The movie looked great. The potential for Sci-Fi at the highest levels. The protagonist rolls out of the troop carrier to an alien sky with a giant planet and smaller moons. An alien environment with strange foliage and landscape. As our hero rolls on, (He has been previously wounded in combat serving as a Marine.) his way is partially blocked by a giant earth moving machine. It rolls by in all its technological majesty and then one notices arrows stuck in the tires. What?? Arrows in the tires? Somehow, the natives on this planet are so unsophisticated that they shoot arrows (The chances that a separate society on a far distant planet developing anything remotely similar to the culture of Amerinds is a pretty far stretch but this move takes that premise to the point of ridicule.) at the tires of earth moving machines equipped with rubber tires. (These things have been there for a while and they haven't figured out that arrows, even dipped with extreme toxins won't hurt the machinery?) From that point on, the credibility of the script went awry. The people who wrote this mess were grinding their own personal axes and the result was as sophomoric an exercise in biased intentions gone wrong as one could imagine. It is a textbook case in self-indulgence.
Here are some of the various themes in the movie. Some are obvious and others attempt disguise. I could extend this blog into a tome of criticism but we're only dealing with a movie and as extensive as the form is, it isn't a novel where events can be worked out more satisfactorily. In novels, such heavy-handedness would earn the label: "pot boiler." What we have here is a cinematic pot boiler so shot through with liberal and left-leaning sentiment that it more closely resembles a political parody than something serious. Movies aren't working when you are pounding your head from the sheer affront of such simplistic portrayals. So onward:
!. The US, with a high technology based military, doesn't understand the simple elegance of and steps on the rights and sovereignty of less technological cultures. The entire movie is anti-American in its intent and anglos are especially made to look insensitive and ruthless towards anything not them.
Comment: Sorry James, but the way of life on Pandora (The planet where the action takes place.) is so violent (Several times the comment is made that to venture outside of the safety of the compound is to risk death by any number of creatures who will kill you and eat your eyes like ju-ju-bees.) that it would seem impossible that any affront to the Na'vi would be beyond their capability to deal with it. A culture growing out of such violence would be tough. They would have developed a technology that would allow them to survive in that environment. As far as the American association, it's pretty obvious so I won't dwell. The Na'vi are a closed, insular society which is just how the Americans are presented but it's easy to overlook because Sully, the protagonist, has issues with loyalty, his military oath and his adoption of an alien system that didn't turn its back on him.
Not so subtly pointed out was the fact that he was wounded in combat (Bolivia or Venezuela or some such SA ongoing revolution.) but couldn't get treatment becuase he didn't have enough money (Based on the current economy -- what ever that is.) and the heartless VA left him to rot. What a crock! Yes, there are abuses in the VA system and it is grossly underfunded but the type of person in that system would not drop allegiance and join any kind of insurgency without a mental breakdown of an order that would render him useless as a person. But the whole premise is a not so subtle shot at the idea that enlisted ranks and the officer corps are treated disproportionately. This isn't the case. There is a point where his supposed commanding officer tells him he could rotate back and get some scars fixed but he "decides" to stay and keep them as a reminder of how harsh the environment could be. Gotta love those scars because they are worn like Prussian dueling scars at the turn of the 19th to 20th century. What a joke.
2. The indigenous population is known as the Na'vi. But the main interaction is with a specific tribe of Na'vi called the Omaticaya. They are such a loose metaphor for Amerinds that it's foolish. So the invading Americans treated the Indians with disdain bordering on hubris. The simile is foolish. Invaders always treat the conquered so.
Comment: Indians, Indians, Indians. Mohawk haircuts, loincloths, bows and arrows, horses, Indian shouts, Indian jewelry, (or something like it.) and barely-covered-breasted women. Ok, we get it, they're Indians. Here is the not so loose comparison. No need for a double entendre. This film is a single entendre and it's hack. There are many tribes in the Amazon that are being relocated and, in some cases, wiped out by encroaching mechanization. There are several movies that have used this plot device including "Medicine Man" starring Sean Connery. But this idea: that all mechanization is evil compared to the wonderfully simplistic appearing life style of the indigenous is too pat for words. By the way, many "tribes" in the Amazon practiced human sacrifice and ingestion until recently. Does the word hackneyed describe this "too easy" approach to establish tension?
3. Businesses and corporations are evil and only care about profits at the expense of human (or alien) life. Of course, in Avatar, the aliens are the members of the corporation and their mercenary killers.
Comment: How many plays, mini-operas and full operas ("Wozzeck" by Alban Berg comes to mind where the protagonist is actually the victim of medical experimentation.) and about a billion masters theses concepts have presented this concept as if it's something new and original. This is Freshman thinking at best. Even the contemporary composer Paul Drecher wrote a mini-opera based on the same idea: Corporations are bad and out to do evil. The hero escapes and destroys the corporation's evil plans. It's still surprising that Shakespeare didn't use this idea as one of the five main plot devices. Oh yeah, if the corporation would have been a girl, it may have worked: Find the company, lose the company, find the company, bail with a golden parachute.
4. In Avatar, mercenaries -- and by comparison all American soldiers -- are bloodthirsty killers with no conscience, care or soul. They are a motley crew of mostly anglos who hate any and all minorities including the Na'vi. They represent a rough comparison to American and British military contractors like Blackwater, (Now known as Xe.) Aegis and a host of other names. But the obvious comparison to American foreign policy is like a pie in the face.
Comment: Mercenaries are supposed to be bad. Even Bruce Willis was bad in "Tears of the Sun." He was supposed to be a cold-hearted SEAL who gets a conscious and defies his superiors orders. What a joke. Career ending decisions made at the drop of a buzz cut. But mercs are presented as bad because they supposedly operate outside the strict confines of government regulations. But, in reality, the most oppressive systems have not been mercenary based systems but governments. Of note are Nazis (National Socialists), Russian and Chinese Communists, the Khmer Rouge, the current regime in Mynamar (Used to be Burma.) and any of a number of small republics established under a totalitarian system. Corporate mercs would be constrained by any number of self-regulating controls centered around profit. The only entities that can work without regard to long-term profit and long-term consideration are governments.
5. The Na'vi are peaceful people (We only see one tribe of supposedly many.) who are in tune with their environment, don't pollute, wear elaborate clothes and are ordered in a typically tribal orientation with chief and shamans and the rest. These people live in this configuration without question: everyone fits. They are one with the environment. Nothing is wasted and no life taken without ritual of some kind.
Comment: Well if this is the case, of what need warriors? Who are these people, so integrated into their environment with more than enough food to eat and a rigidly established social structure, going to war against? Why do they need a class of men called warriors? Why aren't they all mediators or facilitators instead of warriors? This is a major plot problem and one that doesn't cut the mustard with close examination.
Here's another point: Our protagonist/hero is shown the ways of this warrior group by the chief's daughter. The writers have no concept of how these cultures really are organized. Out on the Discovery or Travel channel, there are two guys called Olly and Mark. They go into nontechnological cultures in the Amazon, New Guinea and other areas and film what life is like in these cultures. The women have specific jobs in these cultures but in each and every case, it is considered a dishonor to be taught by the women. This is because the women do gathering and farming chores while the men do hunting and ritual chores. So for Sully to be shown the "warrior's way" by a girl would have forever left him powerless in that culture. The real warriors wouldn't have anything to do with him. (They did shun him in the movie but no reason was given other than that he was a "Dreamwalker" or alien.) Yeah, I know it's supposed to be a movie but in reality, it's a thinly disguised set of political messages. Several critics and observers of aesthetics in culture have pointed out that art and politics rarely mix with good results for both. The same can be said about this movie too. (It is great to look at though.)
We should be aware that more advanced technological societies usually crush those without similar tools. It's the way of the world and one would suspect holds true throughout Universe. Several Sci-Fi writers have speculated that it would be a disaster if we ever were really visited by agents from an alien society. If they could get here given the vastness of space, they would be as advanced over us as we are over ants.
There are two big blockbusters made by Cameron. One is "Titanic" which was simply horrible and the other is "Avatar" which is visually stunning. In both of these, there is conflict between the haves and the have-nots, the upper and lower classes, privilege and those controlled. Both movies are similar in that respect: Both promote class warfare with the obvious dominant group portrayed in such a negative light it reminds one of attempting a fine oil painting with a roller designed for painting walls. In "Titanic" the rich and privileged locked the poor below decks so they could all escape. (It was reported that some of the gates to "steerage class" were locked preventing easy egress by those below. But this was done by the ship's crew, not by the passengers. As it turned out, there weren't enough life boats for even the rich passengers. Was there disparity in boat assignment? Probably but it wasn't a plot against anyone it was simply a matter of survival. People do strange things when survival is on the line. ) Only by the derring-do of a heroic figure were the gates to Hell opened and the oppressed given a chance at life. What a crock.
In "Avatar" there are so many left leaning political messages that it's like being beaten with copies of Mao's "Little Red Book," "The Communist Manifesto", "Das Kapital" and the combined writings of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and a host of other socialist/communist driven tyrants who want to destroy imagination and enterprise in the name of social justice.
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