did cameron weaken in politically correct atmosphere?

[brianct]

saw this on a cameron blog:

'Then, there is a small but striking addition to the theatrical movie. In voiceover, Jake talks a lot about being a Marine (not scripted) and, more significantly, he says "Back on Earth, these guys were Army dogs, Marines: fighting for freedom...." There was no line remotely like that in the 1995 scriptment or this screenplay. And considering that it was extraneous to the story and characters, I think that it's a safe bet to say that that line was shoehorned into Avatar late in production as a submission to (modern American) political correctness.'


uinteresting point...did cameron weaken?

[Grif]

No, it made it make more sense seeing that privatized security seems to be on the rise.

[Davebwing]

saw this on a cameron blog:

'Then, there is a small but striking addition to the theatrical movie. In voiceover, Jake talks a lot about being a Marine (not scripted) and, more significantly, he says "Back on Earth, these guys were Army dogs, Marines: fighting for freedom...." There was no line remotely like that in the 1995 scriptment or this screenplay. And considering that it was extraneous to the story and characters, I think that it's a safe bet to say that that line was shoehorned into Avatar late in production as a submission to (modern American) political correctness.'


uinteresting point...did cameron weaken?

It's called in 1995 companies like Blackwater and their contemporaries and employee recruitment and practices were not well known... fast forward to 2009 and they are.

[JamesCameronBlogspot]

Yeah, I was the one who wrote that article (it was a detailed summary of the changes from the screenplay to the movie). As anybody who reads my blog will attest....I frequently digress into cranky rants about things like that.

Here's the main point: when I read the 1995 scriptment a few years ago (I also wrote a detailed summary of that a few years back), one of the absolute thoughts I had was, "There's no....possible....way they're going to be able to retain this portrayal of a military. Even a fictional military hundreds of years in the future on a fictional planet." Without carrying on in one of my embittered diatribes, the basic point is that the military is pretty much the most sacred of sacred cows right now in the U.S., the apex of political correctness in terms of lavishing praise (and, in my firm opinion, flagrant idolatry) upon it/them.

Yeah, Cameron could make 'The Abyss' in 1989 and, a year later, Americans could watch 'Dances with Wolves' without batting an eye. But those movies simply couldn't be made today because of their portrayal of the military anymore than Disney's Peter Pan (with its politically incorrect portrayal of Native Americans) or, like, the movies with guys in blackface from the 1920's could be made today with their portrayal of black people.

Personally, I was pretty surprised with how much of the "anti-military" element was retained from 1995. It was definitely tempered and softened a lot (in my opinion, anyway) but a lot of it stayed there, too. But Jake's line that I quoted in the article - which was not in the screenplay and DEFINITELY not in the 1995 scriptment - was just something that I think was pretty clearly added late in the production to try to ward off the American PC police who would invariably attack the movie. It obviously didn't work entirely, but I'm about 90% certain that that's the only reason that that line was injected into the movie.