PolyHedral
Superabacus Mystic
Surprisingly, I am being entirely serious. Keep reading.
It is very likely that you are among the 100 million people that paid to see Cameron's latest work, Avatar. On the off-chance you aren't, don't worry. I'm not here to discuss the plot; I want to discuss the world he built and the Na'vi race he invented to demonstrate his point.
It becomes quite clear in the course of the film that the Na'vi live in harmony with nature. That isn't a metaphor; their entire environment appears perfectly suited to them. Although they have ostensibly Iron Age technology, if that, they do not use any survival strategy used by Iron Age humanity. (There is no suggestion of farming, or of animal husbandry, and the vague illustration of any sort of hunting suggests it's an occasional guilty pleasure.) Instead, everything is handed to them, to the point that the leaves of Hometree (a skyscraper-like, apparently natural dwelling) serve as hammocks. Neither is there any suggestion of a disagreement between either individuals or tribes of Na'vi. All conflicts that arise in the film are, in some way, caused by humans. However, that last part is actually the most plausible, due to Na'vi anatomy: connected to the back of their skull is, functionally, a network cable. This allows them to communicate with a network of trees that is implied to span the entire world, (this part is technically a spoiler) control every creature therein, and store vast quantities of information, up to and including the memories of their ancestors.
Now, when I first saw the film, it occurred to me: Earth is crap compared to that. Before humans came along, nature was cruel, barren, and permitted no mistake before eating you alive. Literally. Even after humans came along, there are many many problems that cannot be fixed without apparently impossible efforts. The lack of co-ordination and co-operation has left a large portion of people only slightly better off than they were a thousand years ago, and all of Earth's creatures about to die because we've accidentally broken the atmosphere, and nobody has the sway needed to fix it.
I am not the only one who thought this. There was a small but vocal group who were outright depressed by Cameron's world and the fact that it was such a very much nicer place to live. This people, as far as I can tell, (darn you, Poe) genuinely want to leave reality simply because of incredibly powerful CGI.
When you suggest a nice and loving someone capable of synthesizing life itself, capable of resurrecting the dead, performing acts of chemistry we can still only dream of, and of performing the still-impossible feat of walking on water, you suggest someone capable of making the comparatively trivial changes needed to make Earth run as smoothly as Pandora.
Why was the world such a mess, even before man came along, when a human, so puny, insignificant and blind compared to the almighty God, can invent a better one? Why was there any possibility whatsoever of the world falling apart as it has, when it takes only trivial changes to make everything work absolutely harmoniously?
(PS: A faulty motor cortex is more annoying to live with and far harder to fix than a broken spinal cord.)
It is very likely that you are among the 100 million people that paid to see Cameron's latest work, Avatar. On the off-chance you aren't, don't worry. I'm not here to discuss the plot; I want to discuss the world he built and the Na'vi race he invented to demonstrate his point.
It becomes quite clear in the course of the film that the Na'vi live in harmony with nature. That isn't a metaphor; their entire environment appears perfectly suited to them. Although they have ostensibly Iron Age technology, if that, they do not use any survival strategy used by Iron Age humanity. (There is no suggestion of farming, or of animal husbandry, and the vague illustration of any sort of hunting suggests it's an occasional guilty pleasure.) Instead, everything is handed to them, to the point that the leaves of Hometree (a skyscraper-like, apparently natural dwelling) serve as hammocks. Neither is there any suggestion of a disagreement between either individuals or tribes of Na'vi. All conflicts that arise in the film are, in some way, caused by humans. However, that last part is actually the most plausible, due to Na'vi anatomy: connected to the back of their skull is, functionally, a network cable. This allows them to communicate with a network of trees that is implied to span the entire world, (this part is technically a spoiler) control every creature therein, and store vast quantities of information, up to and including the memories of their ancestors.
Now, when I first saw the film, it occurred to me: Earth is crap compared to that. Before humans came along, nature was cruel, barren, and permitted no mistake before eating you alive. Literally. Even after humans came along, there are many many problems that cannot be fixed without apparently impossible efforts. The lack of co-ordination and co-operation has left a large portion of people only slightly better off than they were a thousand years ago, and all of Earth's creatures about to die because we've accidentally broken the atmosphere, and nobody has the sway needed to fix it.
I am not the only one who thought this. There was a small but vocal group who were outright depressed by Cameron's world and the fact that it was such a very much nicer place to live. This people, as far as I can tell, (darn you, Poe) genuinely want to leave reality simply because of incredibly powerful CGI.
When you suggest a nice and loving someone capable of synthesizing life itself, capable of resurrecting the dead, performing acts of chemistry we can still only dream of, and of performing the still-impossible feat of walking on water, you suggest someone capable of making the comparatively trivial changes needed to make Earth run as smoothly as Pandora.
Why was the world such a mess, even before man came along, when a human, so puny, insignificant and blind compared to the almighty God, can invent a better one? Why was there any possibility whatsoever of the world falling apart as it has, when it takes only trivial changes to make everything work absolutely harmoniously?
(PS: A faulty motor cortex is more annoying to live with and far harder to fix than a broken spinal cord.)
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That $300,000,000 budget had some effect, even if it's possibly not what some people wanted.