then she, she's mad at him. She keeps calling him baby. You are baby. You are baby. You are baby because, you know, he's, he's irresponsible. He doesn't take responsibility for anything.

He's loud and he, he, uh, like a very much like a baby on his own, doesn't know how to live literally will die without an adult. So she decides to become his adult. And then there's another scene where the same sort of, uh, ethereal, angelic, uh, world tree spores, like dozens of them sort of like just jizz all over him. Yep. And they cover his whole body and she's like, oh, well,

I mean, shade, if the first world tree jizz wasn't a, wasn't a sign from God, then, you know, just them gangbanging this fucking moron. There's something here, right? And, you know, like in, in, in, in a classic, like as I mentioned, like a sort of Pocahontas, uh, Dance of the Wolves style narrative, she sort of adopts him as, as, as her own takes her,

takes, takes him back to the village and sort of brings him before, uh, her mother and father who were sort of the, the village elders, the leaders of this tribe, like her, her father is the chief and her mother is the, the high priestess, the spiritual, uh, leader of their, of their tribe, of their community. And, uh, the mother, the dad wants to kill him, you know, rightly, correctly so.

But the mother, uh, does take the, uh, the, the sort of signs and wonders from the world tree seriously. And, uh, basically says to her daughter, he's your responsibility now. You get, you got to teach him our ways. And, uh, interestingly, she says, we will see if his insanity can be cured.

Because like what, what, what they, like what we think, like our, our normal human behavior, like our way of doing things, our way of seeing the world is to them clinical insanity. Not just insanity, but a term we've used before to describe imperialism or a, a, a strain of imperialism or a part of imperialism, crackpot realism.

What is crackpot realism? But a hundred years in the future, a hundred years in the future, you have committed wars, uh, in Africa, in South America. God knows where else in, in this, uh, alternate history that, uh, Cameron has built all over the world, raping the earth, killing millions, making the earth uninhabitable,

and then running it down to its core. All that surplus, none of it put into developing anything sustainable, none of it into developing a better way of life. Taking the people who got you those resources, who killed those people for you, and throwing them in the fucking garbage and going, hey, uh, do you want to become a blue guy, I guess? Yeah, here you go, dumb fuck.

Um, and, and, and, and solely himself, he throws his body away doing this. He throws his life away. He has nothing. Yeah, of course I'll help you. Of course I'll do this. Of course I'll do another thing for the empire, who I did so much for,

and I have gotten nothing from it. I could just pretend I know how to walk in this piece of military technology that they made just for extracting more, more resources. And if they do get those resources, what do you think happens? They run through it just like anything else. Onto the next planet until you run out of planets.

We got to go to that planet to keep doing this thing. It sucks. That, that is the most insane thing. That is imperialism. It's insanity. It's insanity for everyone except for the fucking reptiles. Yep. Because they are the ones who actually gain sucker

from sitting in an air-conditioned room and fucking putting on a fake, uh, green. Yes. So yeah, like, uh, so, so he becomes sort of adopted by, by this tribe and by Nathuria and she's going to, she's going to teach, teach him their ways.

And then like, you know, of course, like, he is able to, you know, he wakes up in his, in his human body and his back in home base. And, you know, they're all very excited to find out that he has accidentally gained access to something that they've been trying to do for years.

And they all, and both Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang, the fucking, the military asshole, both realize how valuable he is now. And they both want to use him for their own purposes. Sigourney Weaver, so that, like, he can, um, be shown

things about, uh, their, their biology, their culture, and like, uh, the way they, uh, interact with, uh, their, their planet that she's been trying to figure out and then, like, you know, this idea of this, this, like I said, this biological network that is like a, the whole

planet is like a brain. And like, every living thing is a, a network that is connected to a larger whole. So they, they, they have this, like, like, not just a spiritual understanding of this, like, holistic vision of the environment, but a literal one.

Stephen, Stephen, the Stephen Lang guy understands, like, oh, I now have a Marine in a Navi body who can do Scat recon for me. And he's going to get me all the intelligence that I need to, as, as he says, to find their pressure points

and when it comes down to a firefight, which it will, in his opinion, uh, we can hit them where it hurts and we know how to fucking, we know how to kill them better. Why do you think the tree chose Jake Sully? I mean, the answer may as well be

just moving the plot forward, right? Yeah. But I, seeing the incredible depth that we only have figured out about this movie 10 years later, things like the Stanford t-shirt, I think it's because the tree knew, no, we can't do a disagreeing weaver

because she's benefited from this. Yeah. She's benefited from the system that is carrying us up in part. This guy is a nothing. He's a nobody. He, he can give this up. No one else can.

Yeah. And like, if there's another guy, there's another guy that was one of the science nerds who was like friends with names for everything. And when Sully gets picked, he's like annoyed for a long time. But also he couldn't get picked either,

not just because he benefited, but because he thinks he knows. And the reason that she picked Jake Sully more than anything is that he was baby. He could be trained. He could be deprogrammed. The fucking nerd could not be deprogrammed

because his scientific approach to this problem that is embedded in the insanity of imperialism that he doesn't even see means that he would never, there'd be so many points of resistance that he would never be able to be turned into an actual person in one of the people.

So, and then, so what is the actual like intelligence that he's gathering here? Here is where it gets into, I would say, not just one of the more subversive parts of this movie, but one of the, like in a giant Hollywood blockbuster mega mega

movie, like an actually revolutionary element to this movie, is the place where the Natharia and her tribe live is called a home tree. And like they live in like a village that is inside this like gigantic tree, massive.

Like I said, the size of a skyscraper, keep that in mind. And then like, you know, Jake explains to Quattritch, the military asshole, like, oh, like, no, it's supported internally by all these different like struts and columns and like, like

inner superstructures that you don't see from the outside. And he's like, aha, I'm very interesting. So, you know, while this is going on, he spends, you know, months with them and he learns their ways. He learns how to hunt.

He learns how to ride one of the dragons. He learns how to ride one of the dragons and eventually he is made part, officially made part of the people. He is sort of initiated. He's Bar Mitzvah.

He becomes a member of their community officially. He's patched in. Exactly. Okay. Now, here's something that I have to mention about our film experiencing watching this movie

that drove me absolutely insane when I was little. There's always a lot of character takes him into some sort of a garado with a glowing tendrils of the spirit tree. And she says, you know, now as an official man in our community,

you can choose a woman. You can choose a mate and he sells her. I already have and they come together and they join. They kiss each other and make love. When we watch this movie, we rented each other out.

I was on prime and I was waiting for one thing in this scene and one thing alone. And that is the scene where Jake Sully and Natheria have sex by joining their ponytail, like sort of genital tentacles together

and intertwining them together in the exact same way they have already shown him intertwined his genital tendrils into a horse and a flying dinosaur. Yeah. That did not happen in the Amazon Prime version of

this movie we watched. And I thought I was losing my mind. We had just talked about on our last episode that was like a major feature that we were laughing about about the movie. One of the weirdest parts of this movie is that the Navi's

sexual functions and their basically beasts of burden are physically penetrated and put the same way. That's how you drive a car though. The Amazon Prime version of this

movie retroactively edited that scene out. And I swear to God I thought I was losing my mind because I remembered that vividly when I first saw this movie in the theater. You want to talk about evil?

Or whoever or like Fox or whoever put this fucking movie out knew that people made fun of that element of this movie in the past and they edited it out of the movie without telling anybody. Thus creating like this fucking

Mandela effect gas letting effect in my brain where we had to look it up online to find out that it had been fucking changed. Yes. Evil demonic. Like that out like he like Bezos probably hates this

movie has to be like it's totally against what Jeff Bezos wants and designs of the world. Giovanni Robisi watches that movie is like you know what he if he did some more work workflows this never would have happened. Yeah. No. Yeah.

I have to believe this is his personal personal evil and one thing Bernie can do during the Biden presidency is call hearings about this. Yes. Yes. Jeff Bezos whose name is Planet Eating Company after the fucking

the world the Earth. Yes. Pandora that we are in the process of annihilating. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. While we are recording this episode a piece of a piece of Earth's

Pandora the size of the state of Connecticut has just been burned by like a cattle ranchers in Brazil and he loves it. That's fucking reptile. The picture of him picture of him eating that fucking iguana man. The picture.

That is one of the most evil pictures I've ever seen. God damn it. I mean like doing this. Why are you doing this Jeffrey. Why are you just creating human misery by the boatload and creating a wealth

that is inconceivable and unusable by you in any meaningful sense. Well I get to eat a lizard. I get to do cannibalism in front of you and it's just it's just a slight digression though.

I mean like this is this is one of my greatest fears about like like the degradation of our culture and like the corporate domination of every facet of our life is now that like now that all art

is like streaming and that like nobody has it like like physically they just have access to a library that they like oh everything's there it's great like you know I don't have to worry about oh where's the where's the DVD

or oh do I put this in my disk man or whatever. Yeah it's great in one sense and I like it but the terrifying thing though is that the fact that it all exists on a cloud controlled by Amazon

means that they can at the push of a button erase entire swaths of our culture or edit out things that are inconvenient about things that we've already all experienced like

remove it from our cultural memory without telling anyone and for like for nefarious reasons they can do that at the push of a fucking button. So if you have if you have that out there a copy of the original

uncensored avatar with the alien tentacle fucking scene please let me know because I need a copy of this I cannot bear to think that that beautiful scene of love was robbed from us. And on the flip side this is

not this is by this is not the only one of this the only movies that this is true of if you watch the Nicholas Cage Wicker Man on Amazon the one scene that everybody wants to watch that movie

where he is screaming about the bees out. Yes. Yes. They removed it entirely from the version of the Wicker Man that you can rent on Amazon.

I guess because like those things are cringe and we can't have anything cringe. Everything has to be everything has to be smooth over and like digestible and nothing could be too like

earnest or weird or embarrassing or cringy because if everyone is pursuing not being cringe or consuming cringe then they're guaranteed to only absorb

the most like flavorless mush because that's the only thing the only way you can guarantee you're not going to encounter something that's going to maybe hit you the wrong way

maybe make you feel embarrassed in some way and we can't have that everything's got to be a smooth just content orb that you just put a fucking entertainment pellet that you swallow.

I mean it is not inconceivable that I don't know ten five ten fifteen years down the line if you go to rent Avatar on Amazon you want to show your kid you know hey this is

this James Cameron's movie changed every blah blah blah you these chopper guys they really put me on to it and you'll go to rent it and they'll like the movie will

have been with computers just made into a different movie where Giovanni Robisi is the good guy. Yeah. Yes.

Yes. Where when they show up that he introduces themselves to the cadets and instead of saying you're not in Kansas anymore it's like so well it looks like

Pandora happened if you see any seven feet tall Smurfs say hi for me. Yeah. Yeah. They he like starts a charter school for Navi children

to join the mining company and then the movie ends with him saying Bazinga. Remember. Oh. Panther literally ends with a goddamn

opening charter schools. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yeah. No this is like man they have made it harder

to pirate than ever than ever and they have never given you a greater reason to buy. Absolutely. All right. So back to the film itself eventually like it's all

coming to a head because the mining company knows one of the single biggest deposits of unobtainium is right under the home tree where all the Navi. Oh darn it. And like you know

they know that like look this is the only reason we're indulging any of this avatar bullshit or any of like the teaching them English or any of this bullshit is to get them to move from like their ancestral home

so that we can bulldoze it and fucking strip mine it. But that'll be it though. After they do that it'll be done. Yeah. The Navi will go somewhere else and then we will have

we got our our unobtainium and we'll we'll be gone now. Bye bye. Thank you for letting us take your tree away. Yeah. So eventually the

like the Stephen Lang scarcer the military guy uses Jake Sully's own words to make the case for why we should just like just fucking attack them right now.

Like they're yeah because you know and the more Jake Sully begins to sympathize with them and become a part of them like he says in his own little video diaries like everything they sent me here

to do is pointless. Like these people are not going to leave. They're not going to they're not going to become like us because we have nothing to offer them.

Yep. Yes. Like they have a part like their way of life is perfect for them. There is nothing about our world or our relationship already.

We don't have to go to space to try to get some more resources to keep the whole thing from falling apart. Yes. Yes. So and then do you have one of your BC's characters

like yeah. Yeah. I mean you know is there a way we can do it sort of like sort of humanitarian like limit civilian kind of thing

and then whatever and you know Quadritch is like I'll shoot gas at them first. Yeah. And that's key because. All right.

OK. Because because because you can't have Quadritch can't be in charge. If Quadritch is in charge then you don't you don't have a system of like coordinating

like the capital machinery to anything other than just conflict. Conflict is just supposed to be you know the tool. You have to be a tool. The tool has to be well

by a guy who has been seditioned sufficiently conditioned by culture to know. Yeah. We got to press the button and kill these people's tree

and kill as many of them it takes to get the in obtaining it. But I got to feel bad about it. And the other smart thing that they make clear in this movie is that it's not just

like they're on some alien planet. They got the guns. They can just fucking blow these blue people away if they want. Still their shit. They do make clear

that people on Earth are aware of what's going on. Yeah. Like them like through the media and things like that like the Iraq war. Like for instance if Blackwater does a fucking

massacre or we shoot like enough depleted uranium into Fallujah to like lower the birth rate for the next five generations and poison in

higher city of people. That kind of looks bad. Yeah. People go like People can make an angry about that. If we're doing this maybe we shouldn't do all

the other things that this thing feeds. And you have to keep that like people know it at a deep level but you can't remind it of it too much.

It can't be in their face. Yes. So you know like yeah he's like yeah. Okay. Like all right. Let's just let

let's just pull the trigger on this. Let's let's start the operation. So like you know Quattritch and his and his jarheads they assemble their

their locust like swarm of like you know attack helicopters and this gigantic gunship and they all amass on home tree. They shoot it full of gas.

Jake's always trying to warn them but like he is he is prior to this like sort of outed himself is like hey like guess what

I have I'm only here because I've been a spy the whole time and you know they feel a little pissed off about that. I mean the girl

he just had sex with is just like Yeah it's essentially like one of those like one of those guys who infiltrates like antifon

then like has a girlfriend. And then he gets her pregnant or something which by the way cops are legally allowed to do. They love doing it.

They like they can have sex with women as part of their cover even though anyway so yeah so then like there is an amazing scene

in this movie and even when I first saw it I really like it this scene really stuck out in my brain and this is what I'm getting like not just

subversive but actually like potentially revolutionary. They shoot gas into this giant tree and then they're like

they're like target the inner superstructure of the tree and they shoot incendiary missiles into the base of this giant tree and this like I said

giant skyscraper tree full of Navi people collapses and implodes into itself

in a gigantic cloud of smoke. And you're watching this and it is unmistakable that James Cameron is recreating

9-11 but we are doing it. Yes. And this is with it we were watching it like this is the point Felix you said it the point of this movie

that Cameron is saying is that America does 9-11 every single day to the rest of the world. Yes. Yes.

This movie if I had to sum up the point of the avatar it's 9-11 every day. That's what it's about. That's what it's about more than anything.

And like this is this is like you will never see another fucking director do this ever ever. Yeah. This is like maybe Spielberg

doing more of the worlds where it's like oh it's 9-11 but you know it's happening to Americans it's happening to Tom Cruise like our victimhood is is like is is is

is like being eroticized whereas this is saying yeah 9-11 that's horrible all that stuff yeah yeah oh remember that happened to us

no that's what we do that is what we do. We're the 9-11 doers we're the 9-11 doers there's a great scene where Quatchrich like is the Muhammad Atta at this operation

and he's overseeing it all and he's in the cockpit of this giant like gunship and there's a great little detail where he's just sipping coffee he's just sipping his coffee and he's like alright commence firing

takes a little sip it's just like the casual banality of just getting on with his day as he's about to like fucking nuke this yeah like the home but also this this gigantic beautiful tree

it's the world trade tree I swear to God so that happens and you know and then Jake is of course his human body is incarcerated back at the military base for you know

betraying the marines for going native and then along with Sigourney Weaver and the other science bitches but then like they are freed by Michelle Rodriguez's character I haven't mentioned her so far but she's a helicopter pilot

who's supposed to take part in the 9-11 attack but is disgusted by it and chooses not to fire she breaks off I want to point out I love Michelle Rodriguez's performance I love her character and she says

this is another thing that people probably made fun of when it came out but now is genius what does she say when she breaks rank I didn't sign up for this shit and it's like the smart ass thing to say at the time was like oh yeah this is exactly what you signed up for

but no that's his point is that you you're so alienated not just from yourself from your family you're so alienated from your own labor that you don't even realize what you're doing

you're in a cog who is not even aware of their function within the system until the moment of truth and the whole point of all that superstructural stuff in the compound the whole gamut of humans on Pandora is there to keep you

to a point where you're kept from the moment of truth until you're ready to press the button and she's the one person she's a woman and that she is not white is part of maybe why she does that

but everyone makes that choice and it's like the reason I think people get annoyed by things like this because it's like oh look at these you're having all these colonial monsters like turning against the system well some of them but the vast majority of them don't the vast majority of people just do what they're

fucking told so she breaks them out of the brig and hops in the helicopter and takes off and during their escape Sigourney Weaver is shot by Stephen Lang and this is the thing they repossess

the technologies and the tools of this corporate imperial power to fight it to turn against it to help the Navi to bring together the Navi

indigenous struggle against a technologically superior colonial power but like joining it with not just the actual guns and tools created by that same power but as you said earlier about Jake Sully the knowledge of how empire actually

works to turn it against it and that's another thing people complain oh it's white saviorism well I'm sorry and this is the difference between that sort of mopey liberal colonial

narrative is a technologically inferior society if it is opposed by a unified technologically superior society is going to lose every time because the guys with the technology they might be insane husks but they're insane husks

they can press a button that makes us like that gives them the power of been one of them almost every one of the other less advanced technological societies they will lose unless they can get the button pushers to stop pushing the button or turn the button

on the fucking actual people who are making everything or driving the conflict that's only that like yeah that's white saviorism whatever but that's actually solidarity and cooperation just across a culture not within one and that is what we can't recognize and what our culture kind of teaches us

to act like cannot be transgressed that was Cameron's real sin with this movie ideologically was suggesting that no you actually can be different it is not just like the narrative of being like a colonial a colonial foot soldier

or somebody who benefits from empire is not just yeah boy things could be different boy those people sure seem to have the right way of it but oh well I mean I got a 401k after all that's the realism that's the capitalist realism

embedded in like all the racial pessimist narratives that people react to and what they are comforted by and Cameron by saying no no that border is permeable and that makes people uncomfortable

because that really is the only potential liberatory connection that could be made the only real revolutionary connection is one that bridges that kind of species or racial or cultural barrier

so the leader of their tribe was killed in 9-11 and Jake Sully has to return after betraying these people but he regains their trust by riding and fucking an even bigger sky dragon it's not important

but you know he gains their trust and becomes you know he becomes their Ho Chi Minh and he unites not just like the world tree tribe but he travels around like there are other parts of Pandora and he brings together like the warriors from many disparate tribes

and to say that look if we don't stop these people now they're coming for all of you and there's a scene where he actually prays to the the world tree and Sigourney Weaver has died but like they've sort of I don't know the

tendrils of the world tree have sort of like access to her memories and like she's died but has been absorbed into the neural network that unites the entire planet and he prays to the world tree and he says like if Grace is in there then you have her memories

that you can see her memories you can see what she's seen in her life and you will know that the planet she comes from there is no green there it's dead and if you don't help us we will do that

to you like that's what Pandora will look like if we are not stopped here and now and the thing is it does lead to this climactic battle and you guys can talk about it but when we start talking about it like Jake Sully is this fucking nobody

he's a boring character you don't even remember his face after watching this fucking movie I didn't even remember his name I couldn't pick Sam whether he did not have a room if he was standing in front of me right now but the interesting thing is how does Jake Sully become a human being

how does he become a character it is it is only through laying down his life in an act of revolutionary violence against the capitalist imperial state that's the actual

he's still in the avatar body and in his human body and it isn't until he drives the humans off he's able to become just of Navi that's what allowed him to finally sever the connection

and to transform himself but yeah it is it only happens after slaughtering hundreds of his fellow soldiers in another 9-11 and that's 9-11 as we experienced it they're doing 9-11 to our brave troops

but you're rooting for them to do it and he made you feel terrible when he saw 9-11 happen to the Navi people then he makes you feel elated when they do it to us

there's a specific moment that Felix pointed out where one of the Navi guys they'd come from the sky onto these helicopter things to attack these dudes who were gunshipping in to wipe them out and one of the blue warriors

who was friend-zoned by Jake Sullivan's girlfriend he jumps into the open rear hatch like the bay door is open and they're getting ready to push out this gigantic cargo pallet of explosives

to blow up the world the spirit tree that is the most sacred thing in their culture and in their ecosystem itself and they're getting ready to push out of the back of this giant cargo plane this giant pallet of explosives and yeah

one of the warriors jumps off the back of his flying dragon into the back of this fucking plane and there's like 6 fucking jar heads there and he just starts grabbing them like this 12 foot tall fucking angelic warrior

he's got like feathers on he's got little angles he's a fully actualized like human being and these little rat-like grubs in military uniform and guns

he starts just grabbing them one at a time and throwing them out of the back of this plane as they're screaming and falling to their deaths and I swear to god we were just like pumping your fists in the air yes, yes, kill them

kill them all kill the brutes, exterminate the brutes exterminate the brutes like Colonel Kurtz says but we are the brutes we are the brutes we are the savages and we must be killed

not reasoned with or that we come together to an understanding that like oh jeez I guess the environment is important I guess there's a way to sustainably harvest the resources of Pandora so that we can build more shit back on earth

you either have to stop stop, fight it or you have to be defeated that's it I remember like conservative movie dorks being furious at this movie because they were like I never would have thought

that like the sort of sci-fi analog stand-ins for US soldiers that audiences would be expected to cheer to see them fucking put to the sword and people did and you know, Felix you're 100% right guys like Dan Crenshaw

can do epic fucking meme shit about Captain America and then Marvel movies and so Tom Cotton I'm sure when he runs for president will be like memeing about the Avengers and shit can't do it for this movie it's never gonna happen

no, you know Dan Crenshaw can never he will never sell to you that he was that he relates to Avatar he will to the extent that he knows about it he hates this movie but you know who else would hate it

John Brennan they all hate it because they are all the bad guys in it 9-11 happens to it and Americans cheered at it we were the people dancing in the street in New Jersey

and that is why you will never see memes about Avatar that's why everyone you know who is alive saw it and loved it even if they won't admit it I definitely did and here's another part of that and this is a very important part of it

is that James Cameron, unlike all the people who have created this new hegemonic blockbuster theatrical experience which might, I mean it's gone for now we'll see if it comes back, hint hint but those guys they understand that the text of the film is to be

by the audience, not experienced emotionally but processed intellectually turned into memes maybe you cry because you see all of your super friends together in one shot but that's literally just hitting your nostalgia button like hey, you remember when you

read these when you were a kid and you thought life had meaning and everything wasn't going to stop remember how happy you were when it turned out Spider-Man wasn't dead because you can convince yourself that he was dead because we'd never see Spider-Man again and then when he came back you were really happy

like that's the only emotion in them the emotion in Avatar comes from the experience of watching it and that if you saw it in the theater man with the 3D, it's the best 3D I've ever seen in a movie because it was shot by James Cameron on 3D cameras

that he fucking designed and that is the other amazing thing about Cameron is that every movie he does like in Avatar for example this and we've seen it on CGI effects in movies before but James Cameron is really the only director I can think of

that invents the technology that didn't prior exist to do the thing to fulfill the creative vision that he has in his head and if it doesn't need to be done with computers he won't do it but with something like Pandora the vision that he is hoping to achieve needs to be done

digitally and he needs to do that by creating new technology and I'm sorry Avatar is the only movie I've seen probably since Terminator 2 that has meaningfully moved the ball forward on special effects technology

and what was it done what did everyone else do with it hey they paid more for this 3D ticket well let's just take a bunch of pieceship movies we were already shooting in 2D convert them afterward to 3D which means that the screen literally darkens the image

it makes it harder to watch and then we're going to charge them twice as much for a ticket yeah that is the final thing we want to get to about this movie is Cameron isn't just an amazing director

I mean he's up there with Spielberg I think there are about equal levels of talent just as filmmakers Cameron writes all his own material this is all original material by him he's not taking history channel bullshit and turning it into

slob that makes you go support the war in Kosovo he's not doing that but not just that if it wasn't already amazing enough that he you know he creates Terminator after a food poisoning nightmare he got he invents technologies

yeah and he does just invent technologies and use them and change in cinema and expression but he commands armies of people 50,000 people

working on something like billion dollar budgets and he commands them flawlessly he earns everyone's respect he's not like an exacting prick he knows exactly what he wants if he sees you painting a set piece

he's coincidentally has read 10,000 fucking pages about polymer painting and it's going to show you the way to hold the brush right and he'll be right there are so many stories I've heard from film people

about Cameron on set that he knows exactly what every one of the 10,000 people on that set are doing what everyone's job is what leader in America is like that

everyone has the most narrow aperture of knowledge which the more power you have is the more removed from the actual thing it takes to do what you're directing the more it's just like some fucking powerpoint shit

you learned in college and not the actual like hey what are we doing here what are the actual component processes that make up this project there should be an L we want a funnier we want the smurfs

can we have the big smurfs can they have a Nike swoosh on the back and that is why I've realized we were talking about this last time we said movie looks like they're going away and the thing that might honestly save them is the fact

that motherfucking Cameron is right now in New Zealand in a city sized set making three avatar movies and a lot of people say when he was announced and when they started shooting it they say oh my god who asked for this

and the answer is we all did in our hearts we didn't know it but James did and he's trying to bring it to us I remember reading a story about how Cameron apparently came across some quote by a critic who said it's weird how Avatar made all that money and has no cultural footprint and he said well I said I'll show her a cultural footprint

and of course that reads like an egomaniac and the thing is Cameron is an egomaniac because he has this confidence and he has this ability to do stuff which means he's probably not wasting time in his mind communicating things to people at their level which does definitely mean

he ends up kind of going up his own ass in his own mind but that's not just him saying oh yeah I'll show you cultural import it's that the reason that as we said there was no lasting thing about Avatar is that it couldn't be digested

and it was subversive in a way that the memes and the cultural like feed fallout of stuff like Star Wars and Marvel can't be and so it didn't and so when he says I'll show you fucking cultural relevance I'm gonna make three more of these motherfucking movies

he's essentially saying I am going to give you Avatar movies until you turn into fucking Navi and I think watching these movies turns you into a goddamn Navi there will be your fucking cultural relevance if you don't believe us watch this movie again

this movie he started working on the special effects like during the Clinton administration this looks better than any Marvel or DC or whatever fucking trillion dollar fucking movie yeah it looks way better than Star Wars every CGI

object has density, momentum weight every battle you stand up and cheer even when you're watching on a 20 inch TV you stand up and cheer watching the Navi jump into space C-130's and destroy jar heads

when he made, when the two or three more of these comes out with four or five what, no this is humanity's last chance as Che Guevara said two, three, many avatars yes well no, I mean what I want to say is like when you say that you're getting like

Avatar didn't have any lasting cultural impact because it wasn't memeable it wasn't a movie where everyone's doing lines to each other and referencing in another movies and things like that because I think as a filmmaker Cameron understands

that movies are an experience he wants you to have an experience watching a movie that to see something that you have never seen before and that creates the potential for you to feel

something that you've never felt before and as Meg, and you know there's plenty of this movie is sort of is jaded, kind of cynical ironic people that may may strike you as a little bit a little bit corny, right but that's fine because I genuinely

do think megalomaniacly or not he wants you to feel something and he wants to change the way you think and he wants to save humanity yes, he wants to save humanity it's like somebody says and people point out oh wow easy for him to say you know Hollywood celebrity

this movie isn't going to change the world yeah we're all coping everybody's coping but James Cameron can make a fucking movie that's what he's good at what do you want to do something else that he would be worse at Cameron is not the Orson Welles

or the DW Griffith or that of our time because we live in a bug soy whatever you want to call it whatever it is hell world clown world fucking whatever our Napoleon is a film director as it had to be

as a society of spectacle what job coordinating a vast bunch of people to get something done well we have a military but as we said that's not their job their job is just to keep fighting it's not to win anything if you want to command people to a goal and see it achieved you got to make a movie

that is he is Napoleon he is Alexander he is Xerxes he is the greatest administrator in North America and you know I think back

again we talked about it last episode how when we talked to Naomi Klein she said I don't know what can make Americans care about imperialism it's right in front of us it's right in front of us and the thing Avatar isn't

at the end of the day it's not dances with wolves or it's not any of those horrible Hollywood guilt pieces that they made in 2006 and 2007 after they booed Michael Moore for talking about the Iraq war with the Oscar suddenly oh we feel bad here's the movie where Matt Damon is sad

in Iraq it's not that because they're all about defeat because the left in this country wants beautiful defeat yep because they finished they have accepted at a deep level their powerlessness because of their comfort our comfort is attached inextricably to this machine

there's no way that you can imagine sustaining yourself outside of this system and so you have to cling to it even as you hate it and then you have to just watch culture that like allows you to sort of sublimate that feeling and you're talking about how you know it doesn't have a cultural relevance but when after that came out

there was a real phenomenon of people talking about how they were depressed after the movie because they couldn't go to Pandora but what they were really depressed about is the fact that they fucking live on Pandora and we destroyed it we live here we live it but that's the message of the movie you live here but

you live here but the frontier does not have to be the frontier destroy the frontier it's all you are them the people that live in the fucking rainforest you are them the people that live on iridium in Afghanistan you are them

the people that live in Yemen you are them we are all them there's no world tree physically there but we're all them destroy the frontier destroy the empire and we will realize that we are all on Pandora together that's it

that's it that's it however if I could offer just one critique of the plot and the vision at the end of this movie that doesn't land quite right for me even I understand why he did it at the very very end of the movie after

the Navier victorious they expel all of the humans off of their planet and they allow some of them to stay like the ones who fought with them but there's a scene where they're sort of marching them all back onto their space shuttles to like go home

Yankee and to go back to your dying world knowing what we know particularly about the history of the American conquest of the west in this country and our indigenous peoples in this country the Navier should

have killed all of them well for sure but I will say but about that another answer to the question of who asked for this does this movie really need a sequel one though I mean there isn't a fucking post-credits sequence where

Giovanni Abisi gets back to earth and there's like a Navier guy with an eye patch talking to like gonna create a new fucking show to watch oh right the movie you watch is actually just a commercial for another movie psych but like just narratively you know as an earthling as one

of the people from the dying planet that oh okay they're gonna come back and kill all of them unless unless Jake Sully and the Navier are able to turn enough of us into them to stop it and I gotta think that that's what these movies are gonna be about

these movies are I hope and I think they're gonna be about the concept of obliterating the frontier yes yep yep because all this stuff especially even the most like a

critically praised like you know post-colonial narratives they all reify the frontier at every point they say that because you're in a different society because one is an extractor and one is an oppressed person there can be no like human connection there and it's like well yeah

it's a matter of the mechanistic outcomings of people's relationship to the means of production that's true but god damn it you're also a fucking human being and there is the only hope we have is that individual human beings enough of them in a chain of reaction have a literal change of heart are able

to transform themselves from within turn the dying planet into Pandora turn themselves into the fucking Navier that is the only shot for humanity yep it's not yeah the only shot for humanity is that hundreds of millions of people

have a change of change of heart yep it's not going to be people getting feeling like bad about themselves and of course the main thing that's going to make this happen is not going to be a movie obviously obviously not we know that it's going to be literally people in their workplaces number one and in their

families and in their communities like building connections and relationships to each other that awaken within then an understanding that oh oh shit like these things that I thought I had to put up with because there's no other way to organize a society except chasing after the fucking carrot at the end of the stick that the

banker is holding over your face oh no there's actually a way for us to conduct our affairs equitably there's a way to distribute surplus justly if we acknowledge the common humanity of everybody within our group and those groups expand and you know if that's going to happen

one part of it is going to be people having experiences not just in their lives but in their entertainment realities and if there's going to be a hope it's not going to be because avatar we're not going to if we save the world it's not going to be because of avatar obviously but I do feel like if there are

future textbooks of like the bad time and how we got through them there will at least be like one page you know about avatar oh in the middle of this thing where the empire was like eating itself and going insane and its last throes of like colonial madness the biggest

movie was about how the machine was a diseased freak that needed to be put down and all other movies were about how the diseased freak has a human face and is in fact good in your friend they were about enough empowerment zones among the navy

enough midnight basketball on pandora and you'll be able to achieve the synthesis where you never break down the barriers you never change the relationship of exploiter and exploited and oppressed and oppressed but everyone's nice enough

but everyone's accepted there a lot enough that there doesn't have to be a lot of that horrible violent there you don't have to have the mean guy with the scar shooting people because everybody has essentially conditioned themselves to accept it I just think like what makes Cameron interesting and different and an auteur is more than any other

like big budget blockbuster enormously popular artist his films whether it is the terminator killing an entire police station full of cops whether it is the T-1000 literally

being a cop whether it is the colonial marines and aliens being washed out immediately washed and totally unprepared for the alien force that they face or whether it is a

nobby throwing fucking marines out of the back of an airplane as you cheer aesthetically James Cameron in his movies really does portray in a way that is entertaining in a way that kind of like gets through under your natural defenses

that America is the bad guy we are the bad guys when you see a movie and there's like it's the empire in star wars or it's fucking it's Thanos and you see like the evil conquering forces in movies that are fought

by good people that is America yep and why is that partially because Cameron is a fucking Canadian yes there is another thing they are most pretty much all of these movies are about the evil

of America or the American empire in one way or the other but I think one thing his movies are positively about all of them are about motherhood yes absolutely yes how that is like motherhood and like nurturing is the antidote

to the psychosis and the violence and the inevitably as you said the inevitably self defeating and annihilating violence will destroy the old thing itself Cameron is pointing out these systems are terrible but it's not like oh it's so sad that they're doing that

but I guess they're just going to keep doing it forever no they're embedded within it it will be destroyed everyone will be destroyed because the opposite of that is motherhood is nurturing is community yeah

I I would love to get into T2 and about how it's about motherhood but this would be a 4 hour episode then I think we'll have to save that for another time I think we should wrap it up here and I will close by saying

to all of the Jake Sully babies out there listening and I include myself in that category we are all Jake Sully babies we are all baby we are all Jake Sully babies we see you James Cameron sees you

yep this is Chavo Trapp House signing off from Pandora from Pandora where you live too yep bye I see you I see you

I see you