Avatar is a popular and commercial phenomenon soon to break through the most cherished barrier in Hollywood to become the top-grossing movie of all time. In doing so, Avatar's creator, James Cameron, will only be besting himself - for his earlier blockbuster, Titanic, currently occupies the sacred top box office slot.
But, this box office banter is perfectly trivial - isn't it?
The real question should surely be: Is Avatar more than a mere box office phenomenon? The simple answer is, "Yes, it is much more than a commercial phenomenon - Avatar is political dynamite."
While Hollywood regularly produces fine films with progressive themes, few of them ascend to box office nirvana. Here are a few cases in point: Milk; In the Valley of Elah; An Inconvenient Truth; Syriana, "W.", Good Night and Good Luck, Religulous and Rendition. All made their riveting political points then vanished into the yawning chasm of artistic achievement wrapped in the well-worn shroud of commercial obscurity.
While Avatar is being hailed as a breakthrough to new levels of filmic techno-sophistication - its 3D and special effects are wrapped around a scintillating story line that is driven by thermonuclear political intensity. Avatar is a hyper-political film from its gripping beginning to its illuminating end.
In a nutshell, Avatar's political message is: The American Military-Industrial Complex will utterly destroy the known universe. Avatar depicts a war in heaven - on a mythological planet named "Pandora" - where the cosmic box is opened to reveal that the evil demons set loose to destroy humanity are - us - the US of A. The evil Usses are, indeed, Us.
A brief recapitulation for anyone who has not yet seen the film: The US Military-Industrial Complex is hell-bent to colonize and mine Pandora for its rare extra-terrestrial element, Unobtainium, a mineral with anti-gravitational properties that will resolve the terminal decline of Earth and permit the colonization of more planets for the aggressive exploitation of the universe in pursuit of energy to fuel an endless cycle of extraction and consumption.
The characters of Avatar are archetypes. The protagonist is a paraplegic ex-Marine named Jake Sully who became paralyzed from the waist down like the heroic Ron Kovacs in some future US military intervention. Sully is proselytized into a high-level research program on a far-flung planet that will liberate him from his paralysis with occasional interludes as the mind of an avatar - a native of Pandora, a humanoid people, the Na'vi. On the distant planet, Jake Sully meets the lead scientist of the Avatar project, Dr. Grace Augustine, and her dual nemeses, Parker Selfridge, the corporate bureaucrat driving the mission to mine Unobtainium, and Miles Quaritch - the US military commander of the Pandora invasion.
Upon his formal implantation into his 10-foot tall blue-skinned Na'vi avatar, Jake Sully immediately falls into the vortex of the rapidly spiraling plot. Lost on Pandora and facing grave dangers, Jake meets his savior, Neytiry, the princess royal of the Omaticaya clan. Inevitably and against the will of the princess, Jake Sully is swept deeply into the Pandoran culture. This development pleases his immediate supervisor, Grace Augustine, and his ultimate commander, Miles Quaritch - but Jake's conversion to Pandoran Na'vi ultimately sets off apocalyptic repercussions that will threaten the existence of his mother planet, Earth.
The story is driven by the conflict in Jake's mind. Torn between his commitment to his human DNA and his longing for restorative surgery to regain the use of his body, Jake finds liberation as a Na'vi warrior who dives deeply into the indigenous aboriginal culture of animism and the unadulterated exaltation of Nature. The Omaticaya dwell in a veritable paradise of a planet-girdling rainforest where trees provide the skeletal infrastructure for their naturalistic civilization.
The clash of civilizations results in a Gotterdammerung of the terrestrials. Miles Quaritch is the last surviving American soldier in the decisive battle, and Neytirry slays him with two arrows shot straight into his heart.
The final sequence depicts the forlorn retreat of the remnant of the American forces including Parker Selfridge (presaging a sequel) followed by the final excavation of the mind of Jake Sully and its permanent implantation into his avatar - his Na'vi body.
After the release of Avatar, the American right suffered a massive attack of apoplexy. While many right wing critics have panned the film as flawed for its sacrilegious message as the triumph of Animists and Druids over Christian Soldiers, Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist, declaims Avatar as a plot to install world government via the "phoney" environmental crisis. While Avatar is grist for the right-wing mill, it is honey to the ears of the progressive trend.
On New Year's Eve while vacationing with his family on Oahu, President Obama and his family were privileged with a private screening of Avatar. The paparazzi will now be placed on alert for the presence of Zoe Saldana who played Neytirry on the White House guest list.
Avatar is powerful art. The finest movies, films and cinema are transformational. They reveal something deep about ourselves. Avatar pulls the political trigger and transforms each of us - one by one - in our multitudes. Let's look forward to the sequel sometime in say - December, 2011 on the eve of the Mayan Apocalypse of 2012 - and the next presidential election. Oh yes, for its excellence, innovation and artistic originality - Avatar should sweep the Oscars, but right-wing knives are already out and operating on its anti-American godlessness.
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Come on, really?
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Where does this come from? This is a classic example of how preconceived notions lead to unchecked assumptions. Where in the movie is it stated that the militia is from the United States? Does it say anywhere that it's a government-backed military force of any kind?
The soldiers in the movie were enlisted in a private army, hired guns for a corporation. The movie questions this notion of private companies using private armies carte blanche, challenges whether such armies should be able to take whatever they want and kill whoever they want, and demonstrates resistance by those oppressed by private militia.
It's important that we do our own thinking, and not let others--in this case, biased partisans who are reading agendas that are written in their hearts, and not in the script--start the thinking process for us.
Whether it's conservative or liberal propaganda, propaganda is an insult to the audience, because it assumes that the audience is too stupid to get a message unless it's spelled out in giant letters.
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I went to see this movie because the special effects looked awesome and the sci-fi space fantasy story looked interesting. I was disappointed by neither (although, I found the 3D more distracting than enhancing). The plot was predictable, but very well conceived and well paced. The CG was flawless and the world of Pandora was a tsunami of visual stimulation.
One way to create an intriguing fictional story line is to exaggerate an otherwise negligible element and extrapolate the consequences in the absence of natural controls and see where it takes you (e.g. the effect of C02 on the climate). Avatar does this by exaggerating corporate greed and diminishing moral checks and balances – the result is attempted genocide to obtain an extremely profitable resource.
I agree that in the fictional world of this movie, this scenario is plausible and abhorrent; but in reality, I don't accept the premise that the American Military-Industrial Complex is as evil as the corporation in this movie, nor is it headed there. Avatar is no more realistic than any of Isaac Asimov’s extrapolations.
So, while the left is getting all excited about a “liberal message movie” making a ton of money, the right isn't accepting your premise. Sorry to disappoint you.
I can also venture to say that the "Na'vi" are influenced by the Nuba Riefenstahl studied. Her controversial book came out about the same time Cameron claims he came upon the idea, middle 1970's. To those who think my idea novel, easily found on web is an article documenting Riefenstahl's influence on earlier Cameron films.
Sometimes the bad guys in a movie are just bad. I felt like if they showed 'negative' military in the persona of the mercenaries, they also showed 'positive' military in the characters of Sully and the helicopter pilot.
I feel like some people have an agenda and are trying to make this film 'anti-american' to serve their own ideas. If you didn't like the movie or the message that sometimes humans are selfish and destroy other cultures violently for their own financial gain, that is one thing. But it isn't really 'un-american' to point that reality out. It is something that has happened in all human cultures for thousands of years.
Ok, I get that this is all fiction, but apparently some are taking this as a swipe at the US. Maybe the truth hurts?
People will suffer, the ecosystem will suffer. Women, children and men will lose their lives either through slaughter or lack of the natural resources essential to their existence. Any why??? Because humankind continues to lose touch with its own humanity.
While we may be making gains in in our ability to connect to one another through technology [Skype, GPS], we meanwhile are creating an unforgiving disconnect between ourselves and our environment, and between the relationship of you and me.
Geez. It's a movie. Some of us will see it. Quit bugging us with geek reasons to splutz all over the screen, already!
There's nothing new in this message, what has changed is the audience's response to it. There are far too many people out there who now see a left vs. right message in absolutely everything.
One thing to note, it actually wasn't the USA who was the invading army in the movie but a private contract army paid for by Big Business.
Your points about audience interpretation and the technical point about the plot are also correct.
It is riddled with silly fetishization of paleolithic life as some sort of edenic ideal, corrupted by the corrosive effect of civilization... oh wait... this is just a post-judeochristian cornball...