What happens if Avatar: Fire and Ash doesn’t make enough profit to convince Disney to bankroll Avatar 4 and 5? Creator James Cameron has said he’s ready to walk away from the franchise, adding he’ll write a book to resolve the one thread Avatar 3 leaves open.
As an Indigenous Canadian, I think the whole Avatar series is sickening
An invading colonizing force of foreign people invading a native people … but the natives are incapable of helping themselves so they need a white saviour to lead them in the fight against their oppressors
It’s basically cultural appropriation masked as a space opera
The worst part of it is how wealthy European people are still able in the most imaginative ways possible are able to monetize the misery and memory of oppressed people. Not only did they destroy entire cultures, they spend a good part of their time making money off of that memory and history.
The only thing I enjoy about the films is the AI, CGI and special effects … beyond that, the writing is just another continuation of white people fantasizing about what it would be like to be a heroic Indigenous person who wins over colonizers … a fantasy that has never been allowed to exist in reality.
If the natives are outgunned and technologically outclassed, how are they to prevail without help from “the inside”? Otherwise it’s just a depressing plot about the natives getting overrun.
I’m having trouble thinking of a time when the natives were able to help themselves against colonizers. OTOH, guerilla warfare has worked pretty damned well in the last century.
Well, there’s Ethiopia, and uh… it’s a pretty short list.
(I’d also give an honorable mention to Haiti, although the oppressed people in that case were imported African slaves, not natives. By the time of the Haitian Revolution, the indigenous Taíno had long since been pretty much wiped out.)
The tech trees are a lot more balanced recently
My favorite movie about an Indigenous person taking on and invading and/or colonizing force is Prey. No white savior there.
Prey was fucking awesome
Good shit there for sure.
As opposed to the other Avatar, which explicitly features Inuit and mesoamerican cultures resisting literal fascist, genocidal regimes. And deconstructs the “chosen one” trope while they’re at it. And (as of now) uses culturally appropriate VAs.
It’s a white saviour rehash. Classic movie trope in the USA and yes it is incredibly insulting.