I have some really good friends
who are twins. Katlynn and Stacy were
born June 5, 1991, just minutes apart. Although
when I first met them I thought I would never be able to tell the difference
between them, as most people know who have had any experience with twins,
before long it becomes hard to think about a time when you wouldn’t have known
which one you were talking to. They become
completely different people. Yet almost everyone who meets them (and yes, I mean
almost everyone) immediately asks them, “Do you guys ever switch places? Pretend to be someone else.” In other words, assuming they want to be like
each other, or be each other.
In the opening scenes of Avatar,
we are introduced to Jake Sully, a guy who tells us he’s a “dumb drunk goin’
some place he’s gonna regret.” And we
quickly learn that his brother has recently died, gun shot. He tells us that his brother was the
scientist – the one that wanted to go to space and everything. Immediately the audience recognizes that he
is trying to create a difference between them.
To let us know that they aren’t the same person, that they are actually
very different.
“Your brother represented a
significant investment. We’d like to talk
to you about taking over his contract. And
since your genome is identical to his, you could step into his shoes, so to
speak. It’d be a fresh start, on a new
world. And the pay is good…very good.” All this is said as we watch the officials burn
his brother body in a box, right in front of him.
It all feels very heartless, like
they don’t recognize that Jake might want to mourn the death of his brother. Not to mention, the only thing the scientists
care about is the fact that they could just replace each other, logistically,
based on their genomes…well what about their personalities and interests? Can you take that into account? As seen later in the movie, Jake is a rule
breaker, he likes to do things out of the norm, and part of the time this is
because he hasn’t had the proper training his brother had in how to work with
the Na’vi, or how to use his avatar body.
In a fantast word, this is how it
would work. Someone dies and you can
have someone replace them with very little work on your part. Imagine if your boyfriend or girlfriend died,
and you wouldn’t even have to be sad because there is someone, just like them,
standing there to take his/her place. In
a perfect world, this would work. But they
didn’t take into account personality and individuality. These are important aspects when thinking
about replacing a person.
Because a movie is retrained by a
time period, they had to get through the background as quickly as possible
(even though Avatar drags on for 2 hours and 42 minutes), so they just smooshed
it all together. The way the camera
changes scenes, and the way Jake is talking about his brother, it doesn’t seem
as sad, but when you stop to think about it, Jake had to go through the sudden
death of his brother, and then be asked to take his place, like he never even
existed. How terrible. How depressing.
Just like I couldn't imagine my friends who are twins living without each other in their lives, I couldn't imagine if one of them died and someone asked the other to take their place. Unbelievable.
Just like I couldn't imagine my friends who are twins living without each other in their lives, I couldn't imagine if one of them died and someone asked the other to take their place. Unbelievable.
I don't think I ever really got all of that out of watching it the one and only time I did and ever will. I think you make a really good point here. That would be such an unbelievable event if someone asked me to replace my sister. Many people cannot tell us apart and mix us up all the time. If I was to just replace her, there would be no way I could replace her because we are such different people. Also I don't know how they couldn't express these feelings more in a 2 hour 42 minute movie. I think they should have elaborated more so we could understand it better. I don't like when movies mush a bunch of important meaningful information together at the beginning.
ReplyDeleteThis really is one point in the movie that is just completely skipped over. There is only like two or three lines that talk about how Jake's brother, twin brother for that matter, was the one who was supposed to be in the avatar. Jake is just the replacement. Some last minute ditched effort, only really even there because the avatar was such a huge, costly investment and it was created in a way that it only worked with his brother's genes (scientifically this still hardly even matches up as even the genes in twins differ). It is really interesting how, despite this being such a long movie, some parts were still skimmed over when so much more detail could have been brought in.
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ReplyDeleteI found this comment very interesting. It is intriguing to see that no one really cares about Jake's brother in the movie. However, i understand that some events in movies must be cut to make a film more appealing for an audience.
ReplyDeleteI think that this is a very interesting subject to talk about concerning the movie. I think that this movie is very focused on action, the relationships with the Na'vi, and the avatar bodies like you said. I think that this movie lacks relationship with emotions in reality, but enhances emotions in Pandora. I was thinking the same thing when the movie started - that they did not even acknowledge the hard time that Jake must be going through.
ReplyDeleteI like the emotion behind this post. This subject is in regard to the human beneath the blue body of the avatar; it is very easy to forget that there are living, breathing, mortal human beings in control of the exotic blue avatars. In science, emotions are often disregarded as they do not matter to experiments or formulas. In a situation like this, even though Jake is filling his brother's place as genomes, he also was probably mourning the loss of his brother. Great post, I like the alternative in perspective!
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