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Blood Boils posted:It's a pretty straightforward white saviour story underneath the veneer of anti-colonialism He kind of shifts it to have the protagonist as being in a wheelchair and not belonging because of being a different kind of minority and the whole being in an avatar/not really caring about risking himself being what prompted the planet to take notice and decide to help out, but it is still kind of funky with him being white. Actually, aren't all the colonialists white outside of the pilot that switches sides, and all the Navi black? Might be a few black soldiers. Normally the white savior is "this thing or knowledge from my culture saves the natives." Avatar was weird in that it was "disadvantaged white guy puts on blackface and gets drunk on the superpowers he gets with it - planetary A.I. thinks it's amusing and decides to help everyone kick the white people out." Darko fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Jun 4, 2021 |
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Jun 4, 2021 21:54
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Do white savior stories typically involve the savior betraying the people of his birth, informing the indigenous people how to go to war against them, and slaughtering them en masse? Because people compare Avatar to Dances With Wolves, but there's a notable lack of Kevin Costner driving Europeans into the sea in the latter.
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Jun 4, 2021 22:08
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Sir Kodiak posted:Do white savior stories typically involve the savior betraying the people of his birth, informing the indigenous people how to go to war against them, and slaughtering them en masse? Because people compare Avatar to Dances With Wolves, but there's a notable lack of Kevin Costner driving Europeans into the sea in the latter. The Last Samurai?
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Jun 4, 2021 22:24
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Sir Kodiak posted:Do white savior stories typically involve the savior betraying the people of his birth, informing the indigenous people how to go to war against them, and slaughtering them en masse? Because people compare Avatar to Dances With Wolves, but there's a notable lack of Kevin Costner driving Europeans into the sea in the latter. Edward Zwick white savior movies like Glory and Last Samurai do. Although in those, they always die trying but make a point. I'm actually not sure Tom Cruise really accomplishes anything in Last Samurai outside of letting them know plans and being marginally decent at fighting. He was hired to be a white savior for one side and ended up being a traitor and informant for the other side.
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Jun 4, 2021 22:24
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Yeah, the samurai are wiped out by gatling guns in The Last Samurai. Haven't seen Glory. In Avatar the Na'vi win. Not saying it isn't still "white savior." More wondering about the "straightforward" part.
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Jun 4, 2021 22:28
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Sir Kodiak posted:Yeah, the samurai are wiped out by gatling guns in The Last Samurai. Haven't seen Glory. Avatar is a bit different for the reasons I stated earlier than the standard. Nothing Jake tells them about human culture really helps them at all, if anything, its his handicap that drives him to.fully embrace being native and thats what the God in the machine is impressed by. White savior movies are typically "culture embraces white person enough for white person to teach them about white culture and make the natives/minorities better people because they can't do it on their own." Dangerous Minds, The Blind Side, Blood Diamond (hello again, Edward Zwick!). Atlantis The Lost Empire is the movie a lot of people think Avatar actually is.
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Jun 4, 2021 22:41
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I don’t think Last Samurai really falls into the white savior category since, as mentioned, he accomplishes nothing and his main role is as a viewpoint character for the western audience. It still has big problems, notable the implication that this story is only interesting if a white guy is jammed in the middle of it, but it’s mostly a movie about the death of a traditional culture as the gears of the industrial modernization grind it to dust.
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Jun 4, 2021 22:43
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Darko posted:Edward Zwick white savior movies like Glory and Last Samurai do. Although in those, they always die trying but make a point. I was gonna say, Tom Cruise's involvement is what let's the "bad guys" win and the "good guys" take a heroic last stand with him, not because of him. The movie is more about Tom Cruise's journey to learn how kick-rear end Ken Watanabe's character is.
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Jun 4, 2021 22:43
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The Last Samurai pisses me off because I don't know anything about its production but watching it, it's extremely easy to see a version where the screen time is reversed between Watanabe and Cruise and it owns. There's already a reporter narrating bits of the movie's story with a voice over and then we got Tom Cruise's in addition. Like was he cast in mid-production or something so everything had to shift to be more about him? Like it's not even much of a white savior story because Cruise is just, like one of several folks working with Watanabe as the story goes on like nothing would be lost with less of him and no voice over narration from him about how spiritual the samurai are and stuff. You could probably make a great movie out of it with a different cut. I still LOL that they had a decent ending with him just wandering off and the voice over basically saying no one saw him again and he probably died of his wounds but then it fades back in and goes on that extra minute because Hollywood.
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Jun 4, 2021 23:00
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No Way Home trailer has been received by a bunch of movie theater chains. Should be public in a week or two. Be interesting to see how much of the plot they give away or if the Sinister Six/Multiverse theories are bunk or on the mark. https://www.cbr.com/spider-man-no-way-home-trailer-movie-theaters/ Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Jun 5, 2021 |
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Jun 4, 2021 23:44
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YOLOsubmarine posted:I don’t think Last Samurai really falls into the white savior category since, as mentioned, he accomplishes nothing and his main role is as a viewpoint character for the western audience. It still has big problems, notable the implication that this story is only interesting if a white guy is jammed in the middle of it, but it’s mostly a movie about the death of a traditional culture as the gears of the industrial modernization grind it to dust. I like The Last Samurai more than most, I'd wager, and I think you're right. A big issue I had was near the end they give him the armor of the woman's dead husband instead of sending him out in whatever scrap iron they had lying around. He didn't earn the level of respect he got by the end. Sure, he was with them for about a year (I think) and tried his best to fit in and learn but to give him something like that is bananas. It's really appreciated that he didn't wake up in that village and try to tell them how to be more "civilized" or whatever. The character does the work to be respectful for the most part. Give that script a minor tweak and he could have been a reeeeeeal shithead. That being said, the character didn't need to exist. Give Ken Watanabe the screen time and focus on the heartbreak of him knowing his culture is going to be destroyed.
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Jun 4, 2021 23:50
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I like The Last Samurai despite its pretty obvious flaws because it’s a lush film, the cast is excellent and it’s set in a time period and place that are not commonly explored in movies. But it’s also very frustrating because you can see a great movie on there if, as mentioned, you excise Cruise or move him way to the background and give Waranabe more screen time. He’s such a compelling actor and he’s playing a character inspired by Saigo Takamori, who was a fascinating person. To summarize I propose replacing Sam Worthington with Ken Watanabe in all future (and past) Avatar movies.
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Jun 5, 2021 00:13
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Last Samurai is one of Hans Zimmers best scores too.
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Jun 5, 2021 00:19
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Far From Home trailer has been received by a bunch of movie theater chains. Not that I didn’t know what you meant, but No Way Home is the name of the upcoming movie.
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Jun 5, 2021 00:34
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUUM7ZvxMuY
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Jun 5, 2021 00:42
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Klungar posted:Not that I didn’t know what you meant, but No Way Home is the name of the upcoming movie. Doh. Thanks, I corrected it.
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Jun 5, 2021 00:42
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The Last Samurai looks great, but the samurai are the bad guys in that movie.
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Jun 5, 2021 01:31
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porfiria posted:The Last Samurai looks great, but the samurai are the bad guys in that movie. What?
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Jun 5, 2021 01:33
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porfiria posted:The Last Samurai looks great, but the samurai are the bad guys in that movie. Try again with your brain on.
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Jun 5, 2021 03:55
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Inzombiac posted:Try again with your brain on. The brutal feudal overlords fighting the mobilized peasant army are the bad guys.
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Jun 5, 2021 03:59
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porfiria posted:The brutal feudal overlords fighting the mobilized peasant army are the bad guys. Who mobilized the peasant army? In historical terms neither the Meiji nor the Samurai were “good guys,” but in the movie as it is presented the samurai are sympathetic.
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Jun 5, 2021 04:14
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I know the complaints coming from the "anti-SJW"/redpill/alt-right crowd are never legitimate, but this is maybe the most obvious case I've ever seen where people are just straight up pretending to be fans of a thing for the sole purpose of complaining about Black people being included in it. It's just absurd on its face.
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Jun 5, 2021 08:13
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Inzombiac posted:I like The Last Samurai more than most, I'd wager, and I think you're right. I also really like that movie, and agree that a version that more directly focused on Watanabe is probably stronger. But I do think Cruise is relevant in it, because of his specific experience of PTSD and genocidal atrocity. The movie is anachronistic, because Algren is essentially a Vietnam cliche recontextualized to the American West. He's best seen as a sort of time traveler, a cautionary tale for Japan's own future: the "modernization" efforts enacted under Meiji lead to the rise of the kind of military nationalism behind Japan's conquest of China and Korea, behind Imperial Japan's atrocities through WWII. Losing Algren's subjective POV makes that aspect less clear, but it'd also scrub a lot of the "noble savage" tropes it falls into, which is I think the more relevant sin the movie commits. I don't see Algren as a "white savior," since he doesn't actually save them or particularly change their way of thinking. But the movie 100% falls into a cliched and colonial fantasy of samurai as morally pure to an inhuman degree, the beauty of their simple bucolic lives ruined by bad modern societies with their corrupt complexity. Jake Sully is absolutely a white savior, though. I liken it to Dune: Jake is an outsider who slides his way into the indigenous population to fight against resource-hungry sadists from his own world, and co-opts the native mythology to fashion himself into a messiah and leader.
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Jun 5, 2021 08:36
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Xealot posted:Jake Sully is absolutely a white savior, though. I liken it to Dune: Jake is an outsider who slides his way into the indigenous population to fight against resource-hungry sadists from his own world, and co-opts the native mythology to fashion himself into a messiah and leader. Dune plays a lot more with that, mind. (Paul's journey and achievements in particular are a mix of the Prophet Muhammed and Lawrence of Arabia, and then there's the whole thing with the Bene Gesserit deliberately seeding mythology they can easily co-opt for their own ends) Avatar is however one of the straighter cases, especially since supposedly his outside perspective lets him make rather basic observations the natives apparently never did. There's kind of an inverse to the formula of the outsider who, despite humorous misunderstandings, eventually adapts to human culture and basically goes native, even defending it against his own kind. (see Superman, Son Goku)
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Jun 5, 2021 08:51
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Darko posted:Avatar is a bit different for the reasons I stated earlier than the standard. Nothing Jake tells them about human culture really helps them at all, if anything, its his handicap that drives him to.fully embrace being native and thats what the God in the machine is impressed by. I don't think Blood Diamond really fits in that category either. It's definitely got its problems as a movie, but the victory of the end is getting the black guy to tell his own story. Danny being super good at killing people is depicted as a symptom of him being a pretty lovely person who's done a lot of awful things. Solomon is shown as a good and sympathetic person who doesn't know much about war and who, honestly, shouldn't know anything about it.
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Jun 5, 2021 08:52
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YOLOsubmarine posted:Who mobilized the peasant army? At least the samurai would occasionally tell the merchant class to get hosed and cancel all debts owed to them by peasant and samurai alike. The samurai that rebelled were the middle class ones that were already going to lose the most either way the war went. The poorest samurai all through in with the Restorationists and the richest ones came through with barely a scratch. The descendants of the Tokugawa families are still some the richest most influential people in Japan today. Macdeo Lurjtux fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Jun 5, 2021 |
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Jun 5, 2021 14:36
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Xealot posted:I also really like that movie, and agree that a version that more directly focused on Watanabe is probably stronger. But I do think Cruise is relevant in it, because of his specific experience of PTSD and genocidal atrocity. The movie is anachronistic, because Algren is essentially a Vietnam cliche recontextualized to the American West. He's best seen as a sort of time traveler, a cautionary tale for Japan's own future: the "modernization" efforts enacted under Meiji lead to the rise of the kind of military nationalism behind Japan's conquest of China and Korea, behind Imperial Japan's atrocities through WWII. The time traveler character pops up in a lot of biopics and historical movies, but only the good ones use it in a self aware critical sense. For a bad example, in The Imitation Game, a time traveler shows up in Turing's childhood to give him a book of puzzles after he's bullied, telling him "I have a feeling you'll be really good at these." This single act of kindness is meant to inspire all of Turing's genius work, but it's such an artificial contrivance that the only thing to take away from it is a general sense of wish fulfillment. What was once Turing's greatness now belongs to the audience, thanks to our representative granting us access into Turing's biography.
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Jun 5, 2021 17:30
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Inzombiac posted:I like The Last Samurai more than most, I'd wager, and I think you're right. A big issue I had was near the end they give him the armor of the woman's dead husband instead of sending him out in whatever scrap iron they had lying around. He didn't earn the level of respect he got by the end. Sure, he was with them for about a year (I think) and tried his best to fit in and learn but to give him something like that is bananas. Algren did warn Katsumoto of the assassins, fought beside him, and saved the life of his nephew during the fight. Then also rescued Katsumoto from execution when he got placed under house arrest. I figure that probably went a long way. I mean, they made him a sword, might as well give him the armor as well. No, I don't re-watch it a couple times a year, what do you mean?
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Jun 5, 2021 20:42
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I’m glad I’m not alone in being a The Last Samurai liker. It’s also good because Cruise repeatedly gets the poo poo kicked out of him in the film.
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Jun 5, 2021 22:59
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10 Beers posted:Algren did warn Katsumoto of the assassins, fought beside him, and saved the life of his nephew during the fight. Then also rescued Katsumoto from execution when he got placed under house arrest. I figure that probably went a long way. I mean, they made him a sword, might as well give him the armor as well. Ah, you're right. I haven't seen it in five years so my memory was kinda bad.
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Jun 5, 2021 23:07
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Final Trailer for Black Widow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAowcCbWhqg Some minor spoilers: - Looks like Taskmaster is the actual mastermind and not a henchmen. - Taskmaster apparently has some kind of hive-mind situation where he directly controls everyone from the Red Room experiments. - Taskmaster or his suit has some kind of super-strength and he isn't just a regular dude. - Thunderbolt Ross is there for some reason? - David Harbour will almost certainly be the standout performance. Everyone else seems... fine, but not mindblowing. O-T Fagbenle is supposed to have a major role (20+ minutes of screen time) as SHIELD commander/Black Widow lover "Rick Mason" and he has not appeared in a single trailer, so there is a 99% chance that the plot twist is that "Rick Mason" is actually Taskmaster and he somehow defected to Russia (if that is even possible in the 2010's) or was a double agent.
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Jun 6, 2021 00:16
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Last Samurai rocks. That tired meme about them “making a white guy the last samurai” annoys the poo poo out of me
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Jun 6, 2021 00:29
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Mandrel posted:Last Samurai rocks. That tired meme about them “making a white guy the last samurai” annoys the poo poo out of me If nothing else, that last battle scene is one of the best commited to film. It's so loving good.
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Jun 6, 2021 04:45
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Mandrel posted:Last Samurai rocks. That tired meme about them “making a white guy the last samurai” annoys the poo poo out of me The "last samurai" is absolutely Katsumoto, or his army as a collective group. The actual figure Katsumoto is based on, Saigō Takamori, is often referred to as such, and the Satsuma Rebellion is understood as the end of the samurai as a class. This movie is just a pseudo-historical retelling of that story. Algren never struck me as "part" of their community, more as a privileged witness whose purpose is to speak of their greatness. But a lot of people who maybe never watched the movie ran with the most unkind interpretation of the title, and here we are. I have a similar gripe with people's criticism of Last of the Mohicans, which has one of the best final sequences of anything. The last 10 minutes completely refocus the conflict of the movie, ripping the white characters from the center and making the climactic battle between Magua and Chingachgook. The titular Last Mohican is ultimately Chingachgook, who kills Magua to avenge Uncas; the white characters and their concerns become completely secondary.
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Jun 6, 2021 09:14
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Xealot posted:The "last samurai" is absolutely Katsumoto, or his army as a collective group. The actual figure Katsumoto is based on, Saigō Takamori, is often referred to as such, and the Satsuma Rebellion is understood as the end of the samurai as a class. This movie is just a pseudo-historical retelling of that story. To be fair, in both cases the white characters are front and center in the marketing and are the only guys on the posters. It's as if you look at a poster of Terminator, but actually Michael Biehn is the Terminator.
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Jun 6, 2021 09:49
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Grendels Dad posted:It's as if you look at a poster of Terminator, but actually Michael Biehn is the Terminator. Sarah Connor was the actual Terminator  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4aqfrwxInw
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Jun 6, 2021 09:59
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I'm reminded hearing that there apparently was an actual Japanese Samurai who fought in the American Civil War.
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Jun 6, 2021 10:52
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Avatar is a technically near-perfect realization of just the dumbest, bland concept. Consequently, the people who admire it either admire it begrudgingly, or are dumbasses. It’s like if they made a trillion-dollar animated film series, with expert direction and big-name stars, about the importance of not eating glue. Most people would be like “I guess that was pretty good, but I already don’t eat glue,” while a small handful would be like “THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING.”
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Jun 6, 2021 11:14
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I'm reminded hearing that there apparently was an actual Japanese Samurai who fought in the American Civil War. I'd like a movie about that guy's story. The Second-to-Last samurai?
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Jun 6, 2021 11:17
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Avatar is a technically near-perfect realization of just the dumbest, bland concept. Consequently, the people who admire it either admire it begrudgingly, or are dumbasses. That just reminds me of that Powerpuff Girls episode.
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Jun 6, 2021 12:16
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