I recently watched James Cameron's Avatar in 3D. It was an enjoyable experience in some ways, but overall I left dismayed on a number of levels.
It was enjoyable to watch the lush three-dimensional animation and motion capture controlled graphics. I'm not sure that 3D will take over -- as many now expect -- until we get rid of the glasses (and there are emerging technologies to do that albeit, the 3D effect is not yet quite as good), but it was visually pleasing.
While I'm being positive, I was pleased to see Cameron's positive view of science in that the scientists are "good" guys (or at least one good gal) with noble intentions on learning the wisdom of the Na'vi natives and on negotiating a diplomatic solution.
The Na'vi were not completely technology-free. They basically used the type of technology that Native Americans used hundreds of years ago -- same clothing, domesticated animals, natural medicine, and bows and arrows.
They were in fact exactly like Native Americans. How likely is that? Life on this distant moon in another star system has evolved creatures that look essentially the same as earthly creatures, with very minor differences (dogs, horses, birds, rhinoceros-like animals, and so on), not to mention humanoids that are virtually the same as humans here on Earth. That's quite a coincidence.
Cameron's conception of technology a hundred years from now was incredibly unimaginative, even by Hollywood standards. For example, the munitions that were supposed to blow up the tree of life looked like they were used in World War II (maybe even World War I). Most of the technology looked primitive, even by today's standards. The wearable exoskeleton robotic devices were supposed to be futuristic, but these already exist, and are beginning to be deployed. The one advanced technology was the avatar technology itself. But in that sense, Avatar is like the world of the movie AI, where they had human-level cyborgs, but nothing else had changed: AI featured 1980's cars and coffee makers. As for Avatar, are people still going to use computer screens in a hundred years? Are they going to drive vehicles?
I thought the story and script was unimaginative, one-dimensional, and derivative. The basic theme was "evil corporation rapes noble natives." And while that is a valid theme, it was done without the least bit of subtlety, complexity, or human ambiguity. The basic story was taken right from Dances with Wolves. And how many (thousands of) times have we seen a final battle scene that comes down to a battle between the hero and the anti-hero that goes through various incredible stages -- fighting on a flying airplane, in the trees, on the ground, etc? And (spoiler alert) how predictable was it that the heroine would pull herself free at the last second and save the day?
None of the creatures were especially creative. The flying battles were like Harry Potter's Quidditch, and the flying birds were derivative of Potter creatures, including mastering flying on the back of big bird creatures. There was some concept of networked intelligence but it was not especially coherent. The philosophy was the basic Hollywood religion about the noble cycle of life.
The movie was fundamentally anti-technology. Yes, it is true, as I pointed out above, that the natives use tools, but these are not the tools we associate with modern technology. And it is true that the Sigourney Weaver character and her band of scientists intend to help the Na'vi with their human technology (much like international aid workers might do today in developing nations), but we never actually see that happen. I got the sense that Cameron was loath to show modern technology doing anything useful. So even when Weaver's scientist becomes ill, the Na'vi attempt to heal her only with the magical life force of the tree of life.
In Cameron's world, Nature is always wise and noble, which indeed it can be, but he fails to show its brutal side. The only thing that was brutal, crude, and immoral in the movie was the "advanced" technology. Of course, one could say that it was the user of the technology that was immoral (the evil corporation), but that is the only role for technology in the world of Avatar.
In addition to being evil, the technology of the Avatar world of over 100 years from now is also weaker than nature, so the rhinoceros-like creatures are able to defeat the tanks circa 2100. It was perhaps a satisfying spectacle to watch, but how realistic is that? The movie shows the natural creatures communicating with each other with some kind of inter-species messaging and also showed the tree of life able to remember voices. But it is actually real-world technology that can do those things right now. In the Luddite world of this movie, the natural world should and does conquer the brutish world of technology.
In my view, there is indeed a crudeness to first-industrial-revolution technology. The technology that will emerge in the decades ahead will be altogether different. It will enhance the natural world while it transcends its limitations. Indeed, it is only through the powers of exponentially growing info, bio, and nano technologies that we will be able to overcome the problems created by first-industrial-revolution technologies such as fossil fuels. This idea of technology transcending natural limitations was entirely lost in Cameron's vision. Technology was just something crude and immoral, something to be overcome, something that Nature does succeed in overcoming.
It was visually pleasing; although even here I thought it could have been better. Some of the movement of the blue natives was not quite right and looked like the unrealistic movement one sees of characters in video games, with jumps that show poor modeling of gravity.
The ending (spoiler alert) was a complete throwaway. The Na'vi defeat the immoral machines and their masters in a big battle, but if this mineral the evil corporation was mining is indeed worth a fortune per ounce, they would presumably come back with a more capable commander. Yet we hear Jake's voice at the end saying that the mineral is no longer needed. If that's true, then what was the point of the entire battle?
The Na'vi are presented as the ideal society, but consider how they treat their women. The men get to "pick" their women, and Jake is offered to take his choice once he earns his place in the society. Jake makes the heroine his wife, knowing full well that his life as a Na'vi could be cut off at any moment. And what kind of child would they have? Well, perhaps these complications are too subtle for the simplistic Avatar plot.
Barbara Marx Hubbard: Conscious Evolution and the Integration of Science and Spirituality
Paul Lamb: Can Religion Rediscover Itself? Taking a Cue from the Singularity University
1 This is sci-fi fantasty in which Cameron has tried to make the science in it plausible but also fantastical. It's not his Mars Story which does intend to be current plausible.
2 The science in Avatar is excellent: "Good Science is good observation", biology, physics parameters are played around with with both consummate fun and innovation and melded with fine artistry and aesthetics in combination to bring out both familiar science laws but also a visual delight.
3 The story has innovative twists on usual archetypal structure: It involves Myth telling in the future and melds future aliens/lands with past indigenous/lands. Hence the aliens are modified hominids (as per myths) but also scientifically different as per size and dimensions and senses. In fact it's almost shocking how much emphasis is put into tribal motifs, but that draws more powerful allusion to real indigenous tribes and this important theme.
4 The use of various "future creations" such as the vehicles and weapons are finely crafted to fit the fiction but also to fit aesthetics and embrace the drama. The final battle is deliberately hero wrestling with the monster ending but as above with a few twists.
To sum, there are so many great conceits and connections that make viewing this film a truly rich experience and fun entertainment.
in a visual format easily understood by all -- THAT was what the 'twining of the braids' was all about.
Obviously this author missed that message. Also, this author is projecting our notion of 'nature' onto
Pandora. 'Nature' there is something quite different. And clearly the females had quite a bit of autonomy
and were very capable. Avatar is an interspecies love story, and as such is very timely.
Yes, the story is familiar and similar to others, but I personally would not have wanted a "Memento" type of script executed in a such an unfamiliar and complex format. Beyond that, we have never seen any of the similar tales told in this fashion. The concept of avatars, the seemingly corny "I see you line", Jake Sully's journey to discovering his true self, all spoke to something very relevant today in an age of the internet when we all use avatars and no one really knows, or sees, the people they are communicating with.
Was it the best movie ever in the history of film? Not in my *opinion* (movies are very subjective), but for me and many others, it was a good one and worth the ticket price.
> now was incredibly unimaginative, even by Hollywood
> standards. For example, the munitions that were supposed
> to blow up the tree of life looked like they were used in World
> War II (maybe even World War I).
And how different do the weapons of today differ from what we used in WW2? Yeah we have faster and more powerful... but our military hasn't really innovated all that much.
Plus... we don't have exoskeletons (and they do), or FTL space travel (and they do). So, um, yeah.
The ship travelling from Earth to Pandora was not traveling at FTL (Faster than Light) Speed, but rather close to 0.7c or 70% the speed of Light.
This is extremely significant in the sense of a couple of things chief of which is the fact that to get to the Alpha Centauri star system (our closest stellar neighbor and where the Pandoran Moon and it's planet Polyphemous were orbiting) in 5-6 years, that's the minimum speed you would need to travel at. (Alpha Centauri is actually 4.3 Light years from our Sun, but traveling at 70% the speed of light instead of at the speed of light, would add the extra 2 years to your Journey).
Now the other cheif point is the fact that even though, he (Cameron) could have chosen to have them do this, you still don't want your space ships traveling Faster than Light and still have it grounded within our reality, because there's a lot of problems with FTL travel and a lot of unknowns and unpredictable variables thanks to the Relativistic effects of matter moving faster than the speed of light. It's part of the reason why Einsteins said that it is impossible altogether.
And it's also part of the reason why a lot of Sci-Fi movies and shows have to use "tricks" to allow their ships to travel faster than light, such as "Warp fields", "Wormholes", and "Hyperspace". And the problem is that although things like these three phenomena are 'theoretically' possible with modern physics, they have never been known or proven to exist and are for all intents and purposes impractical and impossible with modern energy requirements.
On the flip side, believe it or not, travelling at 60-70% the speed of light is actually possible even with today's technology and technological know-how.The only problem is that we haven't figured the Cryogenic sleep-for-5-years and slow-down-the-body part, as well as a means of shielding the body from the "g" forces during the acceleration and deceleration part of the journey. What Kurzweil seems to misunderstand is that Cameron was trying to keep the "Fiction" part of his Sci-Fi a little bit closer to what, maybe not we, but what our children and grandchildren could realistically see and achieve within their lifetimes.
Just the other day I watched an episode of Star Trek (TOS): the bridge set - and I know this was done on a fairly low budget - had NO screens of any kind save the static ones above the peripheral stations and the main viewing screen. Just switches and buttons. Later generations of the show and movies improved on this as computer technology improved, but even they were looking dated until last year's Star Trek movie. In a couple years it will look dated as well. And no franchise or movie has been able to escape this trap.
Things happen, advances are made, inventions invented and they are all unseeable from now and they affect the future in unknowable ways. So set designers do what they can...
A lot of these points have been covered in other Avatar related material (script treatments, Pandora encyclopedias etc) all over the web so I'll just touch on the more pertinent ones:
- Low tech Weaponry/technology:- a prevailing point was persistently made in the movie regarding the effect that Pandora's intense Magnetic field Flux phenomenon (the so-called "Flux Vortex") had on the human technology to the degree that they had to resort to manual control and basic vision for their flight vehicles for example. Cameron has also mentioned that this was a reason why lots of technology they took with them to Pandora was deliberately low-grade; presumably because state-of-the-art 22nd Century technology and computer systems relied on interfaces that were problematic to operate under that flux vortex.
And I don't see what's so unusual about the fact that people are still using computer screens (vastly advanced ones at that) 100 years from now. We are after all, barely 100 years from the invention of the Cathode ray tube and modern televisions and screens still share the same DNA, if not forms, of those early version "TV's" and "screens". Besides which, they did have Holographic projection interfaces in the movie that were used (the 3D forest map display that they had at the base)
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- The Na'vi were not attempting to "heal" Sigourney Weaver's Dr. Augustine character. They were attemping to transfer her conscousness to the Avatar body in much the same way that the humans used Avatars but in a reverse and more permanent way.
I thought that this was clearly explained in the movie.
-The reason that the Pandoran creatures were formidable in stature (gigantic and with extremely thick hides) and able to defeat the human tanks as a result, was a function of the fact that they evovled on a planet (or rather moon) with lower gravity than Earth, and as such were able to grow much larger (like the Na'vi growing to 10 feet tall) and develop tougher skin and bones. Most scientist acknowledge this to be a possibility and high likelyhood of plant and animal growth in low-gravity planets. Again, I thought that you being a scientist, this would have been obvious if not deductible.
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-The movie itself was not so much anti-technology as it was anti-humans that abuse technology. The Na'vi themselves used some of the human technology such as during the attack on the Tree of souls when Jake sully was able to communicate with the other Ikran fliers using some form of walkie-talkie radio communications device that they wore on their necks. Or did you think that they were communicating telepathically?
A lot of your other points are just basic nitpicking from someone who was seemingly and actively looking for things to hate in this movie (I mean, are you seriously griping about the fact that they did not accurately capture the correct motion and movement of falling objects and 10 foot tall creatures (which don't exist in our planet or our reality, let's not forget), with inaccurate modeling of gravity on a Moon with inherently lower gravity than Earth? Seriously? Come on now. What's your frame of reference, because I can gaurantee that it is 100 percent wrong), and just griping for the sake of griping.
And to compare the Pandoran creatures to what one would see in Harry potter? Really?
Wow.
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Part of the appeal of Cameron's Sci-Fi in his movies is that the fiction part of his Science Fiction is more closely grounded and related to what we actually know to exist in our world and what is, frankly achievable from the strain of modern technology here and now. Hence, no hyperspace travel or faster than lightspeed travel, (it's all Cryogenic-sleep enabled close-to-lightspeed travel just like in his previous movie Aliens). No laser guns or phasers with fancy visuals yet completely energy impractical from the poing of perspective of modern power systems, No teleportation, and none of the "Force"/ Midichlorians nonsense or artificial gravity sans-centrifugal force systems that you find with other Star Wars/ Star Trek type science fiction, that is indeed High fiction and based in part on modern theoretical physics, quantum or otherwise, but which frankly speaking is completely unfeasible and for all intents and purposes iplausible for any of our lifetimes or out children and their children's children's lifetimes.
Why don't you try enjoying a movie on the merits of what they got right right, as opposed to what they failed to correctly depict according to your lofty and frankly speaking unreasonable standards - even for Science Fiction.
"Buzzkill" Kurzweil's ideal version of the movie would have been an absolute drag that no one would have understood or enjoyed.