A lot has been said for Avatar. People go on and on about its technical achievements, its budget, the 3D extravaganza, etc. I can’t say I’m convinced at all that it’s a good film. In fact, I found it boring and offensive, despite my predilections for visual beauty, peace, environmentalism and a new age consciousness of energy, all of which this movie supposedly espouses. This will be a downer of a review:
The plot and script are very boilerplate. There’s nothing interesting about this hero’s quest, and it feels tired and predictable. The movie starts with voiceover narration from a tough, paralyzed soldier, brother-to-a-scientist, down-but-not-out rugged pretty boy. We are introduced to a futuristic world, yada yada.
Science fiction stuff is introduced: the main character lays in a pod and his conscience and agency is transferred into an alien body. Okay, I'll ignore the many plot holes here of how he maintains both lives seamlessly. This was definitely done better in The Matrix, but fair enough. He acclimates to the body perfectly. Immediately. Of course. Except there are no blue or red pills, and he never says "I know kung fu." Sigourney Weaver, the tough-boss-but-still-motherly character doesn’t have much to work with. I wished I were watching her in The TV Set the whole time.
Jake Sully – that’s our hero – gets into trouble but finesses his way through it, of course. He meets a Pocahontas-type character, who teaches him the native way of life, and they fall in love. She's super-skinny and tall. There's been controversy about these ads for Ralph Lauren, but I guess this is different, since it's a movie, and the characters have blue skin.
In Terrance Malick’s The New World, Colin Farrell as John Smith enters the lives of the natives, first as a prisoner too, and falls in love with Pocahontas. Ultimately, though, he chooses his career obligations over his love affair, Pocahontas settles for Christian Bale’s character, and the natives await their eventual slaughter. Malick is able to show us the beauty of the earth and the eastern seaboard in a way that undercuts the human drama with a pervasive wave of serenity and wonder.
In Dances with Wolves, Kevin Costner is similarly enticed into the peaceful, spiritual existence of the natives, and declares his loyalty to them, falling in love with Stands with a Fist. He is captured though by the American army he’s deserted. His pet wolf is killed – a tragedy akin to Artex’s death in The Neverending Story, but akin to nothing in Avatar. Eventually, the Sioux tribe that Costner has loved is conquered by the United States.
Where The New World and Dances with Wolves tell the truth, Avatar lies. About two hours into Avatar, the corporate force of imperialism wreaks havok on the Na'vi through “shock and awe” (one of many allusions to current USA wars). Neytiri (the alien lover) feels betrayed (appropriately) by Sully. The native community is ruined. If the movie ended here, I would be happy, not because I’m sadistic, but because it would ring true. That’s how it’s happened it Iraq, that’s how it’s happened in all stories of conquest. Sully would be left to ruminate his actions, realize the system he's bound to, and grow. Instead, the movie keeps going. Sully devotes himself to an insurmountable cause, going to battle against the US corporate military force with the entire natural kingdom by his side, and the help of some other human deserters. Of course they win. The humans are excused from the planet, except for some new friends, and Sully turns into his Avatar for real, I guess, in some spiritual ritual of energy transference.
Okay, there is so much wrong with all of this fantastical escapism. The human saving the day is insulting in the same way that Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side is insulting. Other movies fitting this bill: Dangerous Minds, Take the Lead, any movie in which an outsider reforms a group of minorities. Jake Sully is more alien than alien, mastering the talents of the tribe better than the tribe itself.
Avatar advocates peace, I guess. In 1914, Woodrow Wilson declared that the Great War would end all wars. Using violence in the name of peace - or in the name of god - is ridiculous. This is a violent movie, but the kind that isn’t honest, again. It shows no actual gore or death or suffering. It’s video game violence, which is the worst kind, since it glorifies aggression and power without admitting to the adverse effects, which, as we know, are actually gut wrenching. Michael Haneke, Sam Peckinpaw, even Quentin Tarantino, are directors who can actually portray the honesty of violence, whether or not maintaining a cathartic satisfaction. Avatar, by comparison, is a war commercial. In fact, it looks just like the 3-minute trailer for the Marines that preceded it.
A much better film that analyzes similar issues is Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong. Race, war, imperialism, nature, humanity, alienation, and love are all discussed with intelligence, and the action, I'd argue, is more fun. It ends sadly because these are heavy issues that resist a happy ending.
Anyway, back to Avatar: the corporate motives to extract unobtainium (read: oil) from the land are thwarted. The military is told to go home and think about what its done. Great dream! Total lie! This offends me because it assuages our country’s guilt without having done anything besides spend a historical amount of money telling a story. In truth, we are raping the fields of the Middle East as we speak. I haven’t heard of any heroic tales of US soldiers sticking up for the Iraqi people in any real way. No US tanks have been destroyed by American tanks, and if they were, I’m sure our media would vilify the act, not celebrate it. Are we Jake Sully? Are we really?
Which way do we want it, America? Can we really advocate environmentalism and nature through a gross over-spending of resources on Hollywood entertainment? Is nature actually celebrated through computer-generated flowers? Is peace advocated through 30-minute battle scenes of visual delight? Is wearing dark glasses in a theater really enhancing the experience? I took my glasses off many times and enjoyed the brighter view, the bridge of my nose unencumbered. In the end, Sully becomes alien. District 9 ends the same way. It’s a good message: to be human these days is to be alienated as much as possible from humanity, or to put it another way: we are alienated from our own humanity. If this was what people talked about upon leaving Avatar, I bless this to set box office records. It won’t be. Like Titanic, we are doomed to miss the point, confined to our arrogance.
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