Marine Official Slams ‘Avatar’: ‘Disservice to our Corps’
by Big HollywoodLet this end the inane hair-splitting over how it’s okay to smear the United States Marines by making them “former” Marines in the form of mercenaries.
Lost amid the staggering commercial success of “Avatar” and obscured by the punditry of the left and right as they debate James Cameron’s social and historical commentary are the real warriors whose heroism, valor and selfless service has allowed the U.S. to leave a war in Iraq that many in 2006 thought was unwinnable and indeed salvage success from the jaws of calamity.
“Avatar” takes sophomoric shots at our military culture and uses the lore of the Marine Corps and over-the-top stereotyping of Marine warriors to set the context for the screenplay. This does a disservice to our Corps of Marines and the publics’ understanding of their Corps.
The Marine Corps embraces a warrior-scholar mentality and prides itself on understanding host country narratives and sensitivities in complex climes and places. Gen. James Mattis, whose catch-phrase is “no better friend, no worse enemy,” better captures the essence of Marines who helped usher in the Sunni Awakening in Anbar province than the cinemagraphically convenient colonel-turned-mercenary antagonist in “Avatar.”
Let’s view “Avatar” for what it is, a leap in the wizardry of cinema, a digital fantasy and a vehicle for a film-maker to make a statement, but not emblematic of the Marines who honorably fight and fall to win our nation’s real battles today.
Col. Bryan Salas director of public affairs
Headquarters Marine Corps
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404 Comments
Hooah! Thank You Thank You Thank You – for your service to our Country. Even if it means saving liberal tail too.
Mess With The Best You Die Like The Rest…..U.S.M.C….That's All.
Well said Col. Salas, but you are too kind to Cameron. God bless you sir, and thank you for your service.
Right on!
Saying what needed to be said…now for someone to challenge that fool Oliver Stone.
Killing people is fun!
What!? Nobody is jumping to Cameron's defense to tell us that the bad guys were ex Marines (as though there were such a thing) and therefore it's not anti military?
Honestly, the way the "military" men are portrayed in Avatar is a travesty. Please, like any military man is like the lead Military in Avatar.
"Hostiles!" Riiiiight…whatever.
Oh and Mr Cameron, your dialogue stinks. The dialogue in Avatar is the most cliche-ridden, on the nose dialogue in cinematic history. My goodness, man, did a 5 year old write it?
My personal outrage aside, I think continuing to point out the problems with this may be a non-starter folks. This turkey is making money hand over fist. In today's world, that's tantamount to vindication. There'll be a sequel. Cameron is talking triology.
Why do they wait to so damn long to register a response the the continued disrespect that Hollywood routinely delivers to them? Would it have hurt to publish this the week of release? Or during previews?
Marines never run from a fight. Even a political one.
Semper Fi.
With ever escalating enhancements to the 3D IMAX technology, of course. Swing something shiny in front of the movie going public to lure them in,then hit 'em with the propaganda.
Colonel Miles Quaritch (A Tribute).
Just like ALIENS. A good film, but shows the Marines to be whinny, incompetant losers. Mmmm….I forget who directed that film.
I think I tried to explain this several Avatar threads ago to someone who said they weren't our noble and honorable Marines.
It's all the same people. Honorable and decent people do not turn into dishonorable killers *just* because they work for a private firm. Same people and same culture.
And now that I've actually seen the movie I can say that the movie *explicitly* says that the "marines" are made up of people who had been in the military on earth. Same people.
Now, this may be sort of painful but… maybe we'll be getting some mercenary love in the future. There's an A-Team movie coming up, right?
Cameron is coming from the Vietnam war protest days, when the head shops often featured a poster showing a baby spitted on an American bayonet under the slogan, "Join the Marines, kill a baby".
A large percentage of today's MSM culture is derived from the culture of the Vietnam protester, yet those people and their infantile brand of leftism remains unexamined by today's media.
… yet people keep flocking to Avatar… and so will to the "uncompromising" Hiroshima… and will sob watching Stalin's and Hitler's sad lives…
I wonder why? Is it a sort of national imbecilization going on? Looks like —
No better friend. No worse enemy. Sure hope you heard that, Mr. Cameron.
The performance of the Marine Corps in Al Anbar Province is a wonderful example of the warrior ethos practiced by the Marines. The Marine Corps gained the trust of the local citizenry and soundly defeated Al-Qaeda with the assistance of former combatants who had attacked Marines on a daily basis. That is the sign of a true warrior culture. Our Marines do not move into an area and kill everything that moves; instead they develop relationships with the locals who are very afraid to challenge their oppressors (Taliban and Al-Qaeda).
Our military institutions are filled with great warriors willing to pay the ultimate price for the freedoms we enjoy every day. I salute Col. Bryan Salas director of public affairs for his exemplary response.
Avatar is a soft headed piece of propaganda designed to create doubt in the minds of the masses.
Support our troops…or they'll support themselves!
"Honorable and decent people do not turn into dishonorable killers *just* because they work for a private firm"
No, but it goes a long way toward explaining why these (mostly) young, able-bodied men are no longer IN the real armed forces and instead are already working as PMCs (Quaritch especially REEKS of "getting older, passed over for promotion, heading for the private sector.)
One imagines he's heard it once or twice, being the brother of a U.S. Marine and all…
This fellow probably has an elephant-sized pair, knows more ways to kill a man than most people know to prepare eggs, and is unquestionably braver than I'll ever be.
That said, I don't know that he makes an especially insightful film critic…
You know I saw the movie Avatar but I am afraid I started laughing to hard when hero character in his avatar body linked his midlink tail to the cilia of the great tree of life and then started exasperatingly crying that they (he means the people of earth killed their mother an now nothing green can grow their and then started telling the tree that they were going to do the same thing on this planet. I found this so funny that I was literally crying form the prolonged laughter and swo missed like the last half of that speech.
Does anyone remember if it was the people of the earth or the marines who were responsible? One just can't determine wat Cameron is thinking because there is so little commen sense. One thing going for the our men in the armed services is that this movie is so ridiculous no one but the completely insane or ignorant could take its points seriously.
From the tone of his movies, one may also imagine it never sank in.
I hope you got some shocked looks from the other people in the theater. Not because you deserve it; I'd just like to think they got ripped out of their complacency for a few moments by the spectacle.
God bless you, sir.
You mean unborn babies, right? As you are a leftist troll and this comment isn't supposed to be sarcastic, surely you're just praising one of the holy sacraments of your Statist religion?
He didn't critique the film, he critiqued the lazy, cowardly attacks.
The USMC is real, all Cameron has is a twisted fantasy.
I for one am not impressed with anything CG these days. I don't care how good the image looks. How about a good story without knocking a US tradition for a change.
Really. One could say the same thing about someone who uses a sarcastic wink ";)" in place of thoughtful analysis.
This movie pokes shots at a bunch of different things that make the liberal agenda jump off the screen at you. Even children are seeing it for what it is a statement by a left leaning maroon.
That's because their leaders in the front offices and management are from that era and those on whom they report are the same – babyboomers from the 70's finally having their say and way at the expense of the American people.
That wouldn't fit in with the current Hollywood mindset.
Each and every Marine is guilty by association of some of the worst and most disgusting travesties of all time.
How many babies did you kill Col Salas?
Calton Bolick
Wikipedia Admin
You've been brainwashed thoroughly. Congrats. You could have used your God-given brain to think for yourself – but No! – that would be too much work. Instead you have permitted the Hollywood Goebbels to condition you completely. What a waste.
I was thinking about seeing this film until I saw preview and who, or I should say what did I see, Segourney Weaver.
I then noted that her name was not on any advertisement as being in this movie.
Not a dime to that Trator or her pals
Flippy the Bear and all those other Leftists haven't had a THING to do since we got rid of Uday and Qusay Hussein – they've worn out all the wank they had when hearing about the rape rooms they had.
Hey Calton – mad because your Uday/Qusay Rape Room Tape doensnt work any more? Angry and frustrated because those Marines effectively protect the women of that area from getting enslaved that again, thereby providing you with fresh wank?
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If the Marines were the out of control killers like the traitor Cameron portray. Don't you think he would already have been wacked for the disrespect? Hell that idiot Stone would have been found bloated and dead years ago it it was true. They should watch there step though as people can only be pushed so far. And at this time in our country people are getting tired of there old Schtick.
Perhaps lots of Marines didn't see the film. After all, they are still busy potecting us civilians from being tortured and beheaded by Muslim terrorists
Well, public schools keep saying that there is such thing as good and evil. So, sadly, this explains why Avatar can rake in so much money.
Next time there's a war to fight, how about going yourself?
Are you're a Wiki admin…what a surprise.
Exactly. Liberal portraying Marines as baby killers is as lame and predictable as them saying all White racists are Republican. (Harry Reid recently proved that belief is a boldface lie.)
Ridley Scott
Later Ridley Scott went on to direct Black Hawk Down, a pro-military film.
Which is weird because he's a flaming liberal. Maybe because he didn't want the veterans who fought in Somalia breathing down his neck.
I saw Avatar, and I very much agree with all that's been said about the movie's scurrilous depiction of the Marines. I also agree with analysts who consider that Americans who flocked to this movie didn't see it that way at all. If they had, they would have stayed home, as they did for a whole raft of overtly anti-military, anti-war movies that have been churned out to terrible box office over the years since 9/11 and Iraq. Some movie have lousy messages that simply go way over, or under, the radar of the movie going public. Think of Peter Pan, which was rightly excoriated by reviewers for a pernicious "message" that's a good thing not to grow up. But the actual audiences went and loved the story and didn't get tagged by the "message" at all. Doesn't mean that the message wasn't there; and Cameron deserves to be excoriated for his leftist preaching, not to mention lousy story, but for most, the good things about Avatar – the imaginative "world", the romance, the humanism (of the non-humans) were rightly captivating. No excuse for trashing the good folks protecting us from the bad. Semper Fi!
I didn't like Alien myself. (Way too gross for me.) However, I thought the marines sounded like a bunch of whiners as well.
The usual attempt is to pretend labeling them "mercenaries" magically makes everything okay. Including Cameron's own statements about the movie.
"Hurt Locker" was pretty damn good, and in no way defames the military. Rather, it highlights the incredible stress our guys perform under.
Don't be fooled by the snark. Scott directed the original Alien — it was, surprise surprise, James Cameron who did the sequel.
And Paul's description of the characters in that film is fairly accurate — one of the marines throws an absolute sh__-fit of despair ("Game over, man, game over!"), and it's Ripley, a civilian, who delivers the most level-headed suggestion to the problem of a colony of bloodthirsty, near-invincible alien life forms: to take off and "nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Proof that Wikipedia is not to be trusted on any subject that carries the slightest political connotation.
Semper Fi, Because this move spits on The Marines I have not seen it nor will I. I would rather spend the 10 bucks on some Shotgun Shells and go shoot some Snow Geese, Which I did. in the Summer of 1978 I had the chance to Work at the USMC Airstation Cherry Point. As of all things a Flight Instructor at the Aero Club. Do to some physical problems, I could never be a Marine. The United States Marine Corp, pre dates the declaration of independence. and for 235 + years they have been the sharp tip of the spear that defends the Nation. When Cameron gets to heaven, he is going to be really surprised to find out who guards heavens streets.
What's this "whacked" s__t? They're the Marines, for God's sake, not the f__king Mafia.
You meant "NO such thing", right?
It is now time for you to leave your home and go underground.
I am sure BIG BROTHER is monitoring your email.
And maybe the 'propaganda' doesn't work, in any case? Massive numbers of Americans have seen Avatar–do we seriously think their opinion of the Marines has been denigrated based on a cardboard portrayal of soldiers–who-are-not-Marines? Maybe movie goers are just looking for a few hours relaxation, and not a message of any kind. Giant robots, Bat-Men, Big Blue Aliens, Fey Pirates–story quality/message doesn't matter ultimately, people are usually just there for the spectacle.
Doncha mean whack off pedophile?
Then my most humble apologies.
But you must agree, a majority of the movies made in today's hollywood are not complementary.
Well, since it appears that my previous comment was eaten, so I will cut straight to the chase by stating that your "challenge" is so blatantly false and ignorant it is beneath responding to, and I only did so in the first place to point out how threadbare it was.
But I love how you toss around that little footnote like it means anything without something to justify it. It doesn't. Particularly since I know how you lot are like.
I am one of those who your friends banned for the most inoffensive of things, such as pointing out that Gaddafi's little movie was actually both propaganda (whodathunkit that a WWII movie produced by the leader of a nation and specifically scripted to make a national hero look grand without a whit of the history that would indicate otherwise- I LOVE how he spared the one blackshirt's life in the movie, when there is zero evidence of that happening, and plenty to the contrary- could actually be called a Propaganda film!), and that the "Italian" army of WWII was not actually that 'Italian", and that the Turkish "revolutionaries" actually included several confessed war criminals. And I was banned without recourse or even the faintest whiff of a free hearing by your little friends.
Let me tell you something very important, knave: you and your friends are but pathetic self-appointed gods who think you can alter reality to your whim by pressing the edit button. You are not. And you never will be. And if you persist in your delusions, your site will either die off or (hopefully) will come into the ownership of people who ACTUALLY KNOW how to run a proper and scholarly ecyclopedia.
You are less than the dirt under my boots. And if you are less than that, how do you think you compare to the USMC?
Well, since it appears that my previous comment was eaten, so I will cut straight to the chase by stating that your "challenge" is so blatantly false and ignorant it is beneath responding to, and I only did so in the first place to point out how threadbare it was.
But I love how you toss around that little footnote like it means anything without something to justify it. It doesn't. Particularly since I know how you lot are like.
Let me tell you something very important, knave: you and your friends are but pathetic self-appointed gods who think you can alter reality to your whim by pressing the edit button. You are not. And you never will be. And if you persist in your delusions, your site will either die off or (hopefully) will come into the ownership of people who ACTUALLY KNOW how to run a proper and scholarly encyclopedia.
You are less than the dirt under my boots. And if you are less than that, how do you think you compare to the USMC?
Depends on the individuals, troll.
rock solid comments….. semper fi…..
"Join the Marines, kill a baby".
Whoa. Coming from liberals, that is WAY ironic….
I will say it again. James Cameron can spit for all I care. You Mr. King of teh World will never get another dollar from this Devil Dogs lady. And Titanic SUCKED!
Umm…. liberals have killed way more babies than any marine, right in their own country. How many hundred thousand was it last year…?
Maybe they aren't expecting a message, but are getting one smack in the face. Bat men, Giant robots. And the bad guys are wearing marine uniforms.
Why would Heaven's streets need guards? It's HEAVEN! ;-D
One doesn't need to be insightful to state the obvious.
A few years ago I had the pleasure of working with a few Marines out at Twentynine Palms. They were officers, the guys who destined to be the defacto political leaders of Iraq cities and troops when they shipped out. I was very impressed by their command of Iraqi customs, culture, and the lay of the land. They did their homework, studied hard, and took their jobs extremely seriously.
We would do well to close down the State Department and instead allow these statesmen warriors to represent our country abroad.
At least when I was on active duty in the Corps, bases didn't get first run movies until they had been out for several weeks. In addition the reviews were normally written by Marine journalists who had to go see it on their own. Marines are not generally privy to the advanced screenings MSM journalists get.
Do you think so?
You can't see anything desirable for someone going from the military to an organization such as Blackwater or other security firm without them being, at heart, a dishonorable killer?
After all, we're not talking about hiring out to some strong-arm force in central Africa that spends more time looting than anything else… and I have heard those stories, too, from people who claimed they were only second-hand, had job offers, but refused.
That was real-life hear-say, such as it was. One of my favorite (used to be) authors wrote a huge best-selling series based on men going from active military special forces or the CIA or FBI to a private firm and somehow she made it seem believable and reasonable… a bad knee will get you retired, easy-peasy, after all, but it wouldn't keep you from working in private security in Baghdad. But then she went off the liberal crazy-train deep-end so bad she doesn't even seem to realize she had been writing about a company like Blackwater. Because they're evil. (In case you didn't realize that.)
The idea that able bodied and *moral* young men might chose high risk and a big paycheck for a job where they will *also* be working to keep people safe is simply not a big stretch.
Which was one of the areas I felt that Avatar lacked any sort of depth. It was all presented as a military force drawn from the active military to a situation that was obviously, at first glance, immoral. And there was no hint that anyone bothered to justify it in their own minds. Not a single voice suggested to Jake Sully that they were counting the days until their commitment was up and that he should watch his back around the Colonel. (Or whatever his rank was.) Not one. And while those in an organization might not talk to outsiders that way, they certainly do talk to each other that way. Watch yourself. There is even a list of service specific terminology that refers to gossip. Tradition is, after all, important.
So I'm thinking that someone probably hates someone named Calton Bolick really bad.
It's not at all unheard of for people to target their enemies this way. If Calton Bolick is a real person I would at least consider the possibility that this post is an assault and be cautious.
Someone said, and I agree, having seen the movie, that I wanted, really wanted Sully to *say* something when the Colonel fellow accused him of betrayal. I wondered if Cameron didn't have him say something because everything sounded stupid (rather than because Cameron *wanted* him betraying humans) and I think that quote from Mattis would have been perfect. "No better friend, no worse enemy."
People who've seen it know when I mean, right?
But it would have been Sully, in effect, saying "once a Marine, always a Marine" and perhaps it would have gone over the heads of most of the audience, but I'd have taken it as a declaration that the person who'd lost their principles wasn't Sully, that he was still standing for what he believed before.
They did it in Daybreakers too. I saw it last night, oblivious to the military angle and I wanted to hurl my nachos at the screen. Pretty much the soldiers who keep the city in order are portayed as blood hungry savages who yell and beat the chest as "innocent" dying vampires are dragged to their deaths in a brutal fashion. One soldier then turns to his brothers and looks at them with despair and shame because he's "changed". The best part would be the ending where the soldiers massacre eachother, feeding on their own till there are no soldiers left at all. It was disgusting and insulting. I am the little sister of a gulf war vet and I have had ENOUGH of Hollywood's negative image of our heroes.
Totally wrong, Paul. The USCMarines in Aliens were badass: Vasquez, Hudson, Hicks, Apone, Ferro et al. Only Lieutenant Gorman was a whinny, incompetent loser. But even Gorman's character reversed, and he died a hero's death trying to save Vasquez. Seems you didn't understand that film.
There have been so many films with evil military, criminal Marines, and nobody ever complained. It's probably just because Cameron's film is making so much money, because the whole world is watching it, that everyone thinks he now needs to criticize Avatar. But on what grounds? The film's hero is a Marine, people! A real one, not a corporate hired gun. Nobody talks about Sully, about his heroism, his intelligence and compassion.
Yes, at the end of the day, he's still better than you.
"You can't see anything desirable for someone going from the military to an organization such as Blackwater or other security firm without them being, at heart, a dishonorable killer?"
No, but the fact that these guys are all or mostly A.) young (i.e. not likely non-injured retirees) and B.) not exactly of typical Marine/US Army moral fibre (in as much as they're actively participating in what amounts to genocide) could be interpreted as explaining why a lot of them are there. Quaritch, especially, seems to be a pretty clear case of an aging warrior who – for whatever reason – has allowed the personal satisfaction of being in combat to overtake the CAUSE for being their in his order of priority.
"It was all presented as a military force drawn from the active military to a situation that was obviously, at first glance, immoral. And there was no hint that anyone bothered to justify it in their own minds."
(continued)
(continued)
"It was all presented as a military force drawn from the active military to a situation that was obviously, at first glance, immoral. And there was no hint that anyone bothered to justify it in their own minds."
This is a criticism I can get behind, to an extent.
A storytelling issue – not necessarily a problem, but an issue – is that because we meet the Avatars (who look like good people we've already met) BEFORE the Na'vi themselves, and then the first one we do meet is Neytiri who's both a good guy and – let's face it – designed to be not-unattractive visually (your mileage may vary); so we never get a real sense of what they (the Na'vi) "look like" from the perspective of the average soldier on the ground. One must assume that a 9 foot-tall, fang-toothed blue alien who's arrows are bigger than you must be a fairly terrifying opponent, and would undoubtedly make it difficult to regard them as an "equal."
I don't know where "no one ever complained" enters the realm of reality.
The difference, though, is the difference between "Oh, here is a bad apple" compared to "Oh, here is a single apple that isn't rotten."
My complaint (besides it being a boring movie) is that no one in it had enough depth to be real. Not the military. Not the Na'vi.
They reap that reward, making one movie after another, and another, and another, and another…
Of course they all break new ground, it's to bad I can't remember anything that came out before 2 weeks ago(if that).
And I haven't been in a theater in years. I feel real sorry for those who are trying to keep up.
These are ALIENS not people!!!! Who cares if they die they don't deserve the world they have.
This guy is a troll in the first degree, and I'll bet he is Ok with legalized abortion. But if the Marines do it, it's wrong.
It's really to bad people have to be this hypocritical and flat out wrong.
He obviously knows nobody that served in the armed forces.
Sorry kid you have to better than that ancient rehashed nonsense.
Hey, isn't the hero of the movie a Marine also? So the prime bad guy is a Marine and the prime good guy is a Marine. Sounds balanced to me!
Absolutely. I salute in your general direction, Col. Salas.
I gotta disagree with you on that. The soldiers were vampires; i.e. the enemy. Remember that their primary function was to hunt and capture humans to be farmed for blood.
So linking these particular uniform-wearers with our heroes was really, really, really pushing it.
The "hero" was an idiot that betrayed his species because he was getting trim from one of the blue cat chicks.
I´m sure Ridley Scott (who didn´t direct Aliens) is a flaming liberal but my impression is that he films the script as it is and doesn´t feel the need to play the grand auteur. Which is good. It is the reason why he has an interesting and varied body of work. Where he excels is in the visuals and the casting; he has a really good eye for that. I hope it stays that way.
What are they talking about? My mother, bless her, she´s fine. I spoke to her this morning!
My MOS in the army is 11B, and all i got to say about the movie is… the blue people would have never won if the army was there instead of the marines.
The only good marines, according to the movie, are the soft, fluffy ones. Gee, thanks a lot.
for a good look at marines of the future, watch the SPACE ABOVE AND BEYOND tv show from the 90s!!! HHOOOOAAAAHHHH!!!!
Agreed. The typical "MSM" reaction to the military was summed up by Chris Mathews / Hardball's description of Obama's speech at West Point as being a surprising journey into the "enemy" camp. The military as the enemy. In fact of course the Army, the Marines, the military aren't our enemies; they are the folks who keep us free; the folks who represent the heart and spirit of America. Hooah!
What makes 'avatar' any different from about 80% of the movies about the military that are being made?
Oh, yeah. "avatar" made money, while it was no better than "stop-loss","redacted", "in the valley of elan" or "hurt locker" among 100s other pieces of crap films that shame the military.
There's a storm coming………
That scene was cringe-worthy. Seriously. Yes, because all the ev-eel people on earth did to the earth what the ev-eel ex-Marines were doing to the N'avi forest.
Frankly, I see it everyday down my block–ex-Marines blasting away at Oaks and Maples. The poor tree swings blasted to pieces. It's so sad. Not.
If anything the Marines should have been Brazilian–if the reference was the rain forest….
Surely your names is Calton Bollocks… because that what your statement was: bollocks. lol
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