Quote: blackaeronaut wrote:I haven't seen the movie yet, but this is a plot element/hole that comes up quite often in fiction.
Well, after studying the official Wiki for James Cameron's Avatar, one thought comes to mind...
Do you honestly think that the RDA is going to just stop after that?
Sure, the Na'vi, against all odds, beat them back and then sent them packing. But now that I have seen what the RDA is (a quasi-governmental entity that
has a monopoly over all interstellar resource gathering) I can't help but feel that the RDA will be back, and with more guns.
1) Starwars -- The Empire has tens of thousands of ships, millions of stormtroopers, and controls the vast majority of habitable worlds in the galaxy. How
exactly does taking out the Deathstar II, the Emperor, and Vader put them out of business? The only real hope for the rebels is for the Empire to split into
multiple factions in the following power struggle, and a four-way or more galaxy-wide civil war isn't exactly "happily ever after".
2) Avatar: The Last Airbender -- The Fire Nation has been at war for a century. That's 100 years in which the social order, political power structure,
economy, and infrastructure have most likely come to revolve around the war. One-hundred years of propaganda and social conditioning of the population. And
they were winning, which which means the military and political structure are going to be full of folks like Admiral Zhou, who aren't going be inclined to
give up just because a couple of disgraced nobles and a bald kid from 100 years ago say so.
The examples continue. A lot of stories that revolve around defeating an Evil Overlord (or in this case an isolated military force) overlook the fact that
such figures or groups usually have some sort of support structure and organization that can and often will carry on if the guy at the top or one set of
soldiers goes down. In the real world, in 1944, the British didn't carry through with a plan to take Hitler out with a sniper, because they weren't
sure if that would actually help them, or just replace him with someone more competent in military affairs.
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No, I don't believe the world has gone mad. In order for it to go mad it would need to have been sane at some point.