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So why doesn’t say, Last Samurai or Pocahontas get the same charity? It’s pretty much the same plot.
Edit: in regard to patting white people on the back gets them to care about things, the jury isn’t out at all. The caring only extends to the point of personal inconvenience. It’s a lib movie with white saviour overtones.
Pocahontas is not as good politically as Avatar. If you watch Pocahantas there are evil colonizers and evil natives, that want war with each other. That is protrayed as a bad thing, and eventually the protagonist Pocahantas deflates the situation, and the movie ends with peace. It’s a both sides narrative, a “why can’t we all just get along.”
Where Avatar says there is a good side, the natives, and a bad side, the colonizers, and it ends with the protagonist joining an armed resistance against the US government and expelling the colonial force.
You are right about the white savior aspect, but I still rate the movie pretty highly.
Well I think you’ve got a legitimate criticism of the movie, that Avatar does the “white savior” trope. Jake Sully being like, the best Na’vi dragonrider and leading the resistance is absolutely absurd. I can get over it tho. The Last Samurai doesn’t even have like the semblance of a good political message though right? That was more about the personal journeys of the characters I thought?
I don’t remember the plots to either of those but in Avatar at least the main character doesn’t really do all that much right? His big thing is uniting the clans or whatever and fighting the head white guy in a one-on-one but I can’t remember if he’s even the one that kills him.
He’s also the chosen one that marries into their royalty and is the only one who can hair fuck the really big dragon. If anything Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson in the other movies impose themselves less on the culture they decided to involve themselves with. Pocahontas is kind of a bad example vis a vis the protagonist cause he gets saved from the natives by Pochanhontas, doesn’t do much in fighting off white people and the whole movie paints both sides as equally bad. Last Samurai, Tom Cruise spends a shit load of time there before there’s a threat and the final standoff is a loss but Tom and the samurai both learn tactically from each other to do better in the battle so theres a collaborative angle there. I’m remembering very far back to when I saw it but for “that kind” of movie I recall it actually not being super white savioury. Especially cause they just get mowwed down by a gattling gun at the end so he literally wasn’t a savior, just a defector.
That’s also a criticism of “chosen one” tropes, which are extremely stupid in their own right.
