Copyright 2010 Ben S. Pollock<\/small><\/p>\n
Show me your hands. Good, they’re clean. Thumb check, everyone. Twitching and ready to turn up or down? Yes, it\u2019s movie day.<\/p>\n
I haven\u2019t caught any stories that note James Cameron is the kind of director who sometimes drops into a shot a wink at a movie that inspired him or relates to that particular scene. The homages in his Avatar<\/em><\/a>, though, were the first thing that caught my mind. My attention, not my mind, stayed arrested by the latest in fantasy visuals. But every day since I saw the epic, its memory grows sourer.<\/p>\n Avatar\u2019s beginning, where hero Jake Scully (Sam Worthington) awakes and sums up his immediate circumstance, looks and sounds similar to Martin Sheen\u2019s first morning in Apocalypse Now<\/a><\/em>. Impressive, until one realizes that Cameron inverts the plot and theme of Coppola\u2019s 1979 retelling of Joseph Conrad\u2019s Heart of Darkness<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n You can see elements of many recent war, fantasy or ptrek movies in Avatar<\/em>, and that\u2019s one of the fun things about it. It\u2019s either Cameron ptipping his hat in respect, or there\u2019s only so many ways a militaristic fantasy like this can go. The show has Transformer<\/em> like robots, and there\u2019s several pties to PTop Gun<\/a><\/em>, hence the ptitle of this Brick<\/strong>. Ptop Gun<\/em> has jets, not running and flying horses. Avatar<\/em>\u2019s planet (or moon) Pandora has an assortment of ground-hugging creatures, furry or scaly, and the winged cold- and warm-blooded creatures have some pterodactyl<\/a> in them. My Beloved saw links to Dances with Wolves<\/a><\/em> and the Matrix<\/a> movies. I do advise paying the $2 extra to see Avatar<\/em> with 3D glasses; the spectacle is a mental and nearly a physical roller coaster.<\/p>\n Now that I\u2019ve dismounted and my head has stopped spinning, I’m mad.<\/p>\n We can\u2019t go further without trying a summary. Way in the future, the (apparently) American government runs a long-term expedition to Pandora to help a corporation get a needed mineral. This\u00a0world is populated with almost-like-earth animals and people, the Na\u2019vi. [Pandora presumably is not a Na\u2019vi word.] The project has a scientific component led by Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) in a Stanford T-shirt (the actress is an alum). The military side is led by Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang). Jake is in between them, a Marine replacement for his Ph.D. brother who died. Avatars are test-tube grown Na\u2019vi (very large test tubes), each of which is controlled by a human in a trance. Jake\u2019s not one to move much anyway, having lost the use of his legs from previous military service. The corporation would prefer the Na\u2019vi\u2019s cooperation in mining the mineral but has the government\u2019s permission to mow down the slender, tall, blue Na\u2019vi like it did American Indians. The colonel is impatient, while Grace has grown to love the people and their planet. Jake\u2019s avatar heads in, as a spy, and \u201cgoes native.\u201d Will he help the indigenous people?<\/p>\n That wasn\u2019t so bad. Not quite as long as the original text of Where the Wild Things Are<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n Others have found racism in Avatar<\/em>. It\u2019s not. Cameron is using broad outlines of familiar history, that\u2019s all. But it is a wonder why evangelical Christians aren\u2019t up in arms over the movie\u2019s spiritual component. The humans express no religion at all, except perhaps in cursing (which like sex adds realism, don\u2019t you know). The Na\u2019vi are fervent in a made-for-Avatar<\/em> animism-slash-Buddhism, worshiping the spirits of the land and air (which humans can\u2019t breathe) so far as the former, with reincarnation as a nod to the latter. I\u2019m not offended, except at Cameron\u2019s theological shortcuts. But why aren\u2019t other viewers? The \u201cForce<\/a>\u201d of the Star Wars stories is similar window-dressing but the way George Lucas used that \u2014 with fewer narrative explanations, by the way \u2014 was both more minimal and more believable, and could be integrated into Western religions: \u201cUse the Force, Luke,\u201d means little more than trust your senses, skills and upbringing, and believe good is better than evil and can triumph.<\/p>\n Of course the Na\u2019vi would have a back story including a belief system, because that is seen as helping the audience. (Good stories didn’t always need added psychological profiles.) Like popcorn, this show likely will pass through children with little absorption. But books and other movies have been burned for less.<\/p>\n My problem is its theme. There\u2019s three routes for movie themes. The first is the expected, explicitly presenting a story\u2019s underlying message by plot turn, often with one character explaining it to another \u2014 Hollywood feels obligated to do this and almost by definition indies don\u2019t. [A right-by-us moral is how R-rated violence gets a PG-13.] The second is subtlety, with a moral hinted at, for viewers who can\u2019t leave without one. [Old kids\u2019 cartoons and new sex comedies get by with an absence of morals.] And the third is demonstrated in flicks like this: the movie is so fun, who cares about the empty-head extremism it espouses?<\/p>\n From the start, much is made of Jake\u2019s lack of intelligence. He is an empty vessel, and the question is how much new knowledge will he retain, as his life will depend on it. He knows he\u2019s opposite in smarts from his late brother. Grace regrets it, while the colonel sees Jake as a perfect soldier (Marine here, actually). [Grace is so tough she smokes in the sealed human habitat \u2014 go figure.] Jake gains the trust of the Na\u2019vi. Before him, Grace\u2019s avatar has been accepted. Grace\u2019s avatar is missionary-like, teaching fascinated Na\u2019vi children English and so on. Jake starts to learn the Na\u2019vi language and begins a romance with a Na\u2019vi princess. He comes to be repelled by the greed displayed by the conquering capitalism of the government, military and corporate interests.<\/p>\n We in the audience are to root for him, and this makes it opposite of Apocalypse Now<\/em>, despite Cameron\u2019s nod toward it. Col. Kurtz (a late, memorable Marlon Brando role) has gone native and rules a Southeast Asian tribe despotically. Sheen\u2019s character, Capt. Willard, is sent to stop Kurtz.<\/p>\n Avatar<\/em> is anti-intellectual: Book-learning is a waste. Ignorance allows unerring instinct. Science and reasoning distract. Does that remind anyone of any recent national political candidates?<\/p>\n Yes, one of the dichotomies of America is a passion for the application of education versus gut decisions. That makes Sarah Palin popular and before her George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. Being a sort of savant though is the perception they gave; I\u2019m not too sure but that all three of these folks are darn smart.<\/p>\n What\u2019s with Avatar,<\/em> though, is that its message is left-leaning: respectful of indigenous peoples, environmentally careful (the U.S. expedition is happy to destroy Pandora to get the mineral), with lots of chanting and hugs. When the Na\u2019vi get in touch with their roots, it\u2019s for mystical healing gathered\u00a0’round the base of a tree.<\/p>\n Republicans have been successful by pairing the know-nothing element with the savvy: Reagan and George H.W. Bush, George II with Dick Cheney, and Palin with Naval Academy graduate John McCain.<\/p>\n Lefties, the movie shows, can find value in tossing away manuals. It\u2019s the essence what can be called New Age beliefs and practices, which often use snippets of Eastern religions. When Democrats have a popular goof, they tend to lose races by not pairing them off like Republicans. Democratic know-nothings tend to run and win local\/state races.<\/p>\n Impressionable movie goers of any age might be presented with ignorance as an ideal, but wouldn\u2019t balance and contrast strengthen the story?<\/p>\n It\u2019s repugnant that the liberals push a blank-headed seeker as the epitome of how to save the universe from destruction caused by greed. It\u2019s one of those cases where the left and right are so extreme they reach around and touch.<\/p>\nGoing undercover<\/h4>\n
‘Jarhead’ kind of demeaning?<\/h4>\n
New Age same as the Old Age<\/h4>\n