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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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Notes -
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.
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.
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