Review: Avatar 3D

Warning: Spoilers Within.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy James Cameron's latest blockbuster Avatar. An exercise in how much movie money can buy, he successfully brings to life Pandora, a distant moon full of hostile yet beautiful alien fauna and flora. It is both grand in scale and scope, and brought together with near seemless 3D and CGI. It is nothing short of visually-arresting. In this respect, Cameron has set the bar very high. In terms of plot, it is generic. As social commentary, the movie falls flat.

Ostensibly Avatar is an anti-imperialist film with an environmental-bent, a pedantic exercise in nativism versus technology, feeling versus thinking. In this case, the natives are the Na’vi, an indigenous nine-foot tall humanoid species whose culture bears more than a striking resemblance to many of Earth’s indigenous tribes. Those who can, speak an almost pidgin-English. The Na’vi are presented in their “natural state,” which in this case means living happily and harmoniously under the greater rubric of biological-planet as neurosystem. The Na’vi, apparently after repeated contact with humans, have consequently declared they don't need or want human culture or technology, instead favoring moral harmony and sustainability. To hammer this home, Cameron juxtaposes Pandoran ecological niches meeting the needs of the Na’vi with that of humans who have to create what they need. The film demands the viewer sympathize with the Na'vi, and to decry technology and the wanton environmental destruction that comes with.

Yet, as superficially anti-imperialist as Avatar appears, Cameron manages to come back and slap the viewer in the face by deftly weaving in the story of Jake Sulley as white savior. Sulley is a parapalegic marine tasked by a huge corporate entity with assuming control of his deceased scientist twin-brother's ‘avatar’, a remotely controlled test-tube Na'vi-human hybrid. These business interests basically want Sully to play the role of anthropologist, engaging in participant-observation research learning everything there is to know about the Na'vi. Eventually, they hope, humans will be able to mine for unobtainium, the immensely valuable mineral and reason for their presence on Pandora, without having to dodge the natives’ poison-tipped arrows. Apparently the bow and arrow is literally universal. Who knew? But I quibble.

After Sulley plays the bit of stupid white man (thank you, Nobody) and is saved by his future girlfriend, he is treated near-reverentially when ‘spirits’, seeds of a great tree, float down upon him to bask in his awesomeness. Eventually he falls in love with the Na’vi and their ways and goes native. Then the humans attack. Then he becomes the great motivator, convincing the Na’vi to channel some self-preservation and avoid their own annihilation. He also becomes the great warrior, conquering the biggest bird in the sky and consequently handing technology its ass.

Despite its condescending tone, I still have to admit I enjoyed the experience of Avatar. James Cameron successfully created an environment that is as much a character as the Na'vi and humans themselves. The irony is he did so through expanding the limits of our own technology, creating a film that questions our own relationships with technology. I doubt that was intentional though.