The majority of blockbusters these days are special-effects movies, but no amount of effects can save a cruddy script. Yet very occasionally effects can make a decent movie into one worth recommending. Director James Cameron’s most famous film, Titanic, probably falls into this category. Even those who found the romantic tale rather pedestrian had to admire his re-creation of the famous disaster. It may be the same with his latest venture into sci-fi turf, in which he and a couple of thousand other people create a beautiful alien world (shown in 3D on many screens) with effects whose chief virtue is that you forget that they’re effects and concentrate on the story.
As for that, Cameron has always been a better director and idea man than screenwriter, and once you get past the visual aspects the movie feels more familiar. In fact, the plot resembles nothing so much as Dances with Wolves, wherein the main character is a white guy who by turn of circumstance winds up immersing himself in the culture of the oppressed. As was frequently the case with American Indians and aborigines, the goal is subjugation for financial purposes. The fictional planet, Pandora, contains massive deposits of the amusingly named “unobtanium,” a rare mineral. One tribe, the Na’vi, resides above the largest ore deposit, and Jake (Sam Worthington), is part of a team sent to study them. Sigourney Weaver plays the tough leader of the scientific team, probably the most complex character. Zoe Saldana also deserves praise for bringing to life the Na’vi warrior who educates Jake, much like Michael Caine does the title character in Educating Rita.
From a sci-fi angle, the most interesting thing is the way that the humans interact with the Na’vi. The humans create hybrid cloned bodies using alien and human DNA; these “avatars” are controlled by the humans they resemble. Elsewhere, there are certain familiar tropes. Jake manages to learn the Na’vi language in a couple of months despite the fact that the Na’vi he talks with conveniently speak English most of the time. For reasons left mysterious, Jake is favored in other ways by the Na’vi godess. It reminded me of The Last Samurai, wherein westerner Tom Cruise seemingly manages to become a better samurai than every single Japanese person, although that level of absurdity is not reached. The Na’vi themselves seem representative of New Age philosophy; the old image of natives as savages (held by the film’s villains) is replaced with that of the enlightened primitives: without technology but morally superior and literally connected to nature. They are, however, monogamous, and their society is not too unfamiliar to us. Their harmony with nature is explained via a combination of science and religion. Many things about Pandora seem conveniently similar to Earth, like the dichotomy between plants and animals, the single intelligent species, the fact that the intelligent species look much like humans (only larger and bluer), the way many other species (trees, dogs) look like Earth species, etc. Perhaps Pandora has an evolutionary connection to life on Earth.
We know what happens to the Indians and the aborigines, but making this about aliens gives Cameron a chance to write the history. Dances with Wolves highlighted the cruelty of European conquest. Avatar asks whether, given the chance, we would do it any differently today. (Less overtly, it raises the question of whether the natives, knowing what’s coming, would prefer slaughter or subjugation.) Although there isn’t much nuance in the film’s anti-imperialist message, Cameron does deserve credit for creating a somewhat different kind of blockbuster movie and visually raising the bar for any future creators of alien worlds.
IMDB link
viewed 1/3/10 at Riverview (in 3D) and reviewed 1/3–4/10
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