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self_made_human  amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi  3mo ago (open.substack.com)   1649 thread views

Avatar's Dirty Secret: Nature Is Just Fancy Infrastructure

open.substack.com

What if Avatar isn't actually about environmentalism vs. technology, but about recognizing superintelligent infrastructure when you see it? A deep dive into why Pandora's "natural" ecosystem looks suspiciously like a planetary-scale AI preserve, complete with biological USB-C ports, room-temperature superconductors growing wild, and a species of "noble savages" who are actually post-singularity retirees cosplaying as hunter-gatherers.

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Is this where we start bitching about how the two Avatar movies make no goddamn sense whatsoever and how James Cameron is a fucking hack who doesn't know how to write?

Because I'll do it. I'll fucking well do it.

Props for the essay, but it's stuff I've seen before. Hell, it's pretty much my original take away from the first movie.

And Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri did it all better anyways.

Thanks btw; I actually missed the link and thought this was just a really tiny (but intriguing) prompt.

He knows how to write a compelling screenplay which he can then direct. Most directors can't even do that, so it seems a bit unfair to call out James Cameron specifically.

Avatar would have more of a cultural impact if he worked with some good sci fi writers to do some spinoff novels to expand the world. Unfortunately he wants to do it all himself between his submarine adventures so it's a little more simplistic than is ideal.

I mean, if that's what you want to do, be my guest. The storytelling in Avatar is... simplistic at best.

Well, see, that's the problem.

It's the exact opposite.

The reason the first movie drew so many nerds and geeks to it, despite the majority of them actively disliking said movie and it's resolution is that James Cameron actually put in the work to build verisimilitude. The entire setup and world-building of the first movie - if you do the background research - is actually really, really good. He basically sets up a cyberpunk dystopia in a very subtle way to explain the whys and wherefores.

Some of the background aspects that always stuck with me was the brutal albeit realistic risks that people signing up for a tour on Pandora would take. You weren't signing up for a tour on a vacation world, but a potentially deadly mission to what amounted to a remote Antarctica Research facility, only ten times worse. If your cryo-pod failed during transit, they would quietly euthanized you, as they couldn't spare the resources to keep your sorry ass alive for several years, and you just weren't that valuable. If you got injured past a certain point, again, they just euthanized you. It spoke of a ruthless business with very limited resources that treated thier employees like replaceable cogs, and with the same care. Brutal, albeit realistic and understandable.

And then there's the ISV Venture Star, which is one of the most gorgeous ships in movie history. Beautiful thing.

The second movie basically takes all the world-building in the first movie and throws it in the trash. Turns out, no, full-brain uploads and backups are a thing, and can be done in a trivial fashion. Whoops, the head security guy knocked up someone and the resultant child got left behind, despite the previous attitude toward RDA's own employees meaning said child likely would have been aborted without so much as a raised eyebrow or blush.

Avatar 2 basically went full Eclipse Phase without working out the implications of what going full Eclipse Phase actually means. Given all the homework done to make the first Avatar movie reasonably work(compared to other movies, atleast), it points overall that James Cameron likely had nothing to do with the writing/worldbuilding and is basically making shit up for the second movie without thinking it through and going all in on selling a message.

Granted, that's what the first movie did, but it atleast did the work to make it actually interesting.

Whoof. Okay. Glad to get that off my chest. All right, I'm done.

10/10 rant, and I agree with most of it. Only minor quibble is that I believe that the mind uploads were brand new technology developed in between the two movies. As I described in my essay, its existence makes the hunting of sentient whales even more of a questionable value add.

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