welsh
Junkmaster
To be honest, these days I am working for a company that might be seen as mercenaries. We're blue rather than green helmets, but we do a lot of post-conflict stuff. If you train riot police for a dictatorship- are you a good person?
But yes, I give you your point. There are a lot of sub-contractors who are mercenaries doing all sorts of "good work" for countries and people all over the world. Sometimes that's training militaries, other times that's protecting VIPs. But sometimes its not- after all dictators also hire mercenaries too (see Mobuto of Zaire in the last days). In other times, the ruler may hire mercenaries because he doesn't trust his own soldiers (which is why the Sultan of Brunei hires Gurkhas to protect his oil fields). Sometimes the mercenaries seem to be doing a good thing (getting rid of warlords from diamond mines) but actually are not (and getting paid for it handsomely and for the benefit of a mining company that really just wants to make a big profit). For example, while a company may hire mercenaries to "protect" an oil pipeline, generally speaking the people have a hard time hiring mercenaries to stop the pipeline from being built through their communities or stopping the oil company from gobbling up their land.
Do the mercenaries care? One can pay, the other can't.
Lets be fair- yes sometimes mercenaries get hired to do jobs that governments don't want to do. There is a reason why the US hires mercenaries to fight in Colombia or hired MPRI to train soldiers in Croatia. Sometimes those mercenaries manage to botch a job that gets regular soldiers in trouble - see Blackwater in Iraq. Sometimes they do "good deeds" sometimes bad. But mercenaries do it because they get paid too, and paid well.
And that's one of the problems. Mercenaries can easily turn their guns on the countries that pay them (and is why they were so problematic in Machiavelli's Italy). By serving as an alternative, they create an incentive for expensive soldiers (trained with your tax dollars) to go to the private sector where they become even more expensive. In the process, they even allow democratic governments to fight wars with less accountability (because paid soldiers and especially mercenaries are more politically viable than conscripted soldiers).
But enough about mercenaries.
Look, I think you are expecting something from Avatar that it wasn't made to deliver.
In this interview, Cameron is pretty clear about the kind of movie he is making-
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/26/091026fa_fact_goodyear
Its John Carter from Mars-
That's this guy-
http://chud.com/articles/content_images/5/johncarter.jpg
http://www.comicbookmovie.com/images/users/uploads/7601/john carter of mars.jpg
This is visual eye candy not adult, intellectual sci-fi. If you want more intellectual and sophisticated Sci-Fi, this isn't it.
So I think you may be reading into this too much.
To be fair, I thought the same thing you did about Night of the Living Dead- the original. Afterall, black young actor, white middle class family man, fighting over control in a house as zombies attack. Of course its Cold War, race relations- right? Nope, apparently the black guy got the part because he simply auditioned for it and they liked him. Not because he was black. Had he not been black would our appreciation of the film be different? Probably. Afterall, I think a lot of people liked the film because of it seemed to make a statement on race relations (just as Romero's recent zombie flick seems to speak of class relations). But the truth is, that reading was an unintended consequence created by an audience, not by the director.
But lets go back to who you say are cut outs- Hudson and Burke for Aliens. I actually think Hudson did more for Bill Paxton's career than One False Move (an excellent noir flick). But I would not call Hudson a cut out- sure he's the comic foil, but he shows both courage and fear and has some of the most memorable lines. Burke, the corporate slimeball, comes off as sympathetic, supportive and later as a scheming manipulator willing to sacrifice people for his own ends. Afterall, its Ripley who really reveals Burke's true nature. Up to that nature, we are kind of surprised. When he turns off the monitor as Ripley and Newt get attacked by allien crawlers, everyone in the audience thinks- "You scumbag!"
What bothers you is, it seems, that humanity fighting for its survival is seem as merciless and cruel and without redeeming values. But given mankinds desperation at that moment, might it not be prone to cruelty and evil. Isn't it true that in times of war, we tend to make moral choices that would be unacceptable in times of peace?
@Crni- Aliens came out a long time after Vietnam War, so I think the generalization is a bit stretched.
But yes, I give you your point. There are a lot of sub-contractors who are mercenaries doing all sorts of "good work" for countries and people all over the world. Sometimes that's training militaries, other times that's protecting VIPs. But sometimes its not- after all dictators also hire mercenaries too (see Mobuto of Zaire in the last days). In other times, the ruler may hire mercenaries because he doesn't trust his own soldiers (which is why the Sultan of Brunei hires Gurkhas to protect his oil fields). Sometimes the mercenaries seem to be doing a good thing (getting rid of warlords from diamond mines) but actually are not (and getting paid for it handsomely and for the benefit of a mining company that really just wants to make a big profit). For example, while a company may hire mercenaries to "protect" an oil pipeline, generally speaking the people have a hard time hiring mercenaries to stop the pipeline from being built through their communities or stopping the oil company from gobbling up their land.
Do the mercenaries care? One can pay, the other can't.
Lets be fair- yes sometimes mercenaries get hired to do jobs that governments don't want to do. There is a reason why the US hires mercenaries to fight in Colombia or hired MPRI to train soldiers in Croatia. Sometimes those mercenaries manage to botch a job that gets regular soldiers in trouble - see Blackwater in Iraq. Sometimes they do "good deeds" sometimes bad. But mercenaries do it because they get paid too, and paid well.
And that's one of the problems. Mercenaries can easily turn their guns on the countries that pay them (and is why they were so problematic in Machiavelli's Italy). By serving as an alternative, they create an incentive for expensive soldiers (trained with your tax dollars) to go to the private sector where they become even more expensive. In the process, they even allow democratic governments to fight wars with less accountability (because paid soldiers and especially mercenaries are more politically viable than conscripted soldiers).
But enough about mercenaries.
Look, I think you are expecting something from Avatar that it wasn't made to deliver.
In this interview, Cameron is pretty clear about the kind of movie he is making-
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/26/091026fa_fact_goodyear
Its John Carter from Mars-
That's this guy-
http://chud.com/articles/content_images/5/johncarter.jpg
http://www.comicbookmovie.com/images/users/uploads/7601/john carter of mars.jpg
This is visual eye candy not adult, intellectual sci-fi. If you want more intellectual and sophisticated Sci-Fi, this isn't it.
So I think you may be reading into this too much.
To be fair, I thought the same thing you did about Night of the Living Dead- the original. Afterall, black young actor, white middle class family man, fighting over control in a house as zombies attack. Of course its Cold War, race relations- right? Nope, apparently the black guy got the part because he simply auditioned for it and they liked him. Not because he was black. Had he not been black would our appreciation of the film be different? Probably. Afterall, I think a lot of people liked the film because of it seemed to make a statement on race relations (just as Romero's recent zombie flick seems to speak of class relations). But the truth is, that reading was an unintended consequence created by an audience, not by the director.
But lets go back to who you say are cut outs- Hudson and Burke for Aliens. I actually think Hudson did more for Bill Paxton's career than One False Move (an excellent noir flick). But I would not call Hudson a cut out- sure he's the comic foil, but he shows both courage and fear and has some of the most memorable lines. Burke, the corporate slimeball, comes off as sympathetic, supportive and later as a scheming manipulator willing to sacrifice people for his own ends. Afterall, its Ripley who really reveals Burke's true nature. Up to that nature, we are kind of surprised. When he turns off the monitor as Ripley and Newt get attacked by allien crawlers, everyone in the audience thinks- "You scumbag!"
What bothers you is, it seems, that humanity fighting for its survival is seem as merciless and cruel and without redeeming values. But given mankinds desperation at that moment, might it not be prone to cruelty and evil. Isn't it true that in times of war, we tend to make moral choices that would be unacceptable in times of peace?
@Crni- Aliens came out a long time after Vietnam War, so I think the generalization is a bit stretched.
