Avatar

(Movie Review)

I had read several reviews of this movie before seeing it. I don't know about you, but it seemed to me that pretty much all the reviewers had the same take on it. The same themes kept popping up in review after review, (and friends I talked to repeated this as well). They all said:
1). The visuals are really great, and
2). The story is just a rip off of "Dances with Wolves"/ "Ferngully"/ "The Last Samurai"/ Those old Jimmy Stewart movies, et cetera.

Well, I'll start with the number 1.
Yes, the visuals are pretty impressive.

I had read a couple reviews which had said something to the effect of, "These are the most spectacular battle scenes ever put to film."
And, maybe my expectations were raised too high, but I was slightly disappointed when the battle scenes didn't completely blow me away.
They were exciting, yes, but I'm not sure they were particularly better than hundreds of other movies I've seen before.

More than the battle scenes, I suppose the impressive thing about this movie is just the whole look of this alien world : the floating mountains, the spectacular waterfalls, the glowing plants, and the vibrant green jungles.
I'm usually not a big fan of CGI, but this was well done enough that I didn't mind. Sure it was all computer animation, but it didn't look like it was computer animation. And so you could really take in the beauty of this planet and forget, for a moment, that what you are looking at was just a computer generated image. Several times I even caught myself thinking, "That looks really beautiful. I'll have to find out where they filmed that."

Okay, onto the second point, the fact that this story is just a rip-off of Dances with wolves, Last Samurai, Ferngully, those old Jimmy Stewart movies...
(And actually well I'm on it, the spirit tree reminded me a lot of Disney's "Pocahontas", and the big battle between an advanced technological army and a forest tribe reminded me a lot of "Return of the Jedi".)

Since Hollywood is constantly recycling story lines (and each cookie cutter movie seems more like the last) I'm not sure how big of a deal this is. Can we forgive a little repetition of the plot themes in this movie, when we forgive it in just about every other formulaic movie? I guess this is something that every viewer will have to decide for him or her self.

The big difference between a movie like this, and say, your basic formulaic action movie, is that this movie gets preachy. You can easily forgive the recycled plot of a mindless action movie, but when this movie is trying to make you feel, you get a bit more critical.

Or put another way: I'll put up with a movie trying to make me feel emotional about the plight of the Sioux. I have less patience for a movie that tries to make me feel sad about the blue people.

That being said, overall I liked the anti-imperial message of the film. (As a liberal, I suppose you would expect no less of me. I certainly have nothing but disdain for those right wing critics who questioned Cameron's patriotism).

However, I do think this movie was overly simplistic.
In this movie Giovanni Ribisi, the evil corporate chief, states quite openly that he is willing to kill the Na'vi in order to get the precious minerals. And the army is quite willing to do the killing for him. Nice simple bad guys with nice simple motives.

Reality is a lot more complex than that. Motivations for taking over a foreign land are seldom that nakedly obvious.

For example, you could always invade for the natives' own good.
The idea of invading to spread Christianity among the natives is perhaps a bit dated now. But the idea of invading to spread democracy is still a valid excuse. (And if there happens to be lots of valuable resources in the region, or if the land has strategic value, that's just an added bonus.)

Or, you could invade for humanitarian reasons (like the British got involved in the Sudan to stop the slave trade) and just help yourself to the resources well your there.

Or you could get involved initially for humanitarian reasons, but then subtle racism causes a slippery slope where you start massacring the very people you came in to help (Mi Lai massacre in Vietnam, Haditha in Iraq)

Or you could claim that the area represented a security threat to your nation (Cromwell in Ireland, US in Iraq), or that it was unstable and was a breeding ground for terrorists.

Or you could invade to help one side in a civil war (British in Afghanistan, US in Vietnam, Russia in Afghanistan, Caesar in Gaul, et cetera).

Or you could establish a puppet government (Japan in Manchuria).

Or you could just bribe the local elites, and cut them in on your profits as you rape the land. And if someone protests you, you could lean on the local government to execute the dissenters (Shell Oil in Nigeria).

Or if the current government refuses to cooperate, you could aid a military coup (Chile in 1971, Guatemala 1954, Iran 1953, et cetera).

Well, you get the point hopefully. Seldom do the bad guys simply say straight out, "We're going to kill the Na'vi so we can get their land." And seldom do they just go in with guns blazing. Usually they get themselves invited in someway.

And in that respect, I think this movie would have been a lot better had it acknowledged this complexity.
Especially because we as a culture already know it's wrong to invade another country without any cause. And so you could question whether we really need a movie with a message so obvious.

But, I guess you could argue that we don't go to the movies for political complexity. We go to see simple morality plays, and this is a simple story with a simple moral. A place where the good guys always win, the bad guys always get what's coming to them, and all of life's problems are solved with some really cool action scenes.

Final verdict: definitely worth seeing once, but I'm not sure I'm going to be re-watching it any time soon.

Link of the Day
Chomsky Interview

Avatar: Movie Review (Scripted)