I didn’t hate the new Avatar movie. It’s mostly a cascade of liberalism and I did detest the shift of focus from war to the weird personal nonsense story of the general or whatever. Very obviously a set-up for a sequel and maybe they can make it more interesting in the next one, but sheesh could I not give a shit about his weird racial-daddy-Hitlerite issues.

Strange maybe, but a specific theme I really appreciated was the display of how child soldiers are made in the face of genocide and how it may be horrible but to blame the victims is to equivocate the brutality of a genocidal entity and the victims of that entity. “Human Rights” warriors would be condemning the Na’vi for allowing a teenager to wield a human gun while ignoring the literal destruction of Pandora. Maybe I’m reading what I want to read out of it, but I liked it. Also ditched some of the white savior stuff by giving us breathing room from Sully and focusing more on the “actual” Na’vi.

The Tulkun are also cool as shit and the movie is indeed beautiful.