Avatar (2009) with Ali Nahdee

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello listeners. Before we get into this episode, we wanted
to say something to raise awareness about a particular current event.
Our guest Ali Noddy speaks about this at the end
of the episode, but we wanted to stick it here
at the top as well to make sure as many
people here about it as possible. Right now, in Canada,

(00:21):
in Winnipeg, police are refusing to search for the remains
of four Indigenous women who have been murdered by a
serial killer. The women are Morgan Harris, Rebecca Countois, Marcedes Myron,
and a fourth unidentified woman. This speaks to the pervasive

(00:41):
problem in Canada and elsewhere in the world of Indigenous
women going missing, being murdered, and officials doing little to
nothing about it. So we wanted to raise awareness about this.
We've included more information in the show notes, and we
encourage you to learn more about this and other issues

(01:04):
that affect Indigenous people and communities. All right onto the episode.
On the be Dol cast, the questions asked movies have
women inum? Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands
or do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zef invest start
changing it with the beck Del Cast. Jamie Yes I

(01:27):
see you, Caitlin, I see you. Do you want to
mate for life with me? Yeah? Where's your tail at?
Here is great to come and then we kiss Kis
kiss under the tree, iconic moment in cinema for better
or worse. People remember it, they really do. Hello and

(01:50):
welcome to the Beck Dol cast. Oh my goodness. Here's
one that has been a long time request, a long
time coming, and an episode we thought we may never
release because we were not convinced that the sequels are
actually going to come out. And yet here we are,
and here we are the Avatar episode. How you feeling, Caitlin,
I'm nervous. I feel underprepared. Even though I did a

(02:13):
lot of reading. There's truly so much to go through.
And there's also like, there's like fifteen years worth of production, criticism,
waves of different takes on this. But it's just been
it's been a real journey, it really has, and I'm
excited to get into it. We have. I think I

(02:34):
think we should just get started. I'm like, I'm ready,
I'm ready. You can breeze. Let's just breeze past. Look
the show we analyze movies, but you know, figure, let's
tell it must tell him. Let's tell him. Okay, um like,
you're like fun this show. We're gonna be here for

(02:56):
three hours. Buckle In um So analyzed movies through an
intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechtel tests simply as just
a baseline jumping off point to initiate a much larger conversation.
What is the Bechtel test? Though Jamie Well I can
tell you what it is. It is a media metric

(03:18):
originally created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the
Bechtel Wallace Test. Uh. She made it for her incredible
comic dikes to watch out for, originally as a joke,
but it is now kind of become a common media
metric that we use on this show and also in
the world. A lot of different versions of the test,

(03:38):
but the one we use is this. To pass the
Bechtel test, there must be two characters with names of
a marginalized gender talking to each other about something other
than a man for more than two lines of dialogue.
Some things do it, a lot of things don't. And
that's just kind of what it is. How did how

(03:59):
did I do so well? We're off to a great start,
and now is the time to get our guest into
the mix. I'm so pumped returning guest. You know her
from our episodes on Aquaman and Frozen two. She's an
Anisha Nabe, writer, founder of the Ali Naughty Test formerly

(04:20):
known as the Ala Test. It's Ali Naughty, welcome back.
I'm back with my braided tails. Hell yeah, I got
one for each of you. Welcome to the Three Timers Club.
I told them I was like, I called DIBs on Avatar.
Nobody else is allowed to do this. I have so

(04:41):
much to say, and yes I did. You saw my
Google doc had so much to say. I've seen forty
two page google doc. I'm so we talked about this, uh,
I think two years ago, like the first time you
were on the show. En. Yeah, and the moment is here.
Avatar two is come out. It's happening. I thought it

(05:01):
would never happen, and it probably shouldn't happen. But we'll see.
I hope it's good. James Cameron's pretty good with sequels,
so we'll see. We'll see. That's true. Titanic too is
a classic. Ever when he came back, when she woke up,
she woke up? Yeah, So Ali, what is your your

(05:23):
history relationship with Avatar? Oh so this is a history. Okay.
So it came out like two thousand nine. I want
to say I was probably around like eighteen nineteen ish,
and it came out at an interesting time. This is
obviously way before the Ali Naughty Test. The Alt Test
was ever a discussion the way that it is now

(05:48):
and the film itself was cathartic in a lot of
ways for me that I've discovered that it really isn't now,
But at the time in two thousand nine, I was like,
I can't believe that there's a movie like this. As
far as the Natives win, which I didn't see coming.

(06:08):
Everybody else saw it coming. I'm like, no, we never win.
Like this is gonna be Titanic level sadness because everybody's
gonna die and it's pain, and that didn't happen. I
did not expect the girl to live. Nay Terry did
not expect that. I didn't expect her to like because
and and I'll talk about this later, but like in

(06:29):
a lot of movies, when the native female character falls
in love with the white male character and he ultimately
ends up betraying her, she usually like takes his side
like no, no, I love him and we can work together.
And I was hoping that that wouldn't happen. I was

(06:51):
afraid it was going to happen. It did not happen.
I'm like, ah, what is this movie? Right? So then
I get online and so many people like hated it,
just did not like it. They're like, it's pocahontast space,
it stands as with wolves in space. It's white guilt,
it's liberalism, it's you know, just all of this stuff.

(07:14):
And I knew something in it was kind of rooted
in anti Native racism. I just didn't have the words
for it. And obviously, like as the years have gone by,
I found the language to like kind of point out
what exactly like these criticisms which aren't wronged but also
are very yes. So then I almost kind of like

(07:41):
the Avatar out of spite in a way, just because
I'm like, screw you, guys. I like this movie. But
I'll be honest, after rewatching it and especially rewatching it now,
I didn't like it as much. And I'm like, Okay,
I know everything that's kind of I know everything that's
wrong with it, but I still liked it. In spite

(08:03):
of it. But I'm like, you know, after Rhymes three
Young Gules and Reservation Dogs and Rutherford Falls and Wendell
and Wild and all of these indigenous films usually made
by indigenous people. Um, I say with full confidence that
if Native creators were given the same the same amount

(08:24):
of power and opportunity as James Cameron, they could do
it just as good, if not better than. Avatar would
probably be something you'd never see before, right, Yeah, that's
what I think. Yeah, I mean absolutely, it's always where
does the money go and who gets the opportunities? Yes,
exactly that. So that's my very complicated history with Avatar.

(08:49):
I love it, Jamie, what about you? What's yours? It's
a disaster kind of it's all over the place of
like I feel like you've been witnessed to it, and
in large part, Caitlin, like, I saw this movie in
high school, um, along with I think the rest of
the world. It seems like I saw this movie in

(09:10):
three D. I remember, Like I just wasn't. I mean,
I guess like people don't maybe because the show has
been on for so long, like I was originally your
co because I just like I didn't know a lot
about movies and didn't have like a huge passion for
them growing up. So I saw it because it was
like compulsory, it felt like, and I was like, I
liked it, Sure, that was fun. And then as time

(09:32):
went on and Ali you were alluding to this, there
was like just there's always the shifting discussion around what
this movie meant culturally, what it meant about you, if
you liked it versus you didn't. Like I feel like
it's just flip flopped a million times. Um. I think
there was a huge chunk of time where they were
like Avatar like has been forgotten, like lost to time,

(09:54):
and you know, like why everyone saw this movie but
no one can remember a thing that happens in it,
which like I was like, well, I don't remember. And
then I think sometime around the Lockdown, I took on
a shreky in appreciation of Avatar, where it did seem
like a lot of people uh with with like time

(10:16):
on their hands, like got back into Avatar kind of
like spitefully and ironically where they're like, well, I remember
what happened in Avatar, and and I was I was
kind of like I was kind of doing that for
a while because I was you know, lockdown mental illness.
I don't really know, like I can't really speak to it.
I know it was happening. I know I bought a
lot of books in because there was I think actually

(10:42):
the video that like got me back into wanting to
understand more about the movie. Because I rewatched the movie,
I still like, I don't know, I feel like my
opinion on the actually the movie itself has changed for
a lot of the reasons you're describing Ali Like, I
think that a lot of the there's a lot of
of course, like extremely valid criticism of this movie that

(11:02):
we need to talk about. And then there's also a
lot of like overly simplistic comparisons that you're describing that, Um,
I think you're interesting to discuss. Like, but it's it's
it's very it's a very movie movie. I don't know,
it's like a blockbuster where it just kind of washes
over the movie. That feels like a movie. Would you
say that the movie it feels like like a movie.

(11:26):
It's what I would say, um, a movie with blue cats.
It's oh god, I just dude, fox cats a cat
does James Caeron, Like, I it's really I'm always going
to give James Cameron a chance to impress me, and

(11:50):
he's such a weird man, Like I just don't like.
The things that he really commits himself to are baffling
to me, and I'm excited to talk about it. Um.
But yeah, I kind of came all the way around
because I saw a YouTube video by a creator named sideways.
Uh yes, right, so I think maybe we talked about
you about. It's this incredible video that they made about

(12:13):
how the Avatar score was composed and then kind of
uncomposed of like all of this work and resources that
James Cameron um and the production put into like creating
a unique, very specific NAVI culture and then they basically
used none of it and they got like overwhelmed, and
then they're like, um, let's do a pretty standard James

(12:35):
Horner score and that will basically be in So I
got more interested in the production side of the movie
because there was a lot more thought and intention that
went into it than I would have guessed based on
what the movie is like. So ultimately I would say
the movie feels like a movie. Um. And I I
still I mean, I am kind of excited to see

(12:58):
the second one can't lie like I, you know, so Gurdi,
we were playing a teenager. I've been trigued. I don't know.
I don't know, but there's a lot of problems. I
don't know. Yeah, my relationship with Avatar is fraught, but
you know, so is mine. All right, well what's your
relationship with Avatar? So I saw this in theaters I
think twice. I was in my early twenties at the time,

(13:22):
and I loved it. I was like, this movie rules.
I know you loved it. Whoa Asterix At the time.
I was like, damn, this movie is awesome. It's so
good James Cameron, he's done it again. And then like
some weeks passed and people were like, yeah, I mean,

(13:43):
I guess I liked it, but was it that good?
I'm not sure. And I was like, well, I don't know,
was it? And then more weeks passed and people are like,
maybe that movie actually kind of sucks, and like the
same thing that you were talking about Alie is about
and you jam me like and then I was like
seeing all these things on this social media of the time,
which was Facebook, people being like, it's just it's fern Gully,

(14:05):
you know, James Cameron ripped off fern Gully, he ripped
off Disney's pocahon Is it's blah blah blah. And then
I also remember a very specific criticism that so many
people were like the things called unobtainium. That's so ridiculous,
and it's like, first of all, it's I think, intentionally
on the nose. Secondly, have you seen some some of
the elements on the periodic table are called there's an

(14:28):
element called einstein Um, like they have some ridiculous names.
Like Also, it's like everything about this movie is extremely
on the nose, like right, it's not trying to be subtle,
so like it's not really James Don's thing. People being
like unobtainium that's so like that. I don't think it's
a valid criticism. But then I was like, oh, yeah,

(14:49):
I guess it is kind of like pulling from stuff
and maybe it isn't as good as I thought. And
I was like young enough that I was like too
easily influenced by other people's opinions. Still, so I was like, yeah,
reminds this movie it's not good. And then a decade passes, over,
a decade passes, I don't watch the movie again until
three days ago, and then I watch it again. I'm like, no,

(15:11):
I was right the first time. This movie rules. But
with the caveat that, there are right. With the caveat that.
There are a lot of issues with it, which we
are about to discuss. But from a just like kind
of strictly narrative standpoint, I'm like, James Cameron, he did
it again. He can tell a dam cinematic story, does it?

(15:33):
He kind of always does it. There's a fun James
Cameron thing that I noticed on this one was because
there's just like a lot of good killing the bad
guys moments towards the end of this movie. But the
most the closest thing to the propeller moment Titanic is
when the guy gets crushed between the two steel boxes.
You're like, why he's a sick oh, and then that's

(16:01):
what you get, colonizer. A lot of good colonizer kills.
It was pretty exciting so many that's why so many
white people did not like it. Let me tell me,
oh my god, because this movie. I mean, I only
lived in one small country in Europe, you know, so
I can't say that this applies outside of the US. Everywhere.

(16:24):
But the movie made so much money for a reason,
and I'm pretty sure it's because the bad guys in
Avatar are so American codd Like you don't see American
flags or anything like that, but there's no British people
and there's no all the white people have American accents,
except for Sam Worthington, who's really I love million can't

(16:49):
make an Australian guy sound American. Tell you there was
one part where he is like, your life comes down
to one moroment, and you're like, it just made them
Australian because they still have a history of colonialism anyway.
But yeah, and I think that's why, because the Americans

(17:10):
lose in this one. Like I feel like the rest
of the world kind of has a very at least
my experience in Finland, they have a very Disney Princess
cowboys and Indians understanding of Native history and Native people
as far as Native American I should say, even if
it's not as blatantly racist over there, there's still elements

(17:32):
of it where it's like, oh, but you know, we're
sympathetic kind of, you know, we're way more sympathetic, and
we'll play the Indian in our games more than the Cowboy,
you know that sort of thing. So to have a
movie like this where the cowboys lose to the Indians,
I can absolutely see and they sign the Americans packing.

(17:53):
I mean, of course the rest of the world loved
this movie. Of course, of course the white Americans hated it.
It made two point nine billion dollars. Bill yawns, Billy,
I always forget and get mad again. It's like, there's
people have accused James Cameron of ripping off a million
different stories in this, but there's also just like so

(18:16):
much of James Cameron ripping himself off to for like
that moment at the end. It reminded me so much
of like when Mr. Is May survives and you get
one shot on like this motherfucker lived, and they do
the same thing with like the bad guy that's not
the colonel. What's his name? Yeah, yes, yeah, I don't
know that the character's name. I know the Parker Parker

(18:37):
when the colonel gets into the like large robot thing,
that's what Ripley does at the end of Aliens, Like yeah,
like Dave's Cameron's using his own playbook to do. Oh
that scene is so I'm like it's so weird. I'm like,
I like, it's a good movie. There, I forgot. I
haven't seen in a couple of years, and I think,
you know whatever, your brain kind of trains you to

(18:59):
expect the worst in every movie, especially when you do
this show for six where the hosts of the back
to cast. Yes, but I always feel myself clenched up
where I'm like, he's not gonna let na Teri kill
the colonel. Izzy, He's gonna let's he's gonna let's sull
kill the colonel. He let's say Terry kill the colonel.

(19:19):
And it's so exciting, and the whole theater cheered and
it was awesome. The catharsis good job movie. We're gonna
have so much fun. Let's take a quick break and
then we'll come back to recap the movie. So we'll
be right back, and we're back. All right, here's the recap.

(19:46):
I had to gloss over some details and I even
like leave out certain characters just because there's like so
much and the movie is almost three hours long, so
bear with me. But um, here we go. Better not
cut out my friend Dr mac a k, the guy
from Dragged Me to Hell. Wait, who is his name,
Dr Max? It's Dr Max Ptel Oh, yes, Um Deelippe

(20:10):
Row who's also in inception playing a very solar character.
Kind of this is he was on kind of an
unprecedented run in two thousand nine and ten and then
I think James Cameron kidnapped him and um, he is
stuck in Pantora forever forever. At least he's living off
the royalties for the rest of his life. Truly, he's chilling. Okay,

(20:34):
So we meet Jake Sully played by Sam Worthington, and
we get his backstory. He is a marine who became
disabled during battle. He's now paralyzed from the waist down
and he has been approached with an opportunity to go
to a far away planet called Pandora and do something
we don't quite know what yet because his twin died,

(20:58):
which I feel like is very glad used over that
he's actively mourning his brother. His brother died like four
minutes ago. Yeah, I know that. They just cremate him,
like right in front of him. I'm like no, and
he's just like damn dude, and he's like, we need
you for science, and he's like he's Okay, these cans.
He's like, all right, sleep it off science in the morning.

(21:21):
And also no one cares that he just lost his
twin brother, like weavers, like, um, okay, what are you
doing here, you loser? I need your brother. Oh yeah, okay.
So then Jake arrives on Pandora and he learns about
the planet. It's dangerous wildlife and it's indigenous population called

(21:43):
the Navvy, who are tall, blueskinned humanoids. Uh, your cat
like the cat cat features with cat features. Jake meets
Norm and the two of them are going to be
avatar drivers. So basically, scientists have spliced human and NAVI
d NA to create these avatars that Jake and Norm

(22:06):
and other people will remotely operate by hooking the people
up to these avatars via a like neural link, which
is why they wanted Jake for this because he has
the same DNA as his brother. They originally built this
avatar for his brother, but it'll still work with Jake,
and that always messes me up because it's like they

(22:27):
do nothing with that. It's like if it's his brother's
d n A. I mean, this whole movie is about
accessing memory and accessing like history and stuff have them.
They never did anything like that where he enters his
brother's avatar and elements from like his blood memory or
something like that is still there so he can feel

(22:48):
his thoughts or something. They never do anything with it.
That's such a good point. I've never thought about that, right,
because it's like that would fit into the theme of
the movie. And Jake's always like underdeveloped, but it's not
like you don't know anything about it. Damn. Yeah. And
NATII and the deleted scenes has a sister who died,

(23:09):
and these guys never bond over that, Like you both
lost your siblings like recently, and that's not something you
guys would talk about during your forced fucking romance. And
you would also think that, like I don't know that,
like Jake might. I don't know, Like Jake doesn't feel
culpable enough for any of this the entire movie, when

(23:32):
it is like, so his fault a lot of the
like most of the time. But it was like also
on top of that, his brother would be so disappointed
in him for like it sounds like his brother was
a very like, well liked ethical scientist who would be
probably devastated to learn that his brother like Mick fucked

(23:54):
his entire like up on such unprecedented scale. Truly, they
be doing that. Um okay. So then we meet the
head of the Avatar project, Grace Augustine played by Sigourney Weaver. She,
like we mentioned, is not thrilled with Jake being there

(24:16):
because he's not a trained scientist. But Jake being there
was Parker self Ridge's idea. That's Giovanni Ribisi. And then
we learned why people have come to Pandora. It's to
collect parentheses steal an extremely valuable element slash mineral called unobtainium.
And Parker's whole thing is that he'll stop at nothing

(24:38):
to obtain this unobtaini um um, yeah, James Cameron does
the classic thing of like capitalism is one guy and
the military industrial complex is also another guy. It's not
subtle storytelling, but you know, but it's also right, like
it's also correct, which is the worst part. So obviously

(25:01):
the nov don't want them to do this. So right now,
the humans are trying to find a quote unquote diplomatic
way to colonize the Navy and steal their resources. So
then Jake gets neural linked to his Navy avatar for
the first time. He gets acclimated to his new body,

(25:21):
and the movie telegraphs to us that it's exciting for
him because his in his human body, he's paralyzed from
the waist down, but in his navy body he can
walk and run, and he really takes to his new
body very quickly. This is interesting because there is absolutely
some able is um for sure in this movie. We'll

(25:44):
talk about that. Yeah. Yeah, there's a really wonderful line though,
because obviously people with disabilities are not I hate to
say not a monolith, but that's the only thing that
came to mind. You know, there's many different types, uh,
and it's different for each person. So there was a
quote when I was doing my research where a woman

(26:06):
who was able bodied and then couldn't use her legs
anymore and as in a wheelchair, said that the scene
where he goes from his wheelchair into the avatar where
he's walking and playing basketball and running, it's really touching.
She's like, I had a spinal cord injury in a
car accident when I was five years old, so it
gave me chills. I'm in a wheelchair for twenty years.

(26:29):
I can't even remember what it was like, and he's
just stretching his legs out and it must have felt
just so like the ultimate stretch. And then other people
were like, uh no, this is actually quite awful. Yeah, yeah,
there's a whole conversation to be had around that. And
I saw similarly like mixed responses um and ultimately the

(26:53):
actor should have been a disabled actor exactly, a disabled actor,
a good actor. You know, there's a lot of part
your not a white actor, a lot of choices could
have been made differently. I think, yeah, we'll get into
the conversation around disability a little later. But I was
interested that there was such a kind of diversity of

(27:13):
opinion because what was hitting for me And it's like,
I'm able bodied, Like I don't have a voice in
this conversation really, but but I you know, there are
constant insults thrown Jake Sully's way. They are generally from
characters we are not supposed to like. So it's like,

(27:34):
I don't know, it's it's it's a it's an interesting one,
it's complicated, and from characters that we do like it,
even Grace At sometimes that's yeah, she's saying some ablest
slurs at him. Yeah, it's like, okay, Grace smoking a
cigarette in the lab. Oh yeah, She's like, where's my

(27:55):
goddamn cigarette? What's wrong with this picture? That was iconic,
that was great. You don't need a sig you need
but her able ism was disappointed and consistent too. It
like became like a term of endearment. It seems like, yeah,
really gross. Um. So back in his Jake body, he

(28:17):
meets Trudy. That's Michelle Rodriguez. She's a pilot who will
bring the avatars into the wilderness so they can do
their science uh and colonizing. Um. Jake also reports to
Colonel Quaritch his whole thing is science people are losers.

(28:37):
Military people are awesome, And I want you to spy
on the Novi and find out their weaknesses so I
can kill them more easily. I love this bad guy.
I know I shouldn't, but I love this bad guy.
He's such a ham He's so campy. He seems camping, cartoonish.
But also I feel like there are people like this,

(28:58):
oh for sure. So just like this, in any other movie,
he would be the hero. James Cameron just made him
the bad guy this time, but changed nothing like this
would be Arnold in the Goddamn Jungle looking for the Predator.
This could be any action hero in the eighties. It's
the exact same character. He's just bad this time and

(29:20):
it's Stephen Lange and he's just so fucking perfect and scoofy.
It's very good casting. Stephen Lange really seems like he's
having the time of his life being the worst man ever.
And I mean the same with Giovanni Ribisi's character, where
you're like, he's just fucking despicable and it's so like
played up, and then when they're in the same room,

(29:40):
you're like, oh, it's the most evil room in the world,
and you're reculing there are people that are those people
are just like this do you have on ABC? Is
interesting though, I feel like his character would have been
this one dimensional, you know, sort of comic book character
like Stephen Lane, but he um. I think the actor

(30:01):
gives it a nuance where he's like conflicted, where it's like,
because you even see it in the movie sometimes where
he's like he'll give like a heavy sigh, We're going
to kill these people and well they're not people, they're
cats in a tree. Whatever. They can go to another tree.
But we're gonna kill babies, you know. So it's like

(30:22):
you kind of like see the mental gymnastics he's doing,
or like the you know, the things that he has
to do to justify his choices, which does make it
worse because he still Yeah, yeah, not to brag or anything,
but I saw Giovanni Ribis getting ice cream in my
neighborhood one time. Wow. All I did was see Taylor

(30:44):
Lawton or screaming at a moon juice. It's not fair.
I met Scott McNeil a and he told me I
was beautiful. Hell yeah, okay, I do. That was Piccolow
from Dragon Ball Z and all of my nineties heroes
hell yoh okay. So, Jake, Norm and Grace in their

(31:07):
avatars go into the forest. They encounter some big, scary animals.
One chases Jake and he gets separated from the others
and lost in the forest. Then he encounters a navvy
woman Natieri played by Zoey Soldanna, who saves him from
the animals who were swarming him. But she's really pissed.

(31:30):
She's like, those animals didn't need to die, but because
you were careless and flopping around like a baby, I
had to kill them. And he's like, Oopsie, well how
about you teach me to be better at this? And
she's like, no, you suck. But then the seeds of
the Sacred tree float down and surround him as if

(31:51):
to say he's special, He's the chosen one. I know,
there's so many chosen one shots. And then I've kind
of always forget that. It culminate in like and also,
Jake Sully can kind of talk to God and she
listens to him. What God answers to Jake Sully, what
are you talking about? Atlantis Morrissette would never talk about. Also,

(32:18):
Zoe Seldana just like one thousand percent, just embodies this
character like she's the best. She's the best actress in
the movie. I love, like just the physical performance, the
way she moves, the way she the way she hisses
like a cat. Yes, she's so good. They said that

(32:39):
she was a former ballet dancer, so she was able
to do like all the stunt work and stuff like yeah,
because she was in that movie that we covered and
it was called Center Stage. Yes, yeah, that was like
her big debut. Yeah, I forgot that she was Yeah,
Jews dance trained man. So he sail. Donna also on

(33:01):
a hot streak because she's also in the Star Trek
movie this year and Guardians of the and yeah, like
she's queen a sci fi she's in a lot of
space movies. Yeah, she's She's also in the Britney Spears
classic Cross Crossroads. Yes, I did not know that true story.
I feel like I feel like DNA would prefer it

(33:21):
that way. It's not a very good movie written by
Shonda Rhymes though. Okay, So Natieri takes Jake to Home
Tree where the Navi live. We meet her father. Yes,
I know that with him as soon as I saw him,
Like he just has a very distinct looking face, even

(33:44):
before I even knew he was in the movie. It's
like as soon as it was like, okay, native coded characters,
they need a chief there. He is beautiful man. Yeah yea.
So he's the clan leader. And we also meet Natieri's mother,
their Mowatt, played by cc H pounder Um. She's there
like spiritual leader the Sahik. She's incredible. She is the

(34:08):
best looking one. I love her design. Her design is awesome.
First of all, that was so Mowatt is the only
character in the film that passes the Ali Nati test,
oh because she never falls in love with a white
man and she doesn't die and all that other good ship.
But yeah, so she Uh. Usually in stories like this,

(34:31):
there is never a chief's wife, like there's usually the
chief's daughter, the Indian princess type, but you never see
like the spouse of the chief, which is interesting because
a lot of Native society is not all but many
are matrilineal, so the bloodline usually follows the mother, so

(34:53):
you never really see a character quite like this anyways.
But then she just her design is beautiful. I just
love how every aspect of this character. You look at
her and it tells a story. I by that she's
the chief's wife, that she's the spiritual leader. Um, the

(35:14):
fact that she's bilingual suggests that she probably tried to
be diplomatic and then realized there's no salvaging this. So
you know, it's just such a really interesting I wish
we saw more of her and less of Jake. I
like less of Jake on the whole. I hope that
the second movie really runs with the whole concept of

(35:36):
less Jake. The trailers tell us anything, though, I feel
like he's in the movie a lot sid Founder. I
didn't because I'm like, I don't know anything about linguistics.
I'm I'm just a baby. I'm seventeen years old. You're
Jake Sully flopping around in the forest. So that's that

(35:56):
I'm not that bad. But but um in in that
sideways video that sort of unpacks how you know, this
movie invested in building an entire language, kind of Elvish style,
and like hired a dialect coach to teach each actor
um how to speak Navi and speak it correctly. I

(36:18):
guess C. C. H. Pounder is like the m v
P of speaking Navy in a way that it was
like very authentic and convincing. And there's like a whole
sequence of like how she I don't know, it's really
cool cool anyway, shoutout C. H. Pounder. Hell yeah, shout out. Okay.
So most of the nov are hostile towards Jake, understandably

(36:40):
they see him as an outsider. But Ma Watt says
that Jake Sully should learn their ways because she's like
she interprets the will of a wa, which is their deity.
So Mo Wat's like, Okay, you can learn our ways
and NATII, you're going to be the one to teach him,
which she's not thrilled about. Back in human world, everyone

(37:03):
is thrilled that Jake has gotten so close to the
Navy grace for like science and anthropological reasons. And Parker
because under the Navy palm tree is one of the
largest obtanium deposits on the whole planet um and so
he's giving Jake three months to convince the Navy to

(37:25):
move so that they can come and steal the unobtainium.
Otherwise bulldozers will go in and destroy the place. So
back in Avatar body, Jake begins to learn the culture
and customs of the Navy. Also, they call themselves omata kaya,
so I'll like probably use those words interchangeably from now on.

(37:49):
Although they refer to themselves, they never referred to themselves
as the Navy. Is that correct. I think it's part
of their language. Yeah, Because there's a scene where she's
yelling and I here not be I wonder if it's
like their word for like people maybe or something, because
I think is the name of their clan, their clan, Okay,

(38:10):
because I think other yeah, other like regional clans are
referenced later on when they're building their the army against
against Mr. Military. Yes, Stephen Lan, Yeah, I love when
Stephen Lan dies. It's so exciting. Okay. So, because they
refer to themselves as amata kaya, all from this point

(38:33):
on use that um to refer to them. So Jake
learns how to ride this horse like creature, and Naterie
explains that he needs to form a bond called sahlu
with the creature, which is the like. So they all

(38:54):
the Amakaya people have this long braid and at the
end of the braid are these how would doc Yeah,
tentacles more or less little like nerve endings. It's very um,
You're just like James Cameron. It's what are you thinking
about in that big old house? That's what he was saying.

(39:17):
Can't girls and tentacles? I'm just saying, really, it's so funny.
I'm like, I wouldn't even say that's him knowing his audience.
I think that's him broadening his audience. So it's like, well,
fuck the horse with your tentacle braid. Yeah, and that's
how you create this meaningful bond with animals and trees

(39:40):
and um, basically any living thing on Pandora. There's also
this flying animal, the Akron, but he's not ready to
form a halu with one of those yet, because this
is like advanced stuff, advanced tentacle sex. He's not ready
for its. It advanced hantai Hanti two one is yeah,

(40:06):
but he is learning the language, he's learning how to hunt,
he's learning how to see things from an omata kaya perspective.
He learns about the deity Awa and eventually Natteri deems
him ready to try to form this bond with an Ikron,
which he successfully does. Also side note, there is an

(40:27):
alpha version of the Akron, but it's very very rare
for anyone to bond and fly with one, so just
put a little pin in that. It's like the guy
Fieri iron like. It's got flames on this side like
it's the cool He's very big, you can tell because

(40:47):
he's got flames. Oh, speaking of cat like creatures, Ali's
cat just showed up. Heard the call ah Piku, I
too would like to learn about the cats, the fellow
dragon fucking cats. Okay, so Jake and Naterie they fly

(41:12):
together and also they flirt together. Nobody asked for this,
and yet I'm kind of rooting for them. There I
said it, you weren't. That was I was honestly brave
to say, because no one else did. I feel like
at every turn, you're just like Nigeria can do better

(41:33):
so much among these faceless navi that do we know
that it's such a large population, Like, surely, surely someone's
here that isn't Jake Sully. But I feel like, you know,
in in the in the real world, we often end
up with the Jake Sullies of the world. Told me
about it. You never think it's going to be you.
The worst part is that the guy she's hooked up with,

(41:55):
the one who is going to be the next clan leader,
his name Suite. Those two they're like betrothed. I guess
they become a mated pair eventually, but you don't really
see them interact much at all, Like they really don't
have much of a relationship, which is unfortunate because the
actor is super hot, and yet they give my man

(42:18):
this fucking atrocious hairline and these tiny ears and these
any bodies small nipples. I want to like you, but shit,
I mean, las Alonzo is gorgeous. They did him so dirty.
They didn't pretty dirty, I don't. I mean, there's like,
I think the element of Jak and Dyteri's love story

(42:40):
that worked for me, although I was like a little
unclear on what the Navvy mating practices work because it
was like, yeah, they referenced that you would be betrothed,
you didn't have a say in who you married. But
then it's like, I guess they just didn't really go
into it. I'm sure it's in one of my many
Navvy guide books that I have back in Los Angeles,

(43:01):
but I am not there right now, so I couldn't
consult my my small avatar library that I manically purchased
second hand. Please don't judge me, okay, um, but I
think that the element of the Jake and Naterry love
story that worked for me was like her choosing Like
that was cool, That's what I liked to Yeah, and

(43:22):
even Jake Sully was like and she must choose me
because he's an Australian. She's like she already has kiss
You're right, Yeah, that's the part. I like, let's fatantical
six then, but yeah, Jake is a romantic partner? Is um? No?

(43:43):
Thanks pass? Okay, So back in human world. Jake is
having an identity crisis because he has gotten so immersed
in the Omakayah way of life that he feels that
that's his real life and him as a humans like
a dream. Basically, they say he stopped showering. You're like, Jake, Yeah,

(44:06):
get it together, man, Seriously. He is then officially made
a member of the Oma Takaya, so he is now
one of them. Can I just say this takes place
over three months? I know this motherfucker becomes the best navvy,
the best Indian ever in three months. I don't want

(44:26):
to hear anybody complain about Ray from Star Wars ever again,
ever again? Where was that energy for Jake? Selling? Yeah?
I found that hard to believe, both that he could
master a language in three months and like just like
master all of the culture and customs, and that the
Alma Takaya people would so readily accept him in such

(44:49):
a short amount of time. I was like, nothing adds
up here, No disconnected natives, Like obviously not all natives
are the same, but so many disconnected natives who are
displaced because of colonization, residential schools, foster care, or just
some growing off the reservation like there's such an anxiety
when it comes to reconnecting to your own people that

(45:12):
the fact that this dude who has nothing to do
with any of these people and has no history with
any of these people can just walk right and be
like oh yeah. There's so many gross moments, like especially
once he becomes immersed in like o Mentakaya culture, like
where he repeatedly is like I need to speak and

(45:35):
it's like, Jake, you don't, like you've just got here
my man, Like really shouldn't? That, I would say is
my biggest beef with this movie. Yeah, Jake is really
taking up quite a bit of space for being a guest,
for being a new, like a new random white guy
that is actively ruining everyone's life, Like yeah, fucking Jake Sully.

(46:01):
But he's one of them now. And um he gets
to choose a mate and he chooses nay Tieri and
she's like, I choose you back, and then they kiss
and have tentacle sex under a tree. It's kind of hot.
It's confusing, you're corny. James Cameron knows how to make
a sex scene that will even if you don't like it,

(46:24):
it's going to stick with you. It's good, you're gonna
be thinking about it. I remember when I thought that
scene was so weird when I saw it for the
first time, and then I a couple of years later,
I started playing mass Effect and the Love of my
Life is this cricket looking dinosaur, fucking alien man with

(46:46):
a very nice voice, So it's not weird. Yeah, his
pictures in there. If you want to check your the
Google duck like I do. I do want to check
Wait what page? Page twenty the very top is the
Love of my life? Oh my god. Okay, he's kind

(47:07):
of hot, adores you. It's kind of got a Mr.
Darcy vibe to like, he's complicated, but I can get
through to him. His code name is Archangel. Oh my good. Okay.
So Jake and Nati are smooching and they fall asleep

(47:29):
together and the next morning a huge bulldozer comes crashing
into the tree where they're at and Naterian Jake have
to run away. Colonel Quaritch and Parker, the two big
bads of the movie, realized that Jake is trying to
sabotage their mission, and they are piste and they're about
to go back in guns blazing, and Jake is like stop,

(47:50):
let me talk to them and see if I can
negotiate something here. A detail that I didn't really think
about that I appreciated on this uh one was that
Grace knew the whole time, like she was able to
figure out very I feel like a lesser script would
have been like and she had no idea because women

(48:10):
can't brain. But I like that she figures out because
that is like logical, Like he is a marine first,
um so, and he's around the two most evil people
ever all the time, and so she's like, oh, I
need to get him out of here because like I
need the information he can get me. And of course
he's going to go with these guys because that is

(48:30):
like his kind of degree or whatever. Yeah, he hates
science and he's not he's he's refused to mourn his brother,
so he's kind of a loose cannon. He forgot all
about his brother. Yeah, never hear about him ever? Again,
what was his name? Even do we ever? Commy? We
do learn his name? Tommy Sully? Horrible, horrible, pouring one

(48:54):
out for Tommy Sully tonight, Jeeves, just why not Sullivan?
Why not? Anyway? Shout out to your character Sully though
from Santa University. I it's look, he's coming back this
year because it's you're the Sully, Thank you so much?

(49:14):
All right, so so bad guys are about to go
back in, guns blazing, and Jake's like, let me talk
to them, so he goes back in. But NACKTII is like,
what you knew this would happen? I trusted you and
you betrayed us. Favorite scene in the movie. Favorite scene
I talked about this and Frozen too, but I'll say
it again. Uh, this was the point in the movie

(49:37):
where I was like, Okay, this can only go one
of two ways. If it goes one way, I hate
this movie and it is the worst thing ever made.
If it goes the other way, I love this movie.
It's the best thing that's ever been made. I feel
differently now. The stakes are very high, but literally, like
I said earlier too, it's all like in movies like

(49:58):
this and stories like this, especially with a character like this,
it's you know, oh, well, we can reach something peaceful
because I love him and he loves me, and love
saves love consol racism, and it doesn't. So what it
is is you knew this was happening, and We're gonna
lose our home. People are going to die, and we

(50:22):
trusted you. You shouldn't even be here and we've already
trusted you. And Zoey sell Donna's emotional just rage in
that scene was so good and I'm like, good, you
fucking kill his ass, like yeah, and she leaves him
for dead because she leaves dead. I love that she
leaves him for dead. Perfect because they tie Jake and

(50:44):
Grace up to a tree knowing that the bulldozers like
on its way and like missiles are coming, so leaves
him for dead. The military shows up to fire at
home Tree, but then Moa is like, you know what, Jake,
if you are one of us, help us, So she
sets him free conflictive feelings about the home tree is destroyed.

(51:06):
It's absolutely devastating. I'm crying. And Natieri's father is killed
among others in this attack. Someone brought up how despite
how anti military and anti imperialist Avatar tries to be,
they did kill the only native actor in the movie.
I'm like, you're not wrong. That scene was sad, though

(51:29):
I love with study and Zoey's performance again just so
sad because Jake Sulley is once again trying to insert
himself into one of the most personal moments one can have,
and it's I think one of the things that has
I don't I mean, I don't remember how I felt
about anything when I was seventeen. Probably incorrectly it's safety,

(51:52):
but I do think that the movie obviously there's a
shipload of stuff calling on. It's like we're approaching the
climax of the movie. But wish that they took more
time to dwell on that loss, because we lose this
amazing character. It is this really really moving, well performed moment,

(52:13):
and then we kind of don't revisit it, and it's
I mean, obviously everyone's in crisis, but it's like it
would have been nice to see, you know, like her
mother's reaction, to see the community's reaction. But we get
way more airtime to like we have to save Grace,
which is like, sure, Grace is a great character, but
why are we focusing on a white lady we've known
for like a couple, you know, months, versus like our leader, Yeah,

(52:38):
like your parent that like your parents. Oh my god,
I could not like having lost a parent. I promise
I won't cry anymore. But having lost a parent, Like
there's no forgiving someone if they get your dad killed,
you know what I mean? Like how I get it,
Like I get it as well, like find out later

(53:00):
with the Toroka and everything and the story and but
even so, I mean two things can exist at once, man,
and you killed my dad. You know, I'm I fuck this,
fuck you because I didn't mention this, and yet I
don't think. But Jake Selly has been feeding information about
like the tree, the home tree, to Colonel Quaritch, So

(53:24):
he's like gathering this intel that he's now able to
use against the Omakaya people in this attack. So he's evil.
So then Jake finds Nteri in the rubble as she's
mourning the death of her father. She wants nothing to
do with him. She's like, get away, never come back.
Then the military bad guys pull the plug on Jake

(53:47):
and Grace and so they wake up in their human bodies.
They put them plus Norm in a holding cell. But
Trudy remember her, she's in the movie. She she would
the equip about every forty minutes, and you're like, um,
she breaks them out of prison and they get in
Trudy's ship and escape this military base, and they head

(54:10):
to the Tree of Souls, which is the amatokaia is
most sacred place um where they have relocated and Jake
needs to prove his worth to be able to rejoin them,
so he forges a bond with the Alpha Akron, the
the one that has like spinners on the wheels. I

(54:30):
just kept thinking it was like the coolest car ever.
He's got a spoiler on the back. Yeah. Um. So
Jake shows up with the torok at the Tree of Souls.
He pulls up, he pulls up. Yeah, he kind of
tokyo drifts into the I mean, if we have Michelle
Rodriguez of the movie and everything exactly. Um, and everyone

(54:53):
reveres him now and Nati is like, maybe you're okay
again instant forgive nous. Yeah. And then during the escape earlier,
Grace was shot, so the Omakaya tried to save her
by transferring her consciousness permanently to her avatar her Oatcaia body,
but she's too weak and she dies. But she dies

(55:17):
at peace. Yes, it's a really good scene. Yeah, it's
very touching, for sure. It's nice. And I also like,
again it just like I feel like a lot of
movies would have not had the courage to kill her off,
especially like a big but it's like, no one can
die in franchise movies now because not now. But James
Cameron is not shy about killing people off. So oh,

(55:39):
get yeah, you're we're about to see a lot of
colonizers get squished. That Jake gives the biggest, dumbest speech,
but ID it's cringe, but I dig it. Yeah, it's cringe,
but I dig it. And the reason I dig it
is because this is where the Pocahonas and space Trope

(56:00):
just goes to die. Because again, you know, especially with
a character like this, a story like this, it's always
our love can save the day and peace and understanding,
and this is no, we are beyond that. Now we
have to fight. Now they need to fucking leave. And
that never happens in movies like this, where it's like

(56:23):
pieces not an option. We are hell and gone from diplomacy.
You have to fucking go. And you never see this
in like movies about indigenous people, let alone movies about
indigenous people by non indigenous people, like especially rich white
dudes in the film industry. So yeah, because it's them
trying to rewrite history. To be like, no, we it

(56:46):
was so peaceful when we came here and colonized people
and murdered them. Yeah. One of my one of my
grandma's was a princess, was anobby. She plugged her tail
into my dad, did she though? Yeah, that that's a
very James Camerony moment. And it's also like, I don't know,

(57:06):
like I always truggle with Like, I totally agree with you, Ali,
and I think it's like it is a really unusual
subversion in a movie of this scale to to do.
And then it's also like why Jake Sully, like of
all people, when he's like, this is our land, It's
like it's our our land, not your your say this

(57:27):
is your land, Jake, you just got here. It would
have been cool if he said this is your land.
I don't know. So yeah, So Jake is rallying the
Oma Takaya to launch an attack against the humans or
the sky people as he calls them as if he's
not one of them, but um, Colonel Quaritch and the

(57:49):
humans are planning a preemptive counterattack with their you know,
more advanced weaponry and their aircrafts and missiles and all
of that. So Jake goes and pray is to Awa
for help. The Awa scene with it's just Jake Sally
is like so embarrassing all the time. So he goes
to Awa to pray essentially, And I did think it

(58:11):
was kind of funny how that scene and where Natia
comes in and she's like, yeah, that's like not how
this works, and Jake's like, oh man, well it was
worth a dry and then she's like, okay, let's go
to bed. That's like the scene, but then it ends
up working like but then, yeah, God is listening to
Jake Sally, I think not. I think not. Atlantis morsets

(58:36):
in the tree like all right, okay, just this once.
Let's hear this Australian guy out. Let's see. So the
next morning, the humans come to the mountains with you know,
their heavy firepower, but the Alma Takaya have the hometown
advantage and they have Jake as Turuk makto um because

(58:59):
he's on the big pterodactyl with flames on the side convertible. Yeah,
so he is in charge and there's a long battle
and eventually it seems like all hope is lost for
Jake and the tie and the Amatacaya and Trudy who
shows up to help, and Norm, who's fighting with them,

(59:21):
has a gun. It's silly. It's like, why are we
letting Norm have a gun? He's not contributing. Come on,
Norm's an indoor kid, Like, what's he doing here? So
Quarich is headed towards the Tree of Souls to destroy it,

(59:42):
but then the big animals from earlier in the movie
come charging in and they drive out the bad guys.
Seems as though Awa has answered Jake's prayer, and so
the Almatacaya get the upper hand and there's a final
showdown between quar Rich and Jake and the Tiri and
they defeat Karrich and a Ti gets like the killing blow.

(01:00:06):
Two killing blows were also forgotten on the re release
that she gets. She gets him twice just to be sure. Yeah,
it's so satisfying. I love it when the James Horner
that she pulls up. It's good. The movie feels like
a movie when I'm watching. That's so good. And then

(01:00:30):
the Alma Takaya send the humans home and the movie
ends with Jake's consciousness being transferred to his avatar to
make him permanently one of the Alma Takaya the and
so let's take another quick break and we will come
back to discuss and then we're back. Okay, Ali, where

(01:01:00):
would you like to start a preference? Where do we begin?
There's so much, there's so much to say. Uh, okay,
how about we begin with any questions you might have
for me? Well, so we already we touched on a
lot of the criticisms that I think we're going to

(01:01:24):
have against this movie already during the recap. But yeah,
I mean, for me, the big thing is, you've got
this like white guy who like appropriates the body of
an indigenous person comes in. He's flopping around and they're like, no, no, no,

(01:01:45):
You're the chosen one though, and it doesn't make sense,
but he's the chosen one. He doesn't have imposter syndrome
for one single second, which I guess is very white
guy of him. He has a very inflated ego about
the whole thing. Yeah, but yeah, it is. It is
like a white savior top to bottom. So the question,

(01:02:07):
so my question is what in a in a movie
with a similar premise where you know, like white capitalist
colonizers come in and are trying to colonize and steal
the land and still the resources of Indigenous people. What
is a version of this story or what changes would

(01:02:29):
you make or do you think could be made to
eliminate the issues that we see in Avatar? Okay, So
I've thought about this a lot, because a lot of
the issues stem back to Jake, like massively, for all
the reasons that we suggested, I feel like, even if

(01:02:50):
if nothing else were to change about the film, and
it would have been the exact same movie and the
exact same steaks and everything as problematic as it was,
if someone like Adam Beach or Anthony Mackie or a
character of color, specifically a disabled and preferably an Indigenous

(01:03:12):
actor playing Jake instead, I feel like it would have
had more gravity. As much as I like Sigourney Weaver's character,
she's so sympathetic to the knobby that I was like, okay,
but scientists, unfortunately, are not that sympathetic to Indigenous people.

(01:03:32):
They're the ones that are stealing their remains and putting
them in the Smithsonian against people's wishes and stuff, you know,
or conducting the research to prove that you know, Sami
people aren't human enough or not as advanced enough as
like Swedish or Finnish people. You know, so if you

(01:03:53):
were going to have that character like the Scientists character,
if she were indigenous, if she were played by Tantu
Cardinal or even Irene Bedard Roads go back to Pocontas,
or even like if you wanted someone sassy but smart
and you know, still had that ferocity. Even Jennifer Pademski

(01:04:16):
would have been perfect in that part. I think, be great.
She would have been great. She's hilarious and she's badass,
because I think that that would have been an interesting
subversion because her school in the movie. That was another thing.
And Connor Beard was talking about this on TikTok. He

(01:04:37):
was talking about how Avatar has many problems. He's from
the Lumbi tribe, and he said specifically that the school
being used as a positive in the film is kind
of toned off, if not really offensive, because residential schools
were so bad too native children and they aren't in

(01:05:00):
this movie. And I feel like that was probably just
to bridge the communication error, you know what I mean,
like or the conflict or you know, it's like we
need we need to be able to talk to these people.
They need to be able to blah blah blah. But
like what if it was Tantu Cardinal and she was
teaching them a nish nabe mowen instead of English or

(01:05:22):
along with English. So it's like, you know, we can
communicate a little more privately and not in a language
that would like front you off in front of the
real bad guys or something, you know, because then that
would be subversion. That would also be kind of decolonizing
that sort of premise of the school if you were

(01:05:43):
going to have that, because if they want to come
in and like actually engage in some kind of diplomacy,
why is it, oh, we have to teach you English
so that you can communicate with me versus and to
be fair grace like does no Navi And like the
other sidecientists seemed too as well. And I wonder if
that was just almost a choice to be like, well,

(01:06:05):
we don't want to have too much of the movie
in a language other than English, because that Holly Mr.
Hollywood thinks that that tends to put off American letters audiences,
So like we have to as much as possible have
the nov or have the omata kaya speak English. So
I wonder if like that's just how they justify But

(01:06:27):
then but like to have it be like they set
up a school to teach Indigenous children English, Like you said, Ali,
the historical parallels to that are atrocious, and it doesn't
seem like the filmmakers considered the implications of making that choice.
That was like something that popped for me this time
where it's like the there's no like even even with Grace,

(01:06:48):
because I feel like Grace is and the science and
you know, Norm, Dr Max, etcetera. Are are all presented
pretty uncritically as good guys. But on this rewatch specifically
like with Bechdel goggles on your like this actually like
the movie should be far more kind of interrogating what
it is they're doing, because it's like Grace is also

(01:07:11):
appropriating an Indigenous body, Like she's doing that consistently, and
the ethics of that are not questioned, um by any
of the characters in the movie. It's like, because she's
not giving information to the kernel, it's made to seem like, well,
so what she's doing is above board. But it's like
if if she's starting you know, the equivalent of a

(01:07:34):
residential school on Pandora, there's no reciprocity where it's like
the nov don't have an opportunity to to you know,
it all takes place on Pandora because that is where
the humans interests lie is like mining these natural resources.
And Grace is absolutely complicitly in that, Like she knows

(01:07:54):
that to the point where she is able to, you know,
predict that Jake is going to leak information to the
colonel and she gets them out of there, which puts
a band aid on the problem. But she's still aware
of exactly what's happening, and she's you know, she has
like some quips and she's she you know, doesn't seem
to agree with it, but she she's participating. She's a

(01:08:16):
willing participant and that is not really interrogated at all. Yeah,
that's right. I agree. And uh, my friend Aaronnach, who's wonderful, Uh,
they have a really wonderful YouTube channel. We were talking
about this because I was sharing my notes and I
was trying not to share my deeper notes, just more like, oh,
look this funny thing I said, you know, while I'm

(01:08:39):
doing research. But they said, they're like, I think this
film is so forgettable because it almost does something worthy
of note and then went, well, how can we make
a white guy the hero and the weirdest way possible?
And I'm like, yeah, that's the biggest failing of this
film is that Jake is in it, just because it

(01:09:01):
feels like Natari should be the hero. Absolute like if
you're going to have the school and stuff like that
in it, I mean, like, why couldn't it begin with
nat Terry being a student in the school and then
seeing her sister be murdered like they say happens in
the deleted scenes and stuff, and then becoming disillusion and

(01:09:22):
disenfranchised with this idea of diplomacy, you know, because there
is no diplomatic way to forcibly relocate people that's genocide.
Like that's exactly I love. I mean, I love what
you're talking about in terms of casting native actors um
on the human side of the conflict, because that doesn't happen.

(01:09:44):
And I feel like that problem scales up to what
you were discussing at the beginning of the episode, which
is like that would be an incredible, like I think,
a far more impactful way to tell this story and
also probably not a story that James Cameron has any
business writing. And so it's again, it's like a resources
thing of like, you know, who is getting the opportunities.

(01:10:06):
James Cameron's using his own playbook to try to tell
this story, but he's limited and what he can do,
I don't know. It's very outsider's perspective. And the way
that Dances with Wolves was um but but to Dances
with Wolves credit the native characters in that movie are

(01:10:27):
flushed out way more than the Navy are in Avatar.
It's like when I watched Dances with Wolves when I
was very young. I really liked the movie because there
was kind of a Catharsis of I don't like Kevin
Costner and I don't really look like Kevin Costner, but
to see someone who kind of looks like me being

(01:10:47):
accepted in a group of people who look like my dad,
you know, was kind of like really special. And especially
with the stands with the Fisk character. But even then,
it's like Graham Green's character, who is a holy man
in that movie. He's hilarious, he's wonderful, he's dignified, he's

(01:11:08):
open to communication, but he's also like, you know, why
is this guy rolling around on the ground with like
that thing on his shirt? And then the other native
character whose name I forgot, but he's very much like
this dude's fucking crazy. Let's leave, you know, and I'm
not afraid of you. You know, like the time spent

(01:11:31):
in the village, what those characters are more sympathetic and interesting.
You really don't get that an avatar, no matter how
sympathetic or understanding they're trying to be, because like, does
NATTERI have brothers and sisters? Does she have friends? Does
she have anties? Like you just nothing know so little,

(01:11:53):
to the point where like her parents are important characters,
but I only mentioned each of them like twice in
the recap, and I so like they're just they're not
that They're pretty secondary honestly to this story. And it's
really only Naterie who we get any real insight into.

(01:12:15):
And despite Zowey Sodanna's incredible performance, we still don't get
that much about her backstory, about her life. We know
a little bit about what is in store for her future. Um,
she's going to take over the role as like spiritual
leader for her mother, but like, we don't know that much.
And then speaking of speaking of indigenous actors playing characters,

(01:12:38):
so the actors who play the Alma Takaya characters. Um
of the ones who get speaking roles, they're mostly black actors,
except with one exception of West Study, who plays Naterie's father,
A Tookan. He is an actor of the Cherokee Nation.

(01:13:00):
But it seems to me and correct me if I'm
misinterpreting this, but it feels like a lot of the
imagery and iconography they're pulling from as far as just
like cultural things, historical things about the Alma Takaya seem
to be pulled from indigenous people of Northern America, So
it feels weird to not cast more Native Americans in

(01:13:25):
those roles. And if they're playing a character that's not
even human, you know, like if it's going to be
indigenous coded, then there's so many indigenous people that you
could reach out to. You could cast Sami actors, you
could cast Maudi actors or why. It could be the
whole spectrum of indigenous people, But it would be nice

(01:13:46):
to see them as humans. Took Well, that's the thing.
Is like on top of that, it's like, how often
like people of color in general, but you know, specifically
Indigenous Americans are Indigenous people in general, are like other
in I mean, this is like a pretty aggressive mothering
of I don't know. Yeah, we're curiously science fiction. Yeah, yes, exactly,

(01:14:08):
especially since colonizers use language and rhetoric against indigenous people
to justify killing them and stealing from them. And one
of the ways they do that is to reduce them
or liken them to animals, and so to make the

(01:14:29):
Almatya have animal features, pentacle porn cats. This is the mark,
just a bit the other thing. Okay, so even back then,
the thing that makes me just cringe the most, it's like,
you you've got cat people, I know their native coded
Why are they leallying? I mean, I know there's an

(01:14:50):
actual word for it. I just forgot what it is.
But it's where I'm going to move away from my mic. It's, yes,
why why are they doing that? They're cats? Right, like
they're cats. They should be saying even the even that

(01:15:10):
thing that they do that, you know what I mean,
Like it's yeah, I I saw a lot of criticisms
around the battle cries that seemed kind of like randomly
and offensively selected for the Omedicaiah, And yeah, I haven't
seen an effective argument against it, Like it just seems
like that was a straight up offensive, lazy, shitty choice.

(01:15:34):
It just made me. I was like, oh, you know,
first time I saw it too. Every time I see it,
I'm like, oh, why are you doing that? That's so strange.
There's a whole montage where it's like just that over
and over and over and over and and and then
the context of that scene is that Jake Sully is
randomly the general now like that was. He just shows

(01:15:57):
up on his large pterodactyl and he's like, I'm the captain.
We're left to think that, like there is some collaboration
going on between Jake and Suit, but it seems like
at the end of the day, Jake is in charge
because Jake like walkie talkies ton A ri at the
peak of the action, it says that's an order. I
was like, dude, you don't. You're not stop, You're not

(01:16:20):
in charge. You just got here. You can't make an order.
And I mean, speaking of cat like features of the
Oma ta Kaya people, there's I think a whole conversation
around their character design. I mean, there's like a lot
of things to unpack as far as like lack of

(01:16:41):
body diversity, costume design, skin color, just like everything that
encompasses the character design of the Navy or the Ama
ta kaya. So friend of the show, I just want
a quickly shot. Friend of the show Janish Meeting has
pointed this out for years, is the lack of body
diversity in avatar characters. And it's also um because she's

(01:17:05):
the funniest person ever, like turned it into a bit
um where she's like, I'm going to get cast as
a Navy and the game's gonna change, but like she's
she was the first person I heard talking about that,
because there already think so many like problematic elements to
the way the Navy are designed that that sort of
gets overlooked a lot of the time. Well not only that, um,

(01:17:28):
elders play such an important role in indigenous community. So
the fact that we don't really see like an elderly
navvy character, you know other than the terries parents or
you know, like not everyone in a society like this
is a warrior, you know, So what do they look
like when they're not in like peak shape all the time.

(01:17:51):
And what about the warriors who um, you know get
hurt or get injured or are disabled or something, what
they're a bad hunt and the dinosaur thing bite your
arm off, right, We don't see any of that, and
it would have been interesting to see Jake like interact
with some of those veterans you know. Actually, right, so

(01:18:15):
many like overlaps between Jake and Navy culture that just
just goes completely unexplored by this, uh, by this movie, right, Yeah.
And then yeah, as far as like just the body type,
every single Navy person has the same exact body type,
so they all have frog butts. Theyll frog butts. There's

(01:18:36):
not a booty to be found. Well, I think that that,
Like I kind of wonder. I've watched a lot of
behind the scenes features on this movie in the past,
and I like, I know that it's kind of tricky
because in some ways, I want to say that they're
almost animated characters. I know that it's motion capture. So
it's like it's either animation trips we've talked about before

(01:18:57):
where it's like very rigid two body types available, which
I think does kind of carry through this movie, or
it's a casting issue and they only cast to body types.
So either way, it's you know, a fucking wash and
you know, like it just I don't know, it doesn't
just like reinforce um rigid stereotypes we see all the time.

(01:19:19):
It also like lessons the richness of Pandora because you're
just like completely ali, like what what are other people
up to? Like it? Can't they appear to be thriving?
You would think there are other things and elements of
this culture that just are like not referenced or explored
at all. And don't cants always have like that, you know,

(01:19:40):
belly fat that like flops the run and they famously
have eight nipples, So why don't they Alma Takaya have
eight nipples? They just have tentacles nipples on the nipples scales, um.

(01:20:03):
And then as far as and this is something I
think we've touched on in different episodes in the past,
but there's a pretty um a precedent has been set
somewhere along the line that in sci fi and fantasy,
especially because these are the genres where you would usually
have like non human human like characters. So in this case,

(01:20:26):
the Novi, the Alma Takaya have blue skin. And this
is something we see a lot where um, you know,
like humanoid characters who are coded as indigenous, they're coded
as people of color in general, they will have blueskin,
green skin, purple skin, some skin color that does not

(01:20:46):
exist on humans, and um, just like kind of further
others these characters who are coded as people of color.
And I noticed that this is something that happens a
lot in sci fi, where even if they cast like
an actress of color, they usually cast her as an alien,

(01:21:07):
like even um Star Trek, which is pretty diverse anyways.
And I'm referring to like the J. J. Abrams movies
because I am not a tricky how Dare You? Also
starring Zoe's Seldonna, but this time she gets to actually
have her actual skin, Carna skin. But but Sophia Botella,

(01:21:28):
I think that's how you say her name. And the
third movie is an alien with white skin, but she
looks awesome and she's great, but you know, like it's
not her also, but it's always held Donna, and like
Guardians of the Galaxy has green skin, and uh, I

(01:21:49):
love costume and makeup designs and stuff like that, especially
when you're making monsters like Doug Jones is a fucking
g and I love how Boy and everything, but it
is a trope I've noticed like a lot, even in
Star Wars. It's like you get Lupetea n Ago when
you make her that ugly little alien. God do it.

(01:22:13):
I will never get over that. I just like you
did what with that casting decision? You did nothing, nothing
with the casting decision, the most beautiful, talented person and
you did what there. I was, Yeah, I don't even
give a shit about Star Wars particularly, but I was
enraged to fight that. I would also be curious to

(01:22:34):
hear what listeners think on that issue, because I don't know.
I've seen that point made about Zoe Salbanda's career quite
a bit of like her too biggest or you know,
I guess best remembered roles. Although there are those crossheads
people out there, those cross roads cross the cross Heads
from hell. Um, Okay, two SIPs of Miller Lite and

(01:22:55):
I'm I'm cooked. Um. But yeah, I like I I
think that that is like absolutely no accident. And I
wish that sci fi were at a place where, like
you know, sci fi can be like in a really
amazing place to explore like more diverse world. If you

(01:23:16):
have diverse voices, they're also behind the camera, which is
not really happening in Avatar. And I think the you
always run the risk of racial stereotyping anytime you code
non human species as an existing group of actual people.
I think Frozen two and even Avatar The Last Airbender

(01:23:39):
do this better, where it's like, yes, they're coded as
Inuit or they're coded as Sammy, but they're not you know,
their water tribe, their Nothaldra, you know so, but they're people.
You know, they're like actual human characters, even if the
tribe or the races is not. I hope I said

(01:24:03):
that correctly. No, I know what you mean. Yeah, And
this wouldn't be as much of a concern if in
these genres you had white actors also playing like, you know,
blue skinned aliens, like it wouldn't be And then and
that there was no specific like racial coding attached to
any any of the characters. It's just like, this is

(01:24:25):
just a person, like a doctrine with purple right, Doug Jones.
Doug Jones, folks, he's a sexy fish, the sex. But
because the trend tends to be that only bipoc actors
are cast in these roles where their skin is a

(01:24:47):
is you know, some color of the rainbow, and their
character is coded as like another race. It's also because
it's generally by like white writers and directors that are
making that decision. Like that is a huge element of
I don't know, like it does Like the way James
Cameron is doing it seems like a trophy, overwrought, like lazy,

(01:25:09):
kind of pretty offensive like storytelling trope, Like it's not
he's not doing anything new here. Yeah, it would have
more gravity if it was by a writer who was
Indigenous or otherwise marginalized, right, I think. And then as
far as the costume design goes, Um, I'm curious about

(01:25:29):
your thoughts on this alley, But the nov across the
gender spectrum of the nov, they're all like pretty scantily
clad as far as their costume goes, Yes, the two
body types are scantily clad. You can see all of
their blueskin basically. And there is definitely another media trend

(01:25:51):
where Indigenous women we see this time and time again
are hyper hyper sexualized in meat. Yeah, I don't know
exactly if that's what's happening here. I'm just so I'm
just curious to your thoughts. So, um, this is kind
of okay. So if you talk to one Indigenous person

(01:26:11):
who've only talked to one Indigenous person. So this is
just me personally. UM Connor Beard on TikTok, who's from
the Lumbi tribe. I think I mentioned him earlier. He's
doing a series of TikTok videos about Avatar and racism
in it and tropes in it that are anti Indigenous,

(01:26:31):
and I can co sign on most of them. I
think he makes really good points. But he released and
I say this respectfully. Um, he released a recent TikTok
talking about how avatar uh fetishizes and sexualizes Native women,
and I get it, but I don't agree entirely because, UM,

(01:26:54):
I personally have a rule where if male and female
characters are wearing the same costume, the costume itself isn't
inherently sexualized. UM Like, Black Widow and Captain America are
basically wearing the same unitard. It's just Black Widow was
filmed differently, you know, So it's not really the costume

(01:27:17):
that's the problem. UM. Like, someone I forgot who it was.
I think it was a pop culture detective was talking
about how Cora in tron Legacy is sexualized and I
did not agree with that either. I'm like, she's wearing
the same thing everybody else is wearing, and she's never
really objectified by the camera, because there's a difference between

(01:27:42):
like a character just being really sexy on the screen
and the filmmakers and the filmmaking actively sexualizing that character.
I watched that same TikTok um from Connor Beard, and
he points out that in the screenplay for Avatar. So
this makes me kind of think that James Cameron is

(01:28:04):
actively sexualizing especially n No. I hate reading I hate
reading James Cameron's writing. It's so stressful. Do you remember
that thing from Titanic where she falls under his welcome weight.
I will never stop thinking about the phrase welcome weight
written by a fifty year old man. I just can't

(01:28:25):
even Okay, what did he say? What did you say?
I at least it translates well to strain, But he's like,
I don't even think it's like an unpopular opinion to
say that James Cameron is like a pretty bad writer.
He's just got he's got a lot of chops where
he's got a lot of chops. And then he also

(01:28:47):
writes the movie he and then he writes what we're
about welcome here? Okay, sorry, sorry, So This is for
Naterie's character introduction, which in a screen generally has a
little bit more detail um about like the character visually,
like what the character looks like. So quote, Jake passes

(01:29:08):
under a tree limb invisible to him, draped on the
limb like a leopard. Is a striking, navvy girl. She
watches only her eyes moving. She is life as a
cat with a long neck, muscular shoulders, and nubile breasts.
And she is devastatingly beautiful for a girl with a tail.

(01:29:30):
Oh my, Jim, So do they ever mentioned the size
of Jake's dick and he's going into his aftar body
because not that that's telling exactly. Yeah, where's the reciprocity.
Jim's going to horny jail? Again, there's one more sentence
that is upsetting. In human age, she would be eighteen,

(01:29:55):
so she is young, young young Jake Sully is what
in his thirties, mid to late thirties, probably he could
be a strong c W thirty one, you know, Dad,
So that it is creepy. So like I I because
I think that that is a really good rule of

(01:30:17):
thumb that you're describing alley of like if there is
because it's also like you, like James Cameron writes creepy.
We've discussed it on the show before. It seems particularly
pointed in this in this example, because he's you know,
like writing about an Indigenous woman who's eighteen like man,

(01:30:37):
there was like a lot of I'm glad that there's
like a diversity of opinion on this, because I do
think that, like the movie does not objectify Naterie the
way that that couple of sentence run would imply that
it would based on how creepy he's being. I didn't
feel that creepiness in the camera or in the film language.

(01:30:58):
I think that that is like, in spite of the
fact that he's like a creepy writer, he's not a
creepy filmmaker, which is, you know, an oversimplification. I'm sure
he's had his creepy moments, but and he's made like
R rated movies too, So if he really wanted to
be creepy, he could have really been creepy and his
other But but then on the other hand, it's I mean,

(01:31:20):
I know that we sort of have spent a lot
of this episode unraveling, like the way that like comparing
Avatar to disney Spokehontas is a vast oversimplification, but because
it's like the nav characters are like somewhat animated or like,
I don't know how to describe motion capture really, but
she looks more like a cat than a person, So

(01:31:41):
it's not it doesn't I feel like Pocahontas like Disney's Pokehonas.
Even Shell or Shell from the Road to Eldorado. I
think that's way more offensive than the Terry because I
would say that that is hyper sexualized and objectified more
than nay Terry, because I also don't think that nudity

(01:32:02):
is inherently sexual either, And the really the only time
Nateri is ever like sexy on screen is when she's
having sex, which you know, hopefully kind of the best
time to be sexy is during sex. Wow, yeah, kind
of weird if you're not. And even during the weird

(01:32:24):
tentacle sex thing. I mean it's more romantic than sexy. Um,
I guess yes. But like a worse example of this
would be in Terrence Malix film The New World, where
Koreanka Kulture, who is fourteen years old, is way more

(01:32:46):
sexualized with her to grown male counter counter stars co stars,
co stars, that's the word that counter stars. Yes, so
fourteen year old Koreanka culture with that, Christian Bale and
Colin Farrell, And excuse a blame, I still have not
been able to bring myself to watch that one because

(01:33:09):
everything I hear about it is just disgusting. She's beautiful
and she's wonderful, but god, baby girl, I'm sorry. I'm
so sorry, ugly ass bitch like Terance Bald, what do
you do that, you fucking evil? One last thing, I'm
and then then I promise I'll stop dragging Connor. But

(01:33:31):
there was one more line that he says in that
TikTok where so it's a line where NATII tells him,
you know you're Alma Takaya now and you can make
your bow from home tree and you can choose a woman,
and he, you know, Jake's like, already chose, but this
woman must choose me, And Connor feared makes the argument

(01:33:56):
that Jake is the one being progressive and the yes
the one being primitive. And I think that this is
where context matters, because the Navy, with all other problems,
are very egalitarian, and I don't think the women are
just like, oh, you only exist to be chosen by
these dudes, you know, because then why would there be

(01:34:18):
women warriors? And I think it's also cousny Terry's engaged,
so he's like, hey, do you want to come with me?
Or you know, I know who I've chosen, but do
you choose me? And I don't know. It's like I
didn't think that was Yeah, I don't know. I hear
you on that, like I mean, and I think that

(01:34:39):
like the best. I mean, you said it yourself. Like
the fact that she is engaged is not really harped
on by the movie, which I appreciated because that's like
a really annoying trope to like get in the mire of.
But it's like it makes sense that it would be
sort of like tacitly brought up in that conversation, because
be weird if Jake didn't try to tacitly acknowledge like that,

(01:35:04):
it's sort of him the way that Jack Dawson is
like do you love him? It's just a simple question,
do you love the guy or not? And Rose is like,
this is not a suitable conversation. But but Jack was
being being very rude. Jack was being a little devil
in that conversation because he was being agro and not
to hand it to Jake Sally, I don't do it

(01:35:24):
and I hate to do it, but but you know,
Jake doesn't get agro about it. It's like a it's
a conversation. It's not like cornering you in the gym
of the Titan. I'm just merely pointing out that James
Cameron keeps writing more or less the same scene over
he loves, he loves this one movie that he writes.
And UM, my last question as it relates to the

(01:35:50):
character design of the Alma Takaya, is I wasn't sure
if James Cameron was referencing any specific into genius culture
or cultures or nations with the Alma Takaya or is
he just sort of like treating indigenous people as a
monolith and like just kind of making several aesthetic references

(01:36:13):
and kind of lumping them all together. And like, I
don't know what's your thought on that A bit of
column A and column B, Like it feels very outsiders
perspective because it is when I first saw the movie, Um,
it felt like I don't know if you've ever seen Apocalypto,

(01:36:35):
but it kind of reminded me of that where it was.
I assumed, since they're in a rainforest and the nab
don't wear a lot of clothing, that it was probably
inspired by a South American or Mesoamerican indigenous culture. I
haven't found anything that suggested that. What I have found was, um,

(01:36:58):
a lot of inspiration is from Maudi people from New
Zealand and even in U the trailers for the Way
of Water, I noticed that a lot of the facial
tattoos on some of the New nav characters looked very
much like the same ones from Polynesian cultures. Yeah, from
what I've heard of and and read a little bit
about the second movie, it seems like Cameron takes that

(01:37:20):
direction a little more decisively in the second movie. How
effective it is or how respectful it is, I don't know,
but that I was. I was going through like old
features trying to see if there was because there's so
much written about certain elements of production. But that was
not something I was able to really find. And I
know that there is this tendency. Um. We were talking

(01:37:43):
about this with Olivia Woodward a while ago about just
like this tendency to take so many unique indigenous cultures
and just like lump them all into one vague, you know,
kind of trophy interpretation, which I don't know if that's
really what I mean. I I just kind of struggled
to find information on what he was doing. Right well,

(01:38:05):
when I first saw the movie two thousand nine in
the theater, there were several scenes five like major events
in the film that I think mirror actual historical events
in like a broader Native American history. So obviously invading

(01:38:26):
Pandora is any It could be Columbus, it could be
the British, it could be the French, it could be
leif Ericson, you know, like any invasion colonialism, you know
that's happening. Um. Obviously, there are elements that are probably
inspired by Pocahontas and Jamestown and the Powetan nation interacting

(01:38:49):
with the settlers, especially since John Smith, when he was kidnapped,
was accepted into the tribe as kind of like a
honorary member to like, you know, build diplomacy. The image
of Pocahontas, like resting her head on him and saving
him is kind of more of like an initiation, kind

(01:39:12):
of like she's his godmother to compare it to anything. Uh,
don't quote me on that one, since I'm not from
those tribes, but that's my understanding of it. Any big
massacre scene, but you know, a home tree getting destroyed
felt like it could have been wounded me. It could

(01:39:34):
have been sand Creek. It could have been any attack,
any massacre really, and then you have the trail of
tears afterwards. Were forcibly relocating indigenous people, um any death march,
any long walks, you know. I was and again it
was like it was just hard to find any like

(01:39:54):
hard confirmation, But I kind of assumed that that was
what Cameron was trying to reference, even in the a
that Giovanni Ribisi's character was talking about it like oh,
it's not a big deal. It's like a relocation. It's
not like I was like, Okay, this is kind of
clearly mapped on peacefully negotiate their relocation. It's like, there's
no peaceful negotiation forcibly relocating. But the last one, which

(01:40:18):
surprised me, and I'm happy that it ended like this
was I feel like the final battle in Avatar, like
the big climatic, awesome battle, felt like it was a
big allegory to the Battle of a Little Big Horn
or the Battle of Greasy Grass where the Lakota sue
and the Cheyenne one a battle against General Custer and

(01:40:41):
the U. S Army, and um, they did that because
Custer thought that he was going to ambush them and
murder all of them. And no, there's five thousand of
us and you're dying today. And the person who shot
him off of his horse was a woman fun by

(01:41:01):
Buffalo calf road woman. So that pleases me. I didn't
realize that's that's amazing. Yeah, she's the one who shot
him off of his horse and probably delivered the killing blow.
And afterwards the other women took like little needles or

(01:41:22):
whatever and poked out his ear drums. And that's where
the phrase, uh, that's where the phrase see what happens
where you don't listen comes from. A So it sounds
to me like James Cameron is pulling not only from
like a design point of view of the of the
Alma Takaya, but also from just like narrative events in

(01:41:46):
the movie Avatar. He's pulling from a lot of different nations. So,
I mean, allegory in storytelling is like you know that
tends to happen where like you're you might be kind
of referencing something it's an allegorical probably be weirder if
you didn't pull from actual history. Like, it's not inherently

(01:42:09):
negative that he did that, right, it's just the mess.
It's just that, And it's the outsider's perspective that I
think is really Yeah, and uh, well, I mean Indigenous
people globally have a lot of shared experiences with colonialism
and racism and environmental oppression and damage also, so I

(01:42:32):
can see how kind of blending it together because it
all kind of blows together makes sense. I feel like
it probably could have been done a little more ethically,
and the way to do that would be the higher
native writers to write about the allegory. Um what else?

(01:42:53):
Another thing I would change is that a fangirl Gene.
I hope I'm pronouncing her name right. I think it's
pronounced gene, but I think it's also pronounced jean j
e a and n e f jean. Oh my, please
don't kill me, fangro Jean. Anyway, she uh was talking

(01:43:13):
about how she kind of likes and dislikes Avatar in
the same way as I do, but she's like Jake
should not have been allowed to stay period if he
was going to, And I feel like that would have
lended itself to the story a little bit better and
the sincerity of the character where they're like, listen, we
appreciate your help, but you put us in this situation,

(01:43:36):
so at the end of all things, you can't sit
with us anymore. So if it would have, at the
very least it should have and he should be okay
with it, if he's as good as he thinks he is,
then that would have been like, that's fair, Okay, you
don't get to stay with us. Yeah, I fucked up.
I'll see myself out. Yeah, I will say your brother's funeral, Jake, Yeah, jeez,

(01:44:01):
I will say. Um. This is my hot take is
that I think, not that his story is good, not
that his redemption arc is good, but all things consider,
Jake's redemption arc is more satisfying or better than a

(01:44:22):
redemption arc for like Kylo Wren, for example, because at
the end of the day, even though Kyleo Wren or
even Darth Vader turned from the dark side and do
the right thing at the last moment, they die right
after and they don't undo all the damage that they did.
They may have stopped or prevented more damage, which good,

(01:44:44):
but they never face the people that they hurt. They
never like face any repercussions or consequences for the harm
that they've caused. So, Jake, even though it's not great,
he's still it has to prove himself if he's going
to show his face again. And when he does the

(01:45:05):
right thing, eventually it's like his friends die, people get hurt.
He can never go back to his planet again. He
can never you know. So there's a whole lot at
stake that, you know, a lot of sacrifices that was
made for him to do the right thing. He does
have to do a lot to actually have a redemption.

(01:45:27):
But he like centers himself so consistently throughout it that
he's like I'm the boss now, and you're he's like
or like yeah that it's I mean, which is maybe
like realistic, super macho white male behavior, but like, yeah,
the fact that he's like, Okay, I like, I totally agree.
It's good that he recognizes that he can't just like

(01:45:50):
something has to be done to try to mitigate this tragedy.
That is in a huge part his fault, but his
ocean is like I have to be the lead captain
of And then he's rewarded by being like, Okay, you're deaf.
You're one of us again, and you're permanently one of us,

(01:46:11):
and we're gonna do this like spiritual ceremony to make
you shud be back on a trial basis at very
least like for real. It's like you're answering for crimes
against right. Hey, here's another question I have for you, ali, Um.
Throughout the movie, there's a lot of emphasis on the

(01:46:34):
Alma Takaya's connection to the earth and this like spiritual
connection to the wildlife the floor and the fauna, and
obviously pulling from you know, indigenous culture in the connection
that indigenous people have with the earth. But the movie
introduces this like kind of sci fi fantasy element to

(01:46:56):
that with like the tentacle angling network and then yeah,
and and I'm just curious about your thoughts about that
and what implications you think that has good or bad
or neutral. Okay, this is why Natives need to make stuff.

(01:47:19):
Kim Natives the same budget, and we will make something
better than Avatar. I promise. I promise, Um, because I
mean to James Cameron's credit, he's been an environmentalist activists
since like high school, so there are good intentions there.
He Um said in an interview very recently. I think

(01:47:42):
it was like James Cameron breaks down his most iconic
roles or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, he Um was
talking about like as he was making Avatar, He's like
Indigenous people were reaching out and saying, you know, a
lot of the stuff that's happening in your movie is
happening in real life in our community. So there were

(01:48:02):
things like UM and even Sophia yanoku'sa Sami activists UM,
when she gave her TED talk about mining companies in
Lapland in Sami territories and the damage that had done,
she said that Avatar felt like that, Like she definitely
resonated with the damage that's done to these um ecosystems

(01:48:28):
and these sacred territories and everything, and how Avatar has
a happy ending, but in real life, we're still fighting
in Lapland, and the same can be said in like
Brazil and Standing Rock, West Uotan and all these other places.
And when you think of like just the spiritual aspect

(01:48:50):
in Pandora, I mean it's a movie, so they kind
of have to ham it up. But I mean people
are not like usually in indigenous cultures or the way
that we believe in these things. People are not at
the top of the pyramid and then everything is beneath us.

(01:49:11):
Indigenous people tend to be stewards of the land who
believe that we are actually part of an ecosystem. And
as much as we need the land, the land also
needs us to take care of it. And the land
is very much as alive and as sentient as people
and as animals. So I see what he was trying

(01:49:33):
to do. Uh, he's just kind of it's just kind
of out of his element because he's not part of
the community. You know, there's like a something lost in translation.
I guess there's a disconnect because it's so very outsider's perspective,
and it's a good idea. I mean, I do like

(01:49:53):
the idea of you know, like you can plug your
tail into the willow tree and here your ancestors singing
and stuff like. That's beautiful, but not when they're aliens, right,
It's almost to me it reads is like um an

(01:50:14):
outsider's perspective looking at Indigenous spirituality and being like it's
so mystical, it's so magical, it's almost science fiction, and
then like so as to be alien and then just
like leaning into that and then putting it in a movie.
Yeah yeah, and in a way that kind of dehumanizes

(01:50:37):
indigenous people that you're trying to be sympathetic towards. Anyways,
and the deleted scenes. There's a really awesome deleted scene
where Jake, before he becomes one of the people, undergoes
a vision quest. I guess I don't know if you've
seen that. I have not seen that scene. Now. Yeah, it's, um,

(01:50:57):
it's an incomplete deleted scene and they must have ran
out of money because the CG isn't there. But it's
where he like, um, it's when he tells core Rich
or Stephen Lane, you know, I have one more thing
I have to do and then I'll be one of
them and blah blah blah. And then it cuts to
nay Terry putting the war paint on um and then

(01:51:18):
he goes into like this chamber and Moat is like
lighting the incense and the herbs and stuff, and like
this beetle or whatever, like he eats a worm and
then this beetle like stings him on the back of
his neck or whatever, and he has a vision quest
and when he survives it, they're like, oh, well you're alive,
so let's all hug and touch each other. But there's

(01:51:42):
a scene where he's talking to Grace before he does it,
because she's like, dude, you cannot do this because actual
navvy have died doing this and we have no idea
what an avatar is going to do. But it's Jake
and he has his plat armor, so he'll be fine.
But the chosen one he can't die. Yeah, he's God,

(01:52:03):
he should I should have died in the first second
when he goes in as an avatar when those like
rhinoceros like animals are like plowing him over, Like, yeah,
he should have been done for I found I found
it so frustrating. How like anytime n Teria was about
to bail on him, which was constantly because he sucks,

(01:52:23):
Like there's a sign from the from Pandora from Awa
that Jake's a really cool guy. You're like, oh my god,
in what way? But anyway, So the thing is he
tells Grace what he's doing, then he goes They don't
even have a word for lie. They had to learn

(01:52:45):
it from us. I'm like, dude, what, In my opinion,
it dehumanizes Indigenous people when you say something, even if
it's meant to be flattering, Like they don't have a
word for lie. You know, they don't even lie. That's
the other side of the coin, for there's no word
for thank you and doth racky. You don't know what
I mean. It's like it's another form of just degrading.

(01:53:10):
They cannot possibly comprehend the concept of x y Z
or that like an indigenous character would not be capable
of lying, like the full spectrum of being you know, alive. Yeah, ridiculous.
I found it interesting. I looked into James Cameron's first
round of interviews for this movie and then his current interview.

(01:53:30):
It does seem like I mean, I'm just like, I
guess I'm just interested in how avatar to works out
for him. But in the first one I was curious
of like how explicitly he was, how explicit he was
and saying like where his influences were coming from, because
this was something he started working on in the nineties,
like during the production of Titanic. He was it is
very nineties environmentalists Captain planet E right, and we were like,

(01:53:55):
I see the intent, but the follow through is But
he said, like, I was surprised at how open he was,
A like being influenced by movies like Dances with Wolves,
movies like Lawrence of Arabia in terms of a movie
I like. He He references Princess Mononoke uh several times
as another inspiration, but he does kind of explicitly say like, yeah,

(01:54:20):
these you know, very white savior sympathetic colonizer stories are
like ones I was pulling from when I was making
this and and so there's that I just wanted to
share and you can tell, and you can tell, and
Precess Mononoke does it so much better, just does it

(01:54:41):
so much better. And it also features an indigenous main
character because Ashitaka is Amish. Love it my indigenous king.
But uh, okay, so elephant in the room. Let's talk
about the comparisons may between this movie and Pokehonas, because

(01:55:03):
that's usually how everybody dismisses the film. It's Pokehonisan space.
Oh and James Cameron also says that he mapped early
plots about Materia onto. He says the Pokehontas story. But
I'm like, well, what do you even mean when you
say that? It sounds like he's he's referring specifically to
the Disney version of it, because the real version of

(01:55:26):
that story, you're fifty years old. Yeah, so um so
to begin, I mean, obviously, the reason I haven't stepped
up to do a Pokehonas episode is because I'm not
from her tribe and there's a lot of insight that
I cannot provide that someone from her tribe would. But

(01:55:49):
you know, obviously, the way I look at it, when people,
you know, try to dismiss it as Pokehonisan space, I
always say, I'm like, Pokehonas is an actual person who
saw heard and terrible things happened to her, So she
deserves more respect than that. And these stories are not
the same, you know, like full stock. It's like, you know,

(01:56:11):
the same way that people make fun of Elizabeth Warren
and call her Pocahonas, And it's like, you know, you
can criticize both this film and Elizabeth Warren for numerous
valid reasons, but you can do it without being racist,
and you can do it without using an abused child
as a punchline. But the other thing is is that

(01:56:35):
the story of pokeahon Is how it like, actually not
even the story of Pocahons, but the romanticized account of
Pocahonas that people are very familiar with that was used
in this movie and the Disney movie and everything is
much older. And it says there's this article and it's
called the pocona Is perplex and it says that it

(01:56:59):
was um Originally there was this old Scottish ballad. It
was called like Lord Bateman and the Turkish King's Daughter,
and it was this really well known ballad in Europe
at the time where an English adventurer goes to a
foreign land and meets like the sultan's daughter or an

(01:57:20):
African king's daughter or something, and she's beautiful and when
he's in a dungeon and he's about to die, she
saves him and then they fall in love. He goes
back to his homeland and she goes after him and
shows up on his wedding day and they love each
other even though she's darker. And people who read John

(01:57:43):
Smith's accounts of his stories in the New World, we're like,
oh my god, it's that story John Smith. And Pocahonas
is like Lord Bateman and the Turkish king's daughter would
be like, you know, oh my god, it's like Jack
and Rhose from Titanic, you know, like it was that level.
So that's what started the whole thing. So there are

(01:58:06):
elements where, you know, like you can compare the two,
but it's not the Pocahonta story specifically, because that is
a very different story. When people were, you know, criticizing
Avatar for ripping off or seemed to be ripping off
so much from Disney's Pocahontas, and I remember like fern

(01:58:26):
Gully being a thing too that everyone was like, it's
ripping off a fern gully. And yeah, as I was
watching the movie this time, I was like remembering that criticism,
but I was thinking, well, no one was talking about
how this movie is just pulling from a lot of
historical events, like in history. Yeah, yeah, his history, like,

(01:58:52):
but that was never part of the mainstream conversation about
this movie. And yes, as we've discussed, James Cameron did
not handle certain things in this movie well, but people
were so hung up on similarities to existing movies. But
it's like a lot of what happens in Avatar, there's
a very clear historical precedent of colonizers stealing land and

(01:59:12):
committing genocide against Indigenous people for capitalist gain and for power,
and that not being part of the conversation about this movie,
I feel like speaks to what you were saying earlier,
like at the very beginning of the episode Ali as
far as like people finding reasons to not like this movie,

(01:59:33):
and that it felt very steeped in like anti indigenous racism,
and the colonizers are very clearly presented as the bad
guys in this movie, which is not true of Disney's
Pocahontas other than it's like I think again, it's like
colonization the one guy and all the other guys are great,
and one of them is Christian Bail and you're just like, well,

(01:59:54):
what the fuck? And the guys in that movie are
terrible and they're never held account bowl for all of
singing about killing Indians and stuff like that. So it's like, oh, well,
this guy is worse than you because this is your
John Smith's friends. So if you work nice, you know,
and and Avatar doesn't do that right right. I yeah,

(02:00:20):
it didn't register for me certainly at the time, but
I I I think that the the original backlash to
I mean, like whatever, it's problematic on so many levels,
and I know that word is overused, but first of all,
it's like, well, it doesn't bode well for James Cameron
if he's being criticized for ripping off a famously historically

(02:00:40):
abysmal children's movie. That's not great to begin with. But
I also feel, yeah, it like speaks ill of the
general audiences at the time and of film criticism, or
at least you know, prominent film critics at the time,
which we've talked about a million times always skew white guys,
and the the implication there is like, well, we've already

(02:01:03):
had a movie that talks about colonialism. We don't need
more where you're just like, no, like not to say
that Avatar deals with it anywhere, approaching perfectly, but for
the conclusion to be like imperialism and colonialism and racism
against indigenous populations is like, what, we have that movie,
we don't need another one. It's like, well, okay, I'll

(02:01:24):
go fund yourself. No, yeah, well I noticed that back then,
and I'm sure it hasn't gone away. But back then,
when I was like spite liking it, the white reviewers,
like on YouTube and on different um platforms, we're criticizing
the film, and the biggest thing that kept going if
they didn't just outright dismiss it as dancers with wolves

(02:01:47):
in space or Poconisan space, they would say things like
white guilt, and you know, like, oh, well, what am
I supposed to do? You know, And it's like Hollywood's
making these movies where I'm supposed to feel bad for
being a white guy, and all of these white guys
in this movie are the bad guys. And I'm like,
if that's your takeaway from it and not the anti

(02:02:10):
indigenous like racism in the film, even if it is,
you know, not nearly as bad as it has been
in the past, but it's still problematic, Like you have
a bigger problem with not being the good guy this time,
when you know, there's so many other problems with the
film that you could be talking about that, you know,

(02:02:32):
Indigenous people have even talked about, like I like the movie,
but lots of Indigenous people don't, for like many valid reasons.
And it's like none of those reasons that I've heard
Indigenous people complain about have ever been said by any
of like those reviewers from the past at all because
they just weren't even thinking about it. It's like their

(02:02:53):
ego was just so fragile. There the hell of this
movie was vaguely critical of me and I hate fire.
You're just like still at the end of the day,
it's like, I mean, this movie was made by a
fabulously wealthy white guy, like and the other thing. Um,

(02:03:16):
because I used to think back then, I used to think, Okay,
maybe the bad guys are a little too on the nose,
maybe they're too cartooning, maybe they're you know, not subtle enough.
Until Standing Rock happened, and that really I'm like, rewatching
this in a post Standing Rock era, post Missing and

(02:03:37):
Murdered Indigenous Women era, I'm like, this is exactly how
these people think, you know, Like this is how they talk.
So let's see. There's a couple quotes from the movie
that really stood out to me. Um. The first one's
Joe Bonny Rubus's character when he's talking to Jake about
relocating them, and he says, look, kill the Indigenous looks bad.

(02:04:01):
But there's one thing that shareholders hate more than bad press,
and that's a bad quarterly statement. Yes, that is like yes,
that's not a cartoon villain. That's how it works. That's Enbridge,
you know what I mean. That is Oca, you know,
the Oca crisis for people who don't live in the
United States, is every mining facility in sami Land, you know,

(02:04:26):
in Lapland. And that's how they think. That's that's how
it is. There's a quote from I think it's in
Jake's voiceover, so it shouldn't be him who says this.
It should probably be material who says this. But the
quote is something like, you know, make them the enemy
and you can justify killing them, which is what has

(02:04:48):
happened all throughout history when genocides have happened. Is like again,
rhetoric and mental gymnastics are used to justify by killing
entire populations of people. And you see that happening in
the movie where like the Omanakaya people are referred to
are like references being roaches and you know Blue Monthly

(02:05:14):
and yeah, anti indigenous slurs are used several times. Their
intelligence is insulted, like it's just all these things to
dehumanize them and make them the enemy to justify killing them.
And I found the line while a line from the movie.
It says, it's grace telling him these are people in

(02:05:34):
Giovanni Ribisi's character says, no, they're fly, fly bitten savages
that live in a tree. All right, look around. I
don't know about you, but I see a lot of trees.
They can move. So I said, you know, this is
genocide and action. You know, granted they're not human, but
you strip them of their humanity and it becomes easier
to kill them. And then in colonial terms, like this

(02:05:59):
is something I don't a lot of people understand when
you talk about colonialism, and you know, white imperialists coming
to America, for example, in America is huge, Like the
continent of North America is gigantic, the United States is massive.
That is a lot of land that was stolen, you know.

(02:06:21):
So anyways, it says, you know, like let's not even
break it down. Let's break it down to like it's
not even an entire continent. Let's say it's your house
and someone comes to your house and they're like, oh, well,
why don't we just share your house? You know, like
we want to live here, We're here, I brought my
whole family. Let's just live in your house. I mean,

(02:06:42):
what do you tell them do you say, oh, yeah,
here's the room set up for you, or do you
tell them get the funk out of my house. Yeah,
it's like, no, we're not sharing our home with you.
You have to fucking get out of my house. Even
in the event where okay, okay, we'll leave Home Tree
and we'll go someplace else, they're not going to stop

(02:07:03):
at Home Tree. They're going to obliterate them, absolutely, because
they immediately switched and threatened to kill, like we're threatened
to the next Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like that's
the other thing I mean, like, again, Turtle Island is massive,
The United States is massive. That is a lot of trees.
They had a lot of natives moved to and look

(02:07:25):
what happened, you know, and it's it's so heavy. It
was almost good, except it's sucking Jake, right, take Jake
out of the story. I think that there was also
a time where I felt like the storytelling was too unsettled,
which is like also kind of ridiculous when you show

(02:07:45):
up a James Cameron movie you're like, well, well, I
don't know what I expected, but but I think that, yeah,
like that those elements have aged very very well, and
in the movie's favor. And it's also like the politics.
I mean, I was not on every front, but in
terms of anti military industrial complex, and I had to

(02:08:05):
go back and like look up, like there were specific
terms and events connected to the Iraq War that James
Cameron was referencing through this that I just did not remember.
Um is unobtainium oil, not your fucking mind. But uh
but I thought that, Like, I mean, the politics of

(02:08:27):
this movie and what it is against is pretty clear,
and like the I think the metaphor and the characters
that they used to make those politics clear is very
very muddled, and bajillion mistakes are made, some of which
we've discussed, some of which we still have to discuss.
But I mean, it's like the politics of this movie.

(02:08:47):
It's it's a you know, massively successful anti war, anti
imperialist movie, anti capitalist corporation. Yeah, And ironically the movie
made three billion dollars three bill on Tall Wars And
that's why people remember it. It's because it was so
good at capitalism, not because it was like the best

(02:09:08):
movie ever. You know. The sad thing is that it
could have been. It just needed like it have been
so much better, could have been because even James Cameron,
like in the YouTube video I was talking about like
his most iconic films or whatever, he said, He's all like,
after I did Avatar, I was hoping to like do
some more environmentalist activism and like Brazil and all these

(02:09:33):
other places. He's like, but I decided to make the
Avatar sequels instead, And I'm like, well, instead of ocean conservation,
and I'm like, dude, you could have been doing actual
good stuff. But he did say, he's like, you know,
film is powerful and you can reach a lot of people.
For sure, I completely agree, But also film productions, especially

(02:09:58):
huge budget ones like this, in the environmental impact they have, well,
I would be curious to know if James Cameron has
made any strides in that direction. I'm always interested in
that kind of side of filmmaking because there's there are
like far less harmful ways to do it. And I
wonder if, like, you know, given the politics of his

(02:10:18):
movies and seems like his personal politics, whether that's something
that has been addressed even remotely. I hope so, but
it's like you just never know with a production like that. Right,
The biggest concern I have with the sequel is that
how many of the characters in the film in the
sequel are actors of color, and how of them, how

(02:10:41):
many are Indigenous? And that's like my biggest concern. It's like,
if it's more white people and blue faces pretending to
be Indians. I'm like, have we learned anything? It's been
fourteen years or something like, it's been eighty four years
and eighty four it's felt like eighty four years since
two thousand nine. To be honest, Um, Um, can we

(02:11:02):
talk about the able is um a bit more? Um?
We touched on a lot of the things already, but
I just want to make sure it has It's like,
we give it some more time. So Jake Sulley uses
a wheelchair. He seems to be paralyzed from the waist
down from an injury he sustained in battle as a marine.
As we mentioned, that character is not played by a

(02:11:25):
disabled actor, which is a problem we come upon time
and time again in movies. Um, Sam Worthington is able bodied.
I read a lot of responses from disabled people about
the representation we get on screen in this movie, and
like we mentioned already, it seems to be pretty mixed

(02:11:46):
across the board, where some people saw themselves in Jake Sully.
They they felt represented by his character and you know,
him being a disabled character. Others criticized him as one
of many movie characters who is trying to quote unquote
fix his disability, right right, He's like being incentivized by

(02:12:08):
the kernel of like I will like it's implied like
I will make you whole again. And that's something that
is said to be appealing to Jake Sully at first.
That and there are interpretations and I can see how
you might interpret it this way where one of the
main reasons he chooses to stay in his avatar body

(02:12:29):
is that his avatar body is able bodied. And of
course this, you know, perpetuates this idea that disabled people
are you know, quote unquote incomplete, or that they have
something wrong with them. Disabled characters and movies trying to
again quote unquote fix their disability is is something that
you see a lot, I think, especially in movie villains.

(02:12:51):
Um A friend of the show, Kristin Lopez, wrote about
this in The Hollywood Reporter when Tour Story four came out.
So it talks a lot about story for but it
references a lot of other movie characters where this is
the case so there's you know, that criticism. But then
other people were like, well, but no, that's not why

(02:13:12):
he chooses to stay in his avatar body. There are
other reasons. So there's just like seems like it's like
an original like that that first sequence where when he's
in the avatar body does seem like that is a
big but it doesn't seem like that remains the incentive.
I don't know, or or like not that it's even
an incentive, right, because then he falls in love with

(02:13:32):
a woman, and then he falls in love with the
culture and he becomes an indigenous person. You know how
when you can be a white person and then you
become an indigenous person, you know when that always happened.
So the point is there's a lot of nuances to
this discussion, and I'd be as always, we're just curious
to hear from our listeners who can speak from from

(02:13:55):
a place of experience. Yeah, I mean, because it's I
also read kind of a diversity of opinion there where. Um,
you know, we have we have a protagonist who he sucks,
but he is our our main our protagonists is a
is a disabled person and you don't see that in
movies really ever very infrequently. Yeah, But on top of that,

(02:14:19):
you have many of the common trophy issues with disabled characters,
beginning with the fact that Sam Worthington is not a
disabled actor, and it kind of goes on from there.
I would be really curious to hear listener perspective on
on that because I think the movie, like the movie
doesn't really touch on it that much after the first act,

(02:14:42):
and which I think is where the you know could
could be seen us for the best, where James Cameron
doesn't appear to have very much insight into that topic.
But again, like who's telling the story, who is advising,
and um, how does that bear out? And character for
exactly exactly Jake, not like the other colonizers Sully. It

(02:15:04):
seems like that choice was made in the story because
when you're writing a screenplay. I don't know if you
know this, but I do have the master's degree in
screenwriting from Boston University. I would never bring it up
on my own, but you make choices about your characters,
especially a protagonist, to motivate and justify other things that
will happen in the movie. So it feels to me

(02:15:26):
like we need to get him from the start of
the movie where he's a human white guy, to the
end of the movie, he's gonna be uh member of
the Alma Takaya people. What qualities or what things can
we attribute to this character to justify that making sense
by the end of the movie for him to want
to permanently be an Alma Takaya person. And I feel

(02:15:51):
like the only reason that he is a disabled character
in the movie is to be like, well, that, well,
that'll be one of the things that justifies him making
this choice. I was about to say that because, um,
one of the things now speaking also as an able
bodied person, was that watching the film for the first time,
I think another reason why I like Stephen Lane's character,

(02:16:13):
even though he's the bad guy, was you know, he
tells them, I look out for my own If you
do this, I promise you you'll get your legs back,
you know, And and he says, quote unquote your real legs,
And it's like, you know, for me, you know who's
not disabled or doesn't have a disability, I'm like, fuck, yeah,
you know these things are aliens and your planets dying,

(02:16:37):
So get your legs and do it and save the
planet and go home. Hell. Yes, you know, and I
feel like a lot of people probably felt the same
way until you meet the nav and you realize that
this is bullshit and he's colonizer and stuff. So at first,
on paper, it makes sense. However, if that was the case,

(02:16:57):
if it was do this for me, get your legs back,
the downside should have been if you don't do this,
you remain disabled. But there's no like lose lose He's like, okay,
so I still have my body at the end, you know, so, well,
that's that's that's implying that, like your punishment is that

(02:17:18):
you stay disabled, as if being disabled is a punishment.
So there's all these like yucky implications. And also it's
like we've received no indication that like Jake Sulley is
unhappy as like as a disabled man, Like that's not
something that we ever hear him speak on in any like,

(02:17:38):
it's just people are making that assumption about him, which
is a very common, ablest thing to do. But it's
like the story doesn't challenge it really, like they're like, well,
of course this is true. Right at the beginning of
the movie, he does make a comment where he's like, uh,
they can fix it if you have the money because
American healthcare in the future is still dogshit. So he

(02:17:59):
is disabled because he broke But still it's like that
should have been a bigger driving point if that was
going to be the thing that motivates them to do
the thing, right, I mean, yeah, it's like, Okay, I
guess there's commentary on like the horrible state of of
like American healthcare slash like veteran benefits, which is like

(02:18:19):
still abysmal, But yeah, the the way that was handled.
And then again, and I'm speculating here, but I think
the choice was made to make him disabled to like
narratively justify like him wanting to remain in this avatar
body by the end of the movie. That's just like
not the representation people. And I you know, I'm also

(02:18:41):
speaking as an able bodied person here, but it's my
understanding that people with disabilities want to see themselves represented
on screen, I mean obviously far more than they already are,
and in a way that just normalizes their experience rather
than being some like justification for something else, some other
narrative choice that's going to happen, And that's not what's

(02:19:02):
happening in this movie. No, it's been like weaponized as
a plot point, like it's just and like a lazy
plot point at that, which is just like, I guess
I can't say that the movie is necessarily above that behavior.
Obviously we've been talking for two hours, but like, but yeah,
it is. I would be curious to know, because I also, like,

(02:19:24):
I mean, I don't want to ignore disabled writers who
who did enjoy how Jake Sally was characterized. Of course,
I have one last, just quick thing that I want
to touch on really quickly, harkening back to the romance
between Jake and the tri um. Yeah, I want to
talk about anterior in general, because praising her like and

(02:19:47):
you know, in different places. But yeah, yeah, and so
the thing I liked about the romance and it's really
just that like he's like, I have chosen a woman,
but she needs to choose me, and she's like, yeah
I did already you goo. Um. So I liked that,
Like she's given and like that just shows how how
low the bar is for a female character being given

(02:20:09):
agency in her own romantic life is something that I'm like,
oh my goodness, that happened. I feel like we've really
been handing it to James Cameron for doing that in
a way that's like, yeah, that should just be kind
of should just a standard. But you know in Titanic
at a period piece, you're like, oh wow, women, I
know choices back then. How subversive. Then it's like, why

(02:20:32):
are the Navy monogamous? Okay? I I had the same thought,
because she's like, and now we had sex one time
and now we're made it for life. And and again
I I don't I'm not an expert on this, but
it's my understanding that like hetero monogamy is a very
European Christian thing. And I'm not knocking monogamy or anything,

(02:20:54):
but things like heteronormativity and the quote unquote gender binary
and long term monogamous pair bonding, these are all constructs that,
again from my understanding, a lot of communities around the world,
including many indigenous ones, don't participate in because it's never
been a part of their culture or cultural evolution. I

(02:21:17):
am literally reading this book called Reclaiming to Spirits, and
I'm like just a couple of chapters in, but they're
already talking about like how all over the United States
in general, like there are so much there's so much
evidence of lgbt Q relationships and polygamous relationships, not even

(02:21:40):
just like one man with multiple wives, which does happen,
but like a man with multiple husbands. And so to
see it like done like this in a movie that
is about connection and about like you know, this network
of people and stuff like that. Why would she just
be limited to one person she would be in love with? Yeah?

(02:22:02):
Why would this? Why would they? When that's such a
construct of like like such a euro Christian centric construct.
It's because he's a white guy, because James Cameron. Right,
it's like it does feel like a James Cameron thing
where it's like he is I don't even know, like

(02:22:23):
I was like who even knows how conscious, like how
hard he even thought about this, because it's just like
that's what happens when you have like he's giving like
he's giving the navi elements of the oppressor in a
way that is like what what who and for what
and what and then gives us the little peanut of like, well,

(02:22:43):
but Nateria got to choose her partner that you have
to marry after having sex with one time, and we're like, yes, girlfa,
it's amazing. So I take it all back. I'm not
rooting for their relationship. She just should have snagged the
white guy and that that should have been Jake, Like,
wait what, because oh, I just sucked a cat with

(02:23:05):
my brain tentacle thing. The one moment with Jake and
Ateri that I did like was when she finds him
in human form and she's holding him and then they say,
I see you and you're like everywhere she he sucks
in all forms, but she accepts him in all forms. Wow,
it's so nice, goddamn it. But no, Niteri in general,

(02:23:32):
I love her. I think that they could have done
more to characterize her. We don't know very much. She
gets reduced to the relationship at certain moments, not all
the time, because, like you were saying earlier, Ali like
she is, like I think, realistically and like tactically and emotionally,

(02:23:52):
most connected to her family and to Pandora. And when
Jake Fox with her family, Fox with Pandora, he's cut
out of her life. That totally makes sense. But there
are sequences of the movie where they're on good turn
like when things are going well. All we know about
Nitti is in relation to Jake. When things aren't going well,
She gets these character moments, but they're also in reaction

(02:24:14):
to Jake more often than not because there's not Is
there a scene in this movie where two Navy characters
talk to each other and Jake or Grace are not there,
Like no n test. It's when Naterie and her dad
are talking to each other when he's dying. He tells
her to protect but then Jake shows up, but then

(02:24:38):
he's still bull dozes into the scene. Okay, let me
touch your shoulder to comfort you, and she's like, get
the funk away from me. You ask whole She loves
to insert himself. You're like, dude, I do appreciate the
um Naterius never framed as a damsel. She saves Jake

(02:24:58):
several times, she saves her elf several times. She's a
competent warrior guy. She kills the colonel that she should
have been the hero, and she should have been and
she should have been that if anything was going to
like be the big motivator to unite the clans, it

(02:25:21):
should have been like we lost home tree, this is
what's at stake. I'm getting a fucking dragon and and
I think that would have been more like that would
have put her people in a better, like more comfortable
place to have, Like yeah, that, why would it? Why
would it be Jake? This movie should have been more
like the movie Prey, where it's told from her point

(02:25:42):
of view, where she is like the Ultimate Warrior, where
she fights the aliens who came from the sky and
kills their ass. I guess it's just one of them
in Prey, but still still, yeah, that would have been great.
That would have been better Jake. If Jake was going

(02:26:03):
to do anything, he should have like sabotaged the base
from the inside, yeah, while Matery was getting shipped done,
because that would have subverted everything. I think like if
that would have been like, Okay, our hero fucked up
and he ain't ships, so now he's in jail and
if he wants to contribute, he can do something with
his own people inside of jail in kind of the base,

(02:26:27):
and then he should have gone back to Earth. And
it's like sorry for you that the Earth is basically
like mad Max Fury Road. But whose fault was that?
It's not our problem was that? Yeah, it's because humans
fucked it up? Um? Is there anything anyone else wants
to talk about? I feel like we've only scratched the service,
but I just wanted to breeze through really quickly. A

(02:26:51):
few other um women in the movie. We've talked about Grace,
you know, like she's it's a Sigourney Weaver characters. At
the end of the day, I'm like, nice, but I
do think like it's worth kind of repeating that her character.
You know, it's like, on the surface level, it's good that,
you know, our highest most respected scientist is a woman

(02:27:11):
who seems to have a lot of control, influence, respect,
woman and stuff. On the other hand, she is ethically compromised,
and no one ever wants to bring that up and
complicit in genie. I do like her relationship with Jake, though,
because you rarely see that mentor student relationships between men
and women, where the woman is the teacher and the

(02:27:34):
man is like her subordinate and there's like a genuine
respect and camaraderie that I wish he would have had
that with nay Terry. Also, yes, instead of whatever the
fun because snag the white guy and then go get
married it or don't get married, just fucking fuck monogamy
and marriage. Just have just fuck. But yeah, I I

(02:27:58):
that's a that's a good point. And also the like
I feel like when there is a woman in the
mentor role, the like Malemntee constantly brings it up of
like I can't believe I'm learning from feel like I'm
learning from my mom. But it's just like a and
inherently respectful and like, I feel like this is these
are elements of the James Cameron play a book that

(02:28:19):
he's generally really good with the same goose. It's like,
it's a pretty diverse team, the science team, and you
also have again, she's like when the Michelle Rodriguez character
is so underwritten and so underdeveloped that it's like, we're
just gonna have her say fast and the furious lines
in this movie. Um, but a very highly motivated character

(02:28:42):
who has a whole arc about realizing that the military
industrial complex is bad. Actually, but she is like she is,
you know, without that character, uh, a lot of you know,
Jake's return to Pandora would not have been possible, so
the whole third act wouldn't have happened. So yeah, Trudy
like is a very important character for someone with very

(02:29:04):
little screen time. I wish that they didn't blow her up. Yeah, yeah,
Trudy is what Giovanni Verese's character isn't because Giovanni Versi
knows that something's wrong and he continues to do it,
and Trudy knows that it's wrong, and she's like, fuck this.
I didn't sign up for this, which we kind of did,
but he did technically did. But maybe you didn't know

(02:29:24):
exactly what you were signing up for because we can
script people very very young and it's sucked up. Uh,
but I did. I did generally like that character. Um. Again,
very broad James camerony writing, but very easily could have
been cast as a man and was not, which I
think is again I feel like we're handing it to

(02:29:46):
James Cameron for nothing, but most male otour directors don't
do that. He did make Titanic, though, so we got
to really hand it to him for a lot of stuff. Um.
Shout out Norm kind of just for no reason. But
I'm just like he was in Bones. He's a sweetie.
He's a sweetie. Also complicit in genocide. Uh yeah. Norm

(02:30:09):
originally in the deleted scenes, was supposed to be the
Jake Sully character as far as like, oh well, we've
got a scientist who's not threatening and maybe he's going
to be the one to connect with the Navvy, and
then Jake just steals his job and that's why he's
piste off. And there's another deleted scene where Suite. It's
after Jake hunts and is a successful hunter or whatever,

(02:30:34):
and then they party and they're eating and drinking and
stuff like that, and Sute is drinking and he and
Jake get into like a drinking competition. He says there
he's kind of drunk. He's like, I never thought a
sky person would be brave. He's like, you guys fight
far away and like those machines and stuff like that,
you fight at a distance. I never thought one of

(02:30:54):
them could be brave. And they had like a bonding
moment and makes that fucking scene where he's like you
made it with her like that much worse because it's like, dude,
I thought we were broke and then you just And
then they actually have a proper fight scene in the
deleted scenes, and that one should have been good and

(02:31:15):
that should have been in the re release and it's not.
And I'm salty about it because he would have won.
He would have won. They keep disrespecting my man, that
entire fucking movie. Well, have we reached the end? I
think we have what a journey, and yet I feel

(02:31:38):
like there's still so much. Boy does this movie pass
the back to test? Does it? Oh my gosh, I
forgot to pay attention. Um, I can't. Really. There is
a few that I flagged that I was like, maybe, like,
there's a few close passes because like, Grace does speak

(02:31:58):
to materies, like, but it's all is I don't think
that it does. And now I have scholarly journal, Bechtel
Test dot com up and the closest I can get
to someone effectively making an argument because they're always talking
about Jake. And the best argument I've been able to
find was like, well, Grace talks to a what at

(02:32:19):
the end window? I was like, well, that conversation doesn't
even happen on screen, um, and she's literally telling Jake
about it. So Jake ruins this whole movie. He also
prevents it from passing the Bechtel test. Congratulations Jake Sully, asshole.
Damn it. And Terry doesn't pass the Ali Naty tests. God,

(02:32:39):
damn it, damn it, goddamn it, son of a bitch. Jake, Well,
what about our nipple scale though scale of zero to
five nipples, where we rate the movie based on looking
at it through an intersectional feminist lens um, I would say, oh, okay,

(02:33:00):
here we go. James Cameron, he had good intentions. I
think with this movie. He tried. He wanted to tell
a story about anti capitalism, anti colonialism, anti military industrial complex,
and those messages are clear. However, when you dig a

(02:33:21):
little deeper and you look at a lot of the
implications of what's happening on screen, you realize that it's
a white savior story about a white guy who fails
upward into somehow being a part of this community. Which
if this was a movie made by indigenous people, I

(02:33:43):
don't think that would have ever happened like that would
have never been written that way. That would have is
not how that story would have panned out. It would
have just been told from, you know, Natierie's point of view.
Jake would have been eliminated from the story. In general.
It would just be a story told from the omata
Kaya people's perspective, and that would be the movie. So

(02:34:07):
intentions good though they might have been, a lot of
marks were missed as far as indigenous representation, as far
as disability representation, and to some extent, I think the
representation of women as well, because you could kind of
easily make the argument that Niteria is presented as a
plot trophy for Jake Sully doing the right thing, a

(02:34:31):
prize to be one. She has more agency than that,
though she does. But but again, if this movie, in
our rewrite that we're going to do, um, Niteria would
be which, first of all, it'll be on ice of ice.

(02:34:52):
We'll find a way to work minions into the story,
and Shrek will make an appearance. Obviously, minions would have
worked for the current opinions, would have worked for the
colonel for sure. Um, we're gonna do a rewrite. But no,
the story should be Nati story like she should be
the protagonist. Jake Sally didn't even need to be there.
So with all of that in mind, I'll give the

(02:35:16):
movie to two and a half. It's kind of where
I'm at Nipples. I'll land on two and a half
because at the end of the day, I still had
a damn good time watching this movie. The movie felt
like a movie. The movie feels like a movie. So
I'll give one to Natie, I'll give one to mowat

(02:35:40):
her mother, and I'll give my half nipple to Pandora mother.
A wa um, I guess I'll made you there. I
kind of want to dog into too. I don't really
know why. I don't have a good reason to go
with your guts, but I'm going on this one. That's
what your braid tentacles are telling you to go with it. Yes,

(02:36:02):
I just saw this really funny tweet while you're um.
It's James Cameron standing at the avatar to Premier. It's
just him standing in front of the words tar. And
it's like even James Cameron had to see what all
the fuss is about and went to see tar. Okay,
moving right along, I'm gonna I think that again. Yes,

(02:36:24):
I think that, like James Cameron expresses certain themes very
effectively here in a way that you never see even
really attempted in blockbuster movies. He's always been good with this.
He's made, you know, entire movies that are explicitly critical
of the L A. P. D Um. He is generally good.
I think he could have been better in this movie, honestly,
about putting women in prominent and um motivated and interesting

(02:36:49):
action roles. Um, I don't think this is the movie
where he does it best, but he does it to
some extent. You know, he's doing the things that he
does well well and then when he's out of his depth,
it's very obvi this. Yeah, but but I think that
like it's I don't know, my experience of this movie
has been so kind of colored by the changing ways

(02:37:09):
that we've talked about it in the thirteen years it's existed.
It feels like it's been around for sucking ever. And
I think that, you know, there's a lot to love
about this movie that we've been encouraged not to love
because of how just media in general seems to view
indigenous stories and centering Indigenous characters in any way, shape

(02:37:30):
or form. And that's not to say that this movie
does it particularly well. So I don't know. I guess
I'll go two and a half because that was mostly complimentary.
Uh that said, it doesn't pass the Printles test, and
you know, and only one character passes the alien Nati test, right,
but not the not the main woman that you'd expect,

(02:37:52):
not in a terry and um, you don't get really
any you know, there's too much Jake Sully. You don't
get any interior look into what the what the Omedicaia
are thinking when Jake Sully isn't there, which is I
think a huge missed opportunity. And that's like supposedly, if
James Cameron wants to make a movie that effectively addresses

(02:38:15):
you know, Indigenous issues and concerns and culture. Um, then
why is Jake Sully always there? Is my two and
a half napples. I'm giving one to a tie, I'm
given one to Niteri's mommy, why do I have the
Wikipedia page for tar Up? Oh, it's because of the

(02:38:36):
um giving one to I'm not giving one to tar
I'm giving one Tonteria, one to Moat, and I will
give the last half twa perfect beautiful Okay. So if
you were to ask me back when it first came out,
I probably would have gave it four four nipples off

(02:38:59):
four of them. But now you know, after enough time,
and especially after talking and communicating with other Indigenous people,
especially indigenous creatives, and now that I've seen better, I
know that we could do better. And there's absolutely no

(02:39:19):
reason why Indigenous people shouldn't be allowed to tell stories
of the scale, you know, so I feel like I'm
gonna give it three. I'll just commit and give it
three because I did, and I did enjoy it. The
stuff that I enjoyed I still very much enjoy I

(02:39:40):
think it's beautiful, and I think like the special effects
and everything, and the fact that the water wasn't real
like blew my mind. The fact that it remotely holds
up is so wild. I know it looks it looks
so good and uh, but the Aliens. Now, as someone
who smashes Aliens and Mass Effect act for three games,

(02:40:02):
I wish that the Aliens were to that caliber of
hot or at least because the characters in Mass Effect
have a lot more to offer as far as like
their own stories, their own histories, their own opinions on things,
and all that stuff. It's a BioWare games, so you're
allowed to go deep. You couldn't go deep in this one.

(02:40:23):
And there were too many human characters, not enough navy characters.
Jake should have had a couple navvy friends outside of
Natterie and outside of his bromance with Sute, just to
like kind of build on why he switches side so

(02:40:43):
fast and feels this connection to these people instead of
just like, well I'm here, I'm here and blessed by God,
so love me God. But um, but yeah, so I'll
still give it the three star, three stars, three nipples,
three pasties. Um one's is gonna go to na Terry

(02:41:04):
one is going to go to Mowat for passing the
Alienati test, and then the last one is going to
go to suite because he should at least have one
regular size nipples because his are so small. On top
of everything else wrong, I have to give my mad
some dignity because he got almost done in this movie.

(02:41:25):
He did have a great death scene, but that's not
saying much. Yeah, well, Elie, thank you as always for
being here. It's been an absolute delight. Three time or
we love to see it. There is one last thing
I want to shout out while I'm here though, This
is very important. So um, this has taken place in
Winnipeg right now in Canada, and since uh, we're talking

(02:41:50):
about indigenous people, let's actually talk about the real ones
that exist today. But there is a situation happening right
now where the daughters of Morgan Harris, who is an
Indigenous woman in Canada who was murdered by a serial
killer along with four other Indigenous women. They believe that

(02:42:12):
their bodies are in the the Prairie Green Landfill the RCMP.
So the Canadian police told them that they believe that
that's where the serial killer dumped their bodies, and they're
refusing to investigate because they said that it isn't feasible.
So there essentially telling these girls that they have to

(02:42:33):
make peace with their mother staying in a dumpster and
not getting a burial, and these girls are fighting to
push back and search the landfill. So I really wanted
to just raise awareness to that and get the word
out there because I heard about it two days ago
and it's just not making as much waves as it

(02:42:54):
should be. So do you know, if there's any kind
of go fund me or anything to support, I will
definitely look it up and send it your way if
I but we'll post it in the show notes if
if well, at least link to a story for context
as well. That's yes, sucking, unconscionable. I was seeing what
you were posting about it, and yeah, I also did
not hear about it before you said something, yep. So

(02:43:16):
if we could do anything good, I mean, like Avatar
is great, but people are going to go see Avatar too,
and not enough people are talking about this. So I'm
definitely yes, spread the word. Thank you for that. Absolutely.
Is there anything you'd like to plug as far as
your own work, Well, I am kind of limiting my

(02:43:38):
Twitter access, but I'm Ali Naughty on Twitter. I'm Ali
Naughty on Instagram and TikTok. I'm back on Tumbler because
I don't like so especially now, but I've been more
active than on the Ali Naughty Tumbler account, which is
still the Ala Test because that's how a lot of

(02:44:00):
people know it. So I keep it there. And my
sisters and I opened up a boutique, Darlings of our Mother,
So check it out and buy some stuff. Very cool.
Yeah wait, that's huge for me. Okay, I can wait. Yeah,
I'll send that to YouTube. Come back anytime please. Yeah.

(02:44:22):
Wonderful and uh you can follow us on Instagram and
Twitter at Bechtel Cast and um. Speaking of Twitter, there's
a pretty good tweet that we found. Oh okay, this
is It feels like an end of the Daily Zeitgeist episode,
like tweets you like, okay, but this was one that

(02:44:46):
really just It's from the l A Times review of
Avatar Way of Water, which is a quite good review.
It's getting quite good early reviews. Folks. Um, we haven't
seen it yet, but the critics are sa drav ing
about the Way of Water. But this is from Justin Chang,
the film critic over at the l A Times. Um.

(02:45:09):
He references how Avatar Too is about Jake Sully being
a loving father in the second movie, and then he says,
and I quote, you could say he's a police Navy dad.
It's so good, twitters. It's still horrible, but there are

(02:45:31):
there are moments there, moments that was my moment that
really meant a lot to us. Um. You can also
follow us on Instagram, where I did not receive that information,
but it is. You know, it's another platform where we're at.
We're also going on tour reminder West Coast. You can
find that in the link in our bios and the
link in this description as well. We're going to be

(02:45:53):
in l A, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle at the
end of January into the beginning of February. More info
about that at the link, and you can join our
patrion ak Matreon. What the hell is that case, Oh
my gosh. It's a place where you can get to
bonus episodes of the Bechtel Cast, usually just Jamie and

(02:46:14):
I hoof and goof and goofing, but we're also having
awesome discourse and um and you get access to the
back catalog of well over one hundred bonus episodes. So
if you've run out of main feed episodes, scoot on
over to patreon dot com slash Bechtel Cast. And it's December,
so we're doing our cursed holiday movie round up. We

(02:46:37):
have already released our Netflix original Lindsay Lohan Falling for Christmas,
a movie where a little girl's Christmas, which is for
Lindsay Lohan to fall off of a mountain. And we'll
also be doing while you were sleeping. And I also
I was getting excited today because January is the Pinocchio
Wars episode and so we just we have a hell

(02:47:00):
of a time over there. Joined the community, Joined, joined
the movement that is the Matreon um. And finally, it's
the holiday so if you're looking for gifts, last minute gifts,
you can go to our store over at t public
dot com slash v Bechtel Cast. We actually have some
new designs just came out pretty fun feminist icon Paddington

(02:47:23):
Shreky in which came up in this episode. It's cannon
to the show is. And um, also just one that
I kind of wanted to make for myself that we
have referenced on the show, which is the Flobber Mambo.
Bye Danny Alfman. So that plus classic designs including our
holiday baby Grinch designs that over there get some gifts,

(02:47:47):
uh and live your damn life exactly. And um, hey
Jamie Ali, I see you. Bye bye m

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Avatar (2009) with Ali Nahdee