BurlFilm

James Cameron – Writer, Director, Producer

2009

Sigourney Weaver, Sam Worthington, and a bunch of digital people

Also starring the general from Starship Troopers (playing the general from Starship Troopers) and that guy who was Phoebe’s boyfriend on Friends.

The reviews for this movie, at first glance, are very strong. However, it is slight of hand, a technological magic trick. The film is awful. The plot is a series of borrowed components from other films sandwiched in a giant, sad cliché.

What is basically comes down to is this (do not read if you have not seen film):

1st world industrialized men seek to relentlessly exploit perfect bio world and – here it comes – build an open pit mine directly under the ‘world tree’ that has a mystical ‘Gaia’ relationship to the chanting, singing, bow-and-arrow wielding indigenous people. Oh my goodness. But wait, you ask: where are the unicorns and the Chinese pandas? And it is true – Cameron did leave out these two essential components of a puerile bio-fantasy. There are no digital rainbows. There is however the obligatory white ‘rebel’ who becomes an aboriginal person and leads the battle against the evil colonial industrialized society. At the last minute, he drops his bow and arrow and switches back to machine guns and grenades, to make sure that the whole point of the ‘magical oneness of the Gaia planet being superior to destructive technology’ is completely undermined. It’s embarrassing to watch.

The digital effects look good. The forest scenes are beautiful , and the soft lighting effects are very nice. This is what has fooled our gullible movie-reviewing public. It’s easy to ignore the horrifically juvenile plot and concentrate on the advances in synthetic scene making. In part, this is negative praise. We’ve been inundated for so long with very poor looking CGI that good CGI is like a breathe of fresh air. However it is still just an effect. The visual appearance of The Fantastic Mr. Fox is at least as appealing,  but Mr. Fox is wonderfully written, and could carry itself in any mode of representation. Avatar dies without the computer tricks. The film therefore leaves a strong visual impression, and this is its strength. It is unfortunate that it is insulting poor in so many other areas.

Avatar also tends to borrow pieces from other films (not necessarily good films or good pieces) and cobbles them together within the 3rd rate narrative. The military commander – a poorly exaggerated drill sergeant character – is lifted absolutely intact from Starship Troopers. It is the same actor, in the same roll. Starship troopers found some of it’s appeal in the fact that it was clearly intended as a sort of plastic parody of itself – it was supposed to be a bit corny. But Avatar is supposed to be a kind of mystical moral tale. This ridiculously one dimensional character shows the absolute banality of Cameron’s ‘moral’ position. Stealing a character from Starship Troopers and giving it less depth – now that is a cinematic achievement.

The robot exoskeleton that said military people use is a direct copy of the loading bay exoskeleton that Sigourney Weaver used in Aliens (which Cameron also directed). The Helicopter/airplanes are also a direct copy – I believe from the ‘thopers in Dune. One gets the impression that the hackneyed plot is well paired with a theatrical landscape that lacks an internal consistency of it’s own, and so is left to borrow components from previous films and graft them onto the Avatar plot, to help support it in it’s weakness.

It’s strange that the film allows itself to so easily far into such awful stereotypes. The Aliens are called ‘aboriginals’ instead of ‘inhabitants’ like any other star trek film would describe them. It must be because they are non-industrialized – like Africans, or Mayans, or Native North Americans prior to the white man’s invasion. It is, like all the individual characters, a one-dimensional typecast. Making them aliens just allowed Cameron to bundle up all aboriginal earth people into one giant one-with-nature stereotype, complete with a ‘tree of life’ and a mystical connective force joining all aboriginal people to their natural environment. The bad earth people have no such connection, but a few of the scientists are allowed to join the ‘good’ aboriginals’ when all the ‘bad’ earth people are sent packing. It’s a juvenile fantasy: the military men are bad and stupid, and send un-armoured infantrymen in against natives who are armed basically with poisoned arrows (great plan!). The political people are stupid and narrow-minded, interested only in profit. It makes George W Bush look like a master of international diplomacy, and 1990’s GM look like a environmentally conscious not-for-profit. The scientists give you a few moments of peace as there is some early indication that their work will provide a bridge between the Earths technocrats and the Alien Gaia life-force, but this too is obliterated as Cameron chooses the quicker, simpler-minded path of an invented mystical force of nature to compete with the already dead stereotype of the industrialized planet destroyer.

In his final scene, Cameron has our converted earth hero give up his earth body forever and actually become an aboriginal in body. Before, he was ‘good’ only in spirit. Science gave him the simulacrum of aboriginality (that is the Avatar), but the mystical lifer force makes it happen for real. The story of biological determinism is complete.

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The short take is as follows:

It’s a story of biological determinism: the aboriginals are environmental and good, the white earth people destroy the environment and are bad. A bridge is attempted by the ‘good’ earth scientists, but that quickly is revealed as futile. The true solution is a magical force of nature which overcomes the evil white man. Oddly enough, it does this by reverting at the last minute to machine guns and grenades. It is helped when the aboriginals make a plea (in English) to the tree, which mystically sends all the forest animals to help in the counter-attack against the 23rd century armed fighting force. And – this is your 19th century colonial clincher – the good aboriginals defeat the bad white men when lead by a white man who has switched sides. The continuity flaw of the aboriginals allowing a representative of their known enemy to lead them against this enemy is solved by the film’s re-occurring crutch – mysticism (in this case, the seeds from the tree of life gravitate towards our hero as they fall from tree). The ‘Avatar’ itself  is highest form of the ‘evil’ industrialized anti-environmental society: he looks like a member of the ‘good’ environmental pre-industrialized society, and through this comes to understand their moral and spiritual superiority. After a twenty minute moral struggle, he reverts to his spiritual pre-industrialized roots and turns against his forefathers. With the help of mystical world forces and some well placed explosives, he defeats his technocrat father and embraces his (alien) earth mother. Jean-Jacques Rousseau wins! The noble savage is victorious! Rasputin wins! Mysticism over technology! Science is given credit for good intention, even though it too is futile! The planet will save us, mankind, from the terrible evil of our enemy – ourselves!

Yes Mr. Cameron – your Academy Award awaits.