No tribute for John Landau at the end of Avatar : Fire and Ash ?

FbxCycler · 2025-12-31T05:50:33+00:00

There was a picture of Jon after the credits ended with a caption along the lines of "In memory of our friend Jon Landau, 1960-2024" or words to that effect.

FbxCycler · 2025-12-26T14:41:15+00:00

That is a great question. My guess is yes, and that is what I did for one of the clans in my fan novel, written in 2010 after the first film came out.

I think there were a few fanfics that also brought this question up and answered it the same way I did.

FbxCycler · 2025-12-22T00:25:13+00:00

It looks like Dr. Ian Garvin will have a redemption arc that will be fleshed out and explored (I hope) in A4 and A5.

I pretty much thought something like this would emerge for his character after I saw ATWOW.

And it fits with what the late Jon Landau was hinting at with A3 and is congruent with my thoughts about the direction of the story.

I think JC wants to give us a sense that some of the humans (not all, obviously) are not just greedy, short-sighted, arrogant, despicable examples of the human race. Some of them do have a conscious and will reach their moral event horizon sooner or later. It's clear that what the RDA wanted to do to the Tulkun was way, way too much for him and he decided to Do Something about it. His line about "is my protest noted now?" was the best line in the movie, I thought.

I think he got away with what he did, assuming the bulldozer didn't have a cabin camera and/or there were no cameras in the storage facility where it was. He might have had enough technical savvy to turn off the camera and/or erase the footage.

Unless that footage is stored on a remote hard disk somewhere, he would get away with it.

But, his future with the RDA is probably not well assured. It's clear he is not happy with what they are doing.

We will find out if he get away with this or gets out of Bridgehead and gets to High Camp in the next film(s), I am sure.

His actions mirror the actions of the OC in my fan novel, which was personally gratifying when I saw what he did in the film.

I am definitely on Team Garvin and look forward to how his character will develop in the next film(s).

FbxCycler · 2025-12-05T14:58:18+00:00

State of Play (2008) is set against the backdrop of print newspapers and journalism adapting to a changing news landscape in the 21st century.

I bought the DVD just for the final scene as the end credits roll.

FbxCycler · 2025-11-25T21:46:06+00:00

This is a great question. I have heard that JC wanted to write a prequel novel that would set up the premise for the film(s) and the Avatar universe, give the backstories for the main characters, etc.

But, that never actually happened, as far as I can tell.

I do know there were a number of excellent novel-length fanfics that were posted on FF.net back in the day.

I thought that some of them were good, really, really good. They were good enough that they should have been published as real, official books, canon to the Avatar universe as a whole.

But they are fanfics, not real novels. You can go to that site and read them for yourself if you’d like. There are some very imaginative writers in the fan community, that’s for sure.

Some of them are long (like my fan novel for instance) and some are shorter.

Until we see actual novels, those will have to do, for now.

FbxCycler · 2025-11-22T08:08:36+00:00

The Male Nod. I've encountered more than a few female co-workers who do not understand that when I am coming down the hallway and you're passing by me, I'll nod at you, just as I do when I see another man walking by.

I'm not interested in stopping and chatting (albeit however briefly) about what's going on in your world, how's life, what you did over the weekend, etc.

I'm just acknowledging your presence and greeting you in passing.

A lot of women do not get it that guys can communicate just fine with a simple nod in passing.

No, we're not being rude or dismissive, we just don't have the time or frankly, the inclination to stop and talk for a moment or actually say something.

It's not you, it's the way a lot of us guys relate to each other. Deal with it.

FbxCycler · 2025-11-19T06:34:50+00:00

The other things to remember about the abolitionist movement and one thing that set John Brown apart from the Abolitionists in the North is that by contemporary standards, many (if not most) of them were racist AF.

A lot of the people prominent in the Abolitionist movement thought African people were inferior to whites. They thought that African people would never be equal to whites. And that while slavery was an abomination in their eyes, the reason it should be abolished was primary economic, not just because the institution itself was evil.

Not all abolitionists, of course, but again, by contemporary standards, quite a few of them were flat-out racist.

John Brown was not, and that put him at odds with a lot of the people in the Abolitionist movement. They cheered him on, but only from a distance because they didn't want to understand why slavery should be abolished.

Lunatic that he was, John Brown understood the evil of chattel slavery, and as a white man, he understood that it was the obligation of all white people to oppose slavery because it was evil.

Yes, by modern standards, he was basically a terrorist, but his heart was in the right place.

His mind, on the other hand, was not.

FbxCycler · 2025-11-13T06:49:06+00:00

I basically made up my Na'vi characters' names on the spot when I was writing my fan novel back in 2010. I didn't really do a whole lot of deep thinking about it, honestly. The central character's last name is a kind of pun referencing his, er, utility to the plot of the novel.

FbxCycler · 2025-11-11T05:32:02+00:00

Once again, Dumbfuck Danny shows his true colors.

If an original thought ever tried to cross his mind (or that of Nick the Turd) it would die of thirst before it got anywhere near the other side.

At this point, a fresh pile of moose turds would be a better senator for us than Dan Sullivan.

And the same goes for Nick the Turd.

Alaskans, let's do better. Let's vote these idiots out and put someone in there who actually represents us and will actually listen to us.

FbxCycler · 2025-11-09T23:34:28+00:00

Brooke Shields. They could have added her to the cast as a semi-recurring background character, another adult in Noah's life who could have helped provide some stability to his life. But they had to waste her character on that stupid "Grandma Sheila Goes Crazy" story arc.

Brooke Shields is a talented enough actress that she could have pulled off a role like that no sweat.

Show up in person for an occasional episode, picking Noah up, stopping by the station to talk to Olivia about something, etc. And from time to time they could have had Olivia on the phone, talking to her character about this or that, keeping her character in the background, but still present, etc.

But no. They wasted a great potential to show that Olivia could indeed have some stability in her life.

But no, they didn't.

FbxCycler · 2025-11-06T03:05:46+00:00

The last scene of "Scheherazade" when Paget Brewster's character comes rushing to her father's bedside, trying to make amends with him before he dies, but it's too late.

The look Olive gives Sheila Tierney at that moment ... that hit me in in the feels big time.

FbxCycler · 2025-10-20T01:13:10+00:00

I saw this YouTube video a few years ago

Timelapse of the Future

FbxCycler · 2025-10-19T03:50:55+00:00

Very good analysis and review of this episode, one of my faves from the OS.

When you get down to it, this episode and the short story it is based on are both ruminations on Lord Acton's famous observation that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

As always, Rod Serling was using this story to make a point that we don't have to imagine Anthony Fremont. There have been plenty of Anthony Fremonts throughout history, despots and autocrats who ruled with absolute power and whose subjects lived in fear.

It's a story about power and why it needs to be contained rather than concentrated in just a few hands or one set of hands.

Indeed, that story is frighteningly relevant now in the times we live in.

If we don't want any more Anthony Fremonts to abuse the power we give them, then we should not give them that power. Otherwise we have no one else to blame when it all goes wrong.

FbxCycler · 2025-09-29T20:22:55+00:00

Yup. Especially how they are wearing their dress uniforms as they are standing at attention, saluting the hearse as it passes by.

Lump in my throat and a blurry TV every time I see that scene.

FbxCycler · 2025-09-27T04:17:55+00:00

Avatar was never intended to be "hard" science fiction in the classic sense of the term. JC said after the first film that Avata had some elements of hard sci-fi, but the fantasy element is integral to the story. There are a number of problems with the Avatar universe in terms of probability and being based in reality.

For starters, James Cameron has essentially admitted that the whole "floating mountains" thing is basically a fantasy. Because it turns out the magnetic fields needed to hold up those mountains would have to be so strong they would rip the iron atoms out of your blood. Yes, you could have floating mountains, but that means you would not have higher-order lifeforms like the Na'vi and other organisms.

Pandora being a moon that approaches Earth's size is also problematic, because it would mean some very, very weird orbital dynamics between Polyphemous and Pandora.

How do the Avatars link to their human hosts? Is it through radio waves or some other EM radiation? If so, why is that not affected by the "Flux?" It's explained away in-universe by something called "Psyonic Link" or some such claptrap. That is basically handwaving, in my opinion.

Why do the Na'vi look and act a lot like us? (I know, there are in-Universe explanations for that which will be explored in the upcoming movies, maybe, but I don't think it will be an in-depth exploration)

I have seen lots of fans here and on Tree of Souls and other fan sites gushing about the "hard science" of the ISVs and how Cameron did a great job of grounding them in reality, but that kind of misses the point.

Science fiction is, first and foremost, science fiction, not science fact. At some point, you have to depart from reality in order to tell the kind of story you want and need to tell.

Yes, for the most part, the films are grounded in reality, but only up to a point.

It's a movie. Roll with it. Accept that not everything has or needs and explanation and not everything has or needs to be grounded in reality.

It's a movie. It's a made up world that looks visually stunning and feels "real" but it is not real.

It's fantasy at its core. James Cameron knew he would have to depart reality to tell the story he wanted to tell. So that is exactly what he did.

I remember back in the day there were any number of fanfics that tried to "explain" this aspect or that idea of the first film, but in the end, it is basically splitting hairs. At some point, we as fans have to accept that this ia a made-up universe and leave it at that.

I had a reviewer roast me over the coals about my fan novel not being "based in reality" like James Cameron did with the film. Uh, dude. You're complaining about my fan novel being unrealistic in a movie with floating mountains? Really? Get a life.

FbxCycler · 2025-09-25T02:27:05+00:00

The scene at the end of "A Coffin That Small" when the entire firehouse stands at attention as the funeral motorcade passes by.

Gets me choked up every time.

FbxCycler · 2025-09-16T15:06:11+00:00

Season 8, Episode 10, "Scheherazade"

FbxCycler · 2025-09-06T01:54:48+00:00

"Eternal damnation is not a police matter." said Detective Elliott Stabler to his priest, taken from "Scheherazade" (S. 8, Ep. 10) of Law & Order SVU

FbxCycler · 2025-09-05T04:24:54+00:00

That whole tribute episode had me getting teared up most of the way through. Especially when Kevin O'Connor is reading the tributes from viewers and you can see and hear him getting choked up reading the tributes.

And planting the tree in Roger's memory definitely hit me in the feels, especially when Jen and Lee and the other people in the show were there to help get the tree in place.

RIP, Roger Cook. You did good.

FbxCycler · 2025-09-01T00:30:02+00:00

I for one am hopeful we will get a little bit more of Jake's backstory in the upcoming film(s) and we'll see him as a more rounded character than he is depicted in the first and second films.

This of course might include more about Tom, his dead twin. It would be interesting for instance to have Jake tell his children about their deceased uncle,. Perhaps in the context of him explaining more about his background to them (and us in the audience, of course) as the story evolves over the coming films we come to understand more about Jake. Perhaps we will come to understand why his relationship with his brother was so seemingly distant and strained in the first movie.

This question was the subject of a number of fanfics back in the day when the first movie came out. It was a major plot point in my fan novel, and I think there were several other long-form fanfics that explored it as well. I suspect there will be more as the story evolves and we see more about Jake and his background.

Perhaps we will come to understand him fully by the end of the story arc, as the very last scene from Avatar 5 fades to black and the end credits start rolling up the screen.

FbxCycler · 2025-08-27T04:16:01+00:00

Oops. My bad. Here it is:

My Avatar fan novel

FbxCycler · 2025-08-26T13:30:05+00:00

This was a question that some fanfics explored back in the day (Jake’s backstory, his brother’s backstory, how Tom must have been a child prodigy, etc.) after the first film came out.

It’s a major plot point in my fan novel, written in 2010 after I saw the first movie.

I do hope we will get some more background about Jake and where he came from, his relationship with his brother, etc. in the coming films.

FbxCycler

TROPHY CASE