The Princess and the Frog AND Avatar (2009)

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The Princess and the Frog

You know how Disney animation fans have been complaining about everything for the past decade or so? Hannah Montana, all those remakes, the lack of a proper Disney Princess movie, etc.? This movie seems to have been specifically designed to shut them up.

Stop me if this sounds familiar: Young woman, well-realized historical setting, charismatic villain, lots of recognizable voices, magic, pretty dresses, awesome music, animal sidekicks. Yeah, this is pretty much a quintessential Princess movie, and a good one. (Strangely, Tiana's just a regular girl, not a princess.)

There's been a lot of controversy over the race issues in this movie, all of which are completely unfounded. This is not to say it takes place in some sort of magical non-race setting; when Tiana gets on the tram, she sits at the back, and when she goes to a party, she's serving food. There's a few more subtle bits, including one I would've missed entirely without TVTropes.

Keith David does a really, really good job as Doc. Facilier. It's clear he's enjoying himself immensely, and so is everyone else. And you will too.

James Cameron's Avatar

Oh dear.

Avatar is not trying to be original. James Cameron pretty much states as much. What is is is well-realized. It's a big, pretty, absurdly detailed movie you've more or less seen before. Heck, George Lucas has pretty much admitted to cribbing everything in A New Hope except the gorram lightsabers, the writing was about the same quality, and look at how well that's regarded.

And now spoilery raegfrothing.

I have long thought the "Unfortunate Implications" trope is overused. It's supposed to mean "politically incorrect implications in a work". It is most commonly used to mean "anything that makes me even vaguely uncomfortable," even when it's a view being espoused by the bad guy". For example, the fact that the Unobtanium has a lot of similarity to oil. Considering that advanced cultures have been stomping indigenous cultures into mudholes for the sake of shiny metal for centuries, I fail to see how. Columbus, IIRC, forced every adult Arawak to bring him enough gold to fill a small bell over a certain period of time, or else. Problem was, the island didn't actually have that much gold.

There's also the complaints of the Na'vi being "xenophobic". What the complainants fail to understand is that the Sky People have nothing the Na'vi want. And given that we are explicitly told that tensions have ramped up just before the start of the movie, and you start wondering if these jackanapes watched the same frakkin' film.

Also, the Na'vi being Native American "stereotypes". This is true, but they seem to use mostly South American stereotypes. One person even cited the one Na'vi with a stick through their nose, which I have never seen on a Native American caricature. South Pacific or New Guinea, maybe, but not Native American. The reason they're accused of being NA (or more rarely African) stereotypes is because that's what the complainant's are most familiar with.

There's also about six movies listed under "Recycled IN SPACE!". Some of them with only the vaguest similarity. I added the comparison to star wars, but that was meant as a compliment.

There's more, but I'll end here. This movie is an excellent example of Hype Backlash. Or, more accurately, the lack of Hype backlash; most info about the film was kept secret until the trailer was released, allowing anticipation to build up. When it turned out to be "blue catgirls vs. space marines", it wasn't pretty. An excellent lesson in keeping one's expectations realistic.