Despite being one of the highest grossing movies of all time, I had no real desire to see James Cameron’s Avatar. When it came out, I wasn’t going to the movies as much as I have in more recent years, and my partner at the time seemed to have no interest in anything like that. Besides, I have a low opinion of 3D movies anyway as, even when done well, it seems more like a gimmick. When I finally saw a bit on a TV my dad was showing off, I was even more unimpressed as the Na’vi onscreen looked like a cartoon character of some kind. OK, it arguably is, but that’s besides the point. I had little to no desire to see the nearly three hour movie. It also seems to be something that was made to be seen on the largest IMAX screen possible.
But there’s a sequel coming later this year. I don’t know if the world of Pandora excites people enough to go see it, but if my moviegoing habits return to something like they were before, I probably will. Best see what this thing is all about and get that over with.
An energy crisis on Earth has led humanity to head out into the stars for resources, particularly the not-exactly-subtly named substance unobtainium. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is on such an expedition. He’s a marine who lost the use of his legs, and he can get them back but it’s expensive. To that end, he joins an expedition to Pandora that his late, academic brother was supposed to take. The natives there, the ten foot or so tall Na’vi, are resistant to humanity’s requests, and academics there, led by Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), have a way to enter a grown Na’vi body and attempt to interact with and study them. These bodies are keyed to certain genetic types, so the body is only really good for a member of the Sully family even though Jake doesn’t possess any of the skills that a good academic would have. Sure, he’s overjoyed to walk again in a new body, but he doesn’t know much about the Na’vi and their language and culture.
That may be an advantage. The Na’vi are familiar with these “dreamwalkers” as they call these human avatars, possibly because when the avatar body loses consciousness, the human disconnects from that body and their mind returns to their human body. Jake makes a big mess of things and needs to be saved by a Na’vi princess (for lack of a better word) named Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). The planet itself is made up of interconnected wildlife, and it seems to approve of Jake enough that Neytiri takes him to her home village where he parents, the political and spiritual leaders of the tribe, decree she will teach him their ways. Jake actually seems to fit in and like life there, learning a lot and wondering at the planet as a whole. Too bad his superiors, whether represented by corporate greed in the form of a corporate administrator (Giovanni Ribisi) or a more bloodthirsty commanding officer (Stephen Lang), don’t have the interest or patience to wait for Jake to maybe get some results on those unobtainium rights. Those folks didn’t bring all those soldiers and weapons out to Pandora to, you know, not use them.
Side note: there was a part of me that really wondered why Jake would, as expected, fall in love with Neytiri. They’re, you know, different species even if her basic biology appears to be somewhat human in shape. Then I remembered furries are a thing. Then again, I was wondering why the company made clothes in the same style as the humans wore for the ones who got Na’vi avatar bodies. That detail kinda amused me.
OK, side note over, how was the movie? Fairly cliched. I knew going into it that this was basically Dances with Wolves in space. A white man goes into an unknown land, decides he’d rather be a member of the indigenous tribe there after learning their ways and language, falls in love, and then fights with that group to protect them. If anything, Dances with Wolves at least shows the white man needs to be rescued by the natives at the end, and the white savior narrative is both not as blatant and an ultimate failure according to American history. Here, writer/director James Cameron doesn’t really say anything new or revolutionary. It’s allegory, and it’s obvious allegory, with all the subtly of a rampaging water buffalo, for everything that’s got a bug up the director’s butt, be it the War on Terror or environmental destruction. Those are important issues, but let’s not pretend Cameron is being clever in the ways he’s hiding those ideas in here. It’s obvious. Sometimes obvious is necessary, but it’s still obvious.
As for Jake as a character, he’s not terribly interesting aside from the fact he’s special since he can do things even other Na’vi can’t, like tame the wildest flying beast possible, unite the Na’vi tribes, and get the planet itself to fight back. But the Na’vi themselves didn’t really interest me all that much. That I can chalk up to the fact that the movie seems to exist mostly to show off the effects through sheer spectacle. Why should I care about Jake or Neytiri or anyone else here when they feel more like stock characters at best? True, Cameron can still direct a great action sequence, and the battle at the end of the movie is still pretty spectacular, but I’m not exactly dying with curiosity to learn more about this world the way I was, say, a certain galaxy far, far away or any number of other sci-fi franchises. In a sense, Avatar is kinda like Baywatch: hugely popular, but there’s nothing about it that seems to stick out in terms of character and storytelling. Instead, there’s this world of Pandora, stuff happens, and then the movie is over. It’s not as if Cameron can’t create worlds that prompt curiosity. He sure did with the Terminator movies. But if this was just to show what special effects can do, then watching it at home, no matter how good my TV is, wasn’t much of an option. I’ll see the sequel most likely in a theater. Then I can decide for myself how much I want to hang around Pandora, especially if it is the sort of experience that really only works on the biggest screen possible to immerse the viewer in that world of color and animals with USB ports.
Grade: C
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