When Simon made James Cameron’s epic hypocrisy our most discussed subject in December, I admit I didn’t give it much thought.
I mean, really: Hollywood gasbag, more money than God, a movie that South Park managed to lampoon more than a month before it even hit theaters — who cares?
But then I saw the movie this week. And I bought my daughter a Happy Meal today. It had a “Hammerhead Titanothere” toy inside.
Is it just me, or is something completely messed up about James Cameron becoming ScroogeMcDuckified by licensing his blue environmentalist Jar-Jar-Binks ripoffs to Big Burger?
The whole premise of Avatar is that militaristic evil earthlings (read: Americans) are strip-mining an alien planet, and robbing the indigenous shamans of their magic trees. Or something.
In 1995, around the time James Cameron started planning the whole Avatar thing, the National Pollution Prevention Center for Higher Education reported this:
[E]ach of McDonald’s 8,600 U.S. restaurants [produces] 238 pounds of waste per day and each of its 34 U.S. regional distribution centers disposes of another 900 pounds of waste per day.
Holy French fries. That’s 2,077,400 pounds — more than a thousand tons — of daily trash pushed through the “thank you” slot. And you know that doesn’t include all the ketchup packets in my car, or the soda lids that end up in the river.
And that was in 1995.
Let’s try to update this for today. McD’s has more than 31,000 restaurants now. And even if they managed to cut their waste by, say, 10 percent on every transaction, that’s still more than 6.7 million pounds of garbage. Every day.
I bet lots of that is paper waste. The kind that we make from sacred trees.
Here’s something else to think about: McDonald’s employs more than 1.5 million people. That makes its workforce larger than every army on earth except China’s. (Ever wonder what it’s like to work at McD’s? Click here.)
So if anyone is actually likely to torch the giant tree where the Na’vi live, … Okay, it would be the Chinese. But if they don’t get the job done, I bet they call McDonald’s.
And somehow, some way, James Cameron is getting a cut of the explosives business. I think McDonald’s should have stuck with miniature Hummers as Happy Meal toys. At least it was honest.
UPDATE: It wasn’t just me.
UPDATE 2: This is funny as hell.
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Alright. I am NOT going to sit still while you disparage Scrooge McDuck. He is a great American and our only hope for emerging from the financial quagmire in which we now find ourselves.
I was thinking this very thing on the way to work last night. How does one just denounce part of the capitalist mindset? It’s wrong to drill for oil, but okay to enrich yourself on plastic merchandise derived from petroleum? I’d think, with the F— you money he made off Titanic Cameron wouldn’t need to go in for all the opportunistic movie merchandise tie-ins, unless you know, he chose to.
I saw this little propoganda piece last weekend, and immediately afterward started seeing the McDonalds, Coca-Cola and various other corporate sponsers. Then I saw the action figures in the stores (which are NOT free, btw). And that’s all I really take away from Avatar: James Cameron (as stated above) is ripping corporations and free market (read greed) in his masterpiece, but he has MEGA corporate sponsers supporting his movie, and a sweatshop in china making toys for it. Maybe Avatar was supposed to be parody in that regard? At any rate, I hope someone in the media picks up this thread and pins the white-guilt hypocrite on this.
My husband wants to go see this movie, and I steadfastly refuse. I have no desire to spend upwards of fifteen bucks to be lectured to and have my hard earned money go to a giant hypocrite like Cameron. God, Hollywood sucks just SO MUCH.
And on a related note, I worked at McDonald’s in high school. Instead of the Golden Arches they should have a sign out front that says, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Seriously.
I refuse to see the movie out of philosophical grounds. I feel it would be like eating dog food with all the best spices in the world mixed it. At the end, it’s still dog food.
I am also tired of the whole “Idiot White Guy” thing the Hollywood media loves to parade in their movies. In reality, Caucasians are teachers and defenders of human rights. I Hollywood movies they are always the brutish, din-witted morons who find illumination with the local aboriginals.
So, yeah, I love the whole McCrap thing.
I refuse to see this movie just because Cameron made it. I saw the video of him the other day refusing a fan his autograph and even calling him a ahole after he went on TV and said he would grant autographs to anyone. What a douchebag and a huge hypocrite. It seems to me that the more money one makes, the bigger hypocrite they become. I want your money but you cannot have mine.
I have said it before, James Cameron has become George Lucas and Steven Speilberg. He is more interested in selling toys and preaching his rhetoric than he is about making GOOD movies. Like the previously mentioned demi gods has too many psychophants that whisper in his ear every morning that he is a god and nothing he does is bad.
It seems all the hope for sequals to some of the work he bacame known for will never come about and if it does happen it will turn out like this turd of a movie.
For some reason, I really want to eat McDonald’s now.
I’m going to see it. IMAX 3D just see what all the fuss is about. It costs like super amounts to make and I expected the cross promotion and all that which by the way sucks. I’ll watch the movie but I’m not going to further waste my time by entering a code from a Big Mac to play an online video game.
At this point I’m immune to all the preaching. I grew up in the hey-day of enviro-toons and now I don’t really care. So, sometime this weekend, I’m going to drive to the mall, get some chain restaurant food, watch the film, then drive back home. Nobody can talk to me about destroying the environment. People by their very breathing contribute to the destruction of the Earth by exhaling carbon so unless they kill themselves and become part of the solution they’re just part of the problem.
I never saw Titanic.
I never paid to see Titanic, so Cameron can try and spend the dollars I didn’t pay.
I never could understand the desire for autographs and even moreso that a famous person’s autograph can actually be worth lots of money and doofuses actually buy this stuff. Then what do you do with it? Frame it and look at it once in awhile? I don’t get it. It has no value really. It isn’t even art. BFD.
If I knew some famous people, or had access to them, I’d collect autographs. Well, not collect, but gather. Then sell. Americans love things from famous people, even more if the famous person is dead.
Also, I lied. I was flipping channels one time and I saw Leo DiCaprio slip off a giant door and sink into the ocean. I said “wtf?” then watched Baywatch reruns.
>>I never saw Titanic.
Me neither. It always looked like a hyper-production with the depth of a Harlequin cheap novel.
I never saw Titanic either. And I don’t plan on seeing Avatar. Just not my cuppa tea. I don’t eat meat so I do not darken McDonalds’ door. James gets nothing from me.
And I have to agree with Mermaid, I do not get the attraction of autographs or anything for that matter,belonging to a celebrity.
Seeing James Cameron’s name anywhere near a movie is usually enough to send me to whatever else is playing at that particular googolplex. No, thanks. Wouldn’t see it if it were playing under my bed.
I have enough strange Happy Meal toys that I need to sell or give to small children. I don’t need a pseudo-enviro-cat thing with which to frighten said children. They’re traumatized enough by the Build-a-Bear webisodes.
@Toubrouk: I’m sick of being told that white=bad and anything else=good. Robert Mugabe has done more harm to Zimbabwe and the countries it used to help feed than any white man ever did. Everyone’s capable of destruction, regardless of their skin’s melanin content. And no one’s ancestors were all saints, either.
I heard that Avatar was a good movie. I think I’ll still see it despite all the crap Jame Cameron has been sending out into the world. I’ll just look at it as a plain and simple movie. If he did intend it to be a lecture of some sort, then I guess he is a big effin’ hypocrite for doing that McDonald’s thing.
I personally would not take a child that I cared about to McDonalds for any reason, “Happy” or otherwise. You might as well feed your kid saran wrap, fat and sugar cubes and call it a meal. I don’t think much of James Cameron either, but that is another, non-nutritive topic.
I saw Avatar last weekend at an IMax and loved it from a technical standpoint. The visuals, the special effects and quality of the 3D is amazing. It’s more of testament to the technical experts who developed the software and techniques to capture human movement and make it look so real with CGI. The 3D effects where not overly obnoxious and in fact they almost became passe but it did give a level a depth I have only seen at Disneylands Captain EO (its actually much better then that).
The story line was typical. Military bad guy but no one mentions the military good guy (the main character). I was well aware of the reported tree hugger, capitalism is evil theme and I guess I see that but if that was what he was after he failed at hammering it home. Case in point my wife, who was not aware of the reported themes, was fascinated with the blue guys way of connecting. She asked me how I thought we, humans, connect with each other and the world? I asked if she got the ant-capitalist view of the movie, she laughed and said no she was to caught up in the visuals.
I haven’t seen Avatar nor do I care to. But, I bet the Hitler parody is more entertaining than the movie
The storyline is always what I care for in a movie, so I wouldn’t have gone to see “Avatar” anyway. I can figure out the entire story from the trailer alone.
Haven’t seen the movie yet. Not sure if I will. But that was one funny clip there Oversneer, waaaay better than the movie. I’m assuming.
The basic point of this post – that Cameron has made an anti-corporate flick, then used the world’s biggest corporations to market and monetize it – is well-taken.
It’s fairly evident to me that the public often heavily discounts ‘movie message’, the same way they discount movie violence. Saturated as they are in entertainment product, they parse out what little ‘real meaning’ they can from what they see. So I’m not terribly concerned about filmgoers being affected by the film’s anti-corporate (and anti-human?) message. Neither, obviously, is McDonald’s. Nor did theater owners expect gunplay among the crowds attending the ‘Matrix’ films.
That’s not to say public opinion cannot be swayed by a film or other entertainment. It’s just not THIS sort of thing that does it. Avatar’s a roller-coaster ride. It’s bubblegum, not food. It’s a disposable entertainment, not the Bible (or even L. Ron Hubbard). It’s a slick, packaged fantasy. Cameron’s not really going to change any minds here, and deep down, we all knew that going in – didn’t we?
That said, I want to turn to The Oversneer’s track record for really lousy case-building. Citing stats for McDonald’s waste not only has nothing to do with the subject at hand, it’s as misleading as Avatar’s own premise. (Wasn’t THE POINT of all this that Cameron was MISLEADING the public with this film, and that his stance was hypocritical?)
McDonald’s has been assiduously cutting back waste-per-customer for years. Yes, much of the waste now IS from trees – paper containers. That’s because they addressed complaints about styrofoam containers. Paper waste, at least, is more recyclable and less toxic.
Re ketchup packets – most McD’s outlets now offer serve-yourself pumps as an option.
As far as waste stats are concerned – yes, those are large numbers. But they are meaningless without context. How does McD’s per-customer waste compare with other fast-food franchises? What would the total waste be if all fast foods were banned (“fat” chance there) and everyone had to prepare their own meals at home? (Include in those figures the pollution of millions of cars taking extra trips for millions of groceries, the packages those groceries are wrapped in, the time lost, etc.) How does this waste compare with everyone eating at a high-end restaurant, instead? Or should we ban them, next?
Without going on and on about the relative merits/problems of fast food, it’s obvious that is a debate in and of itself. But it has nothing to do with Cameron. When The Oversneer went off on that tangent – as is his/her wont – (s)he lost credibility. As (s)he has done in the past. The Oversneer needs, rather desperately I’d say, a solid Debate 101 grounding. His/her posts are just unreadable. They are an embarrassment to the site. I’d stop coming here altogether if they were all at this level. They’re juvenile, and frequently insult one’s intelligence. (I make no great claims to intelligence, but what little I have is, I assure you, insulted by these posts.)
Speaking of juvenile, the Nazi clip that has The Oversneer in such stitches has been flogged to death. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve seen that same clip, with different subtitles, used to ‘prove’ various points. It stopped being clever several iterations ago. The fact that The Oversneer didn’t dismiss that tired old wheeze is indicative of his/her overall lack of sound judgement and discretion. (Although, with new subtitles reacting to The Overnsneer’s posts, even I might find the thing watchable again.)
WHy do I get the impression that whoever is writing The Overneer’s posts is either still in grade school, or wishing they were? The lack of maturity and poise is evident in every word he/she writes. It’s painful to watch.
While I agree that Cameron is being a hypocrite for saying A then selling out to B, and I agree that the movie was visually stunning with no plot to speak of (save being the bastard love child of Ferngully and Dances with Wolves), the Nazi clip? Godwin’s Law much? Seriously Oversneer, if you have to resort to Godwin to prove your point, it wasn’t much of a point to begin with.
How come I can imagine Mr. Snitch wearing “Stop Snitching” t-shirts?
I had to go to urban dictionary to look up “Stop Snitching”. God I’m so cool.
**lights pipe, rides off on old-timey bike with the big wheel**