Avatar--The New Religion

Rating: 5/10 (19 December 2009)

My score of 50 is an average of two scores. On an artistic level, it is stunningly beautiful, not only in the scenery and variety of life, but also in the originality of it's characters from language and mannerisms down even to the "costumes". In all this it is an absolute 10.
But...
From the very opening scene, the political agenda is apparent, immediately deriding as it does, the evil corporations from Earth. Not only is it simple minded, it descends as the movie progresses into the theater of the absurd where corporations, capitalism, private enterprise and technology are inherently and completely bad, while nature and using no technology beyond a bow and arrow (except for the occasional appropriated machine gun) is good--with Mother Nature contradictorily providing the supernatural magic to make up for what technology doesn't provide the American Indian like aboriginals. The dichotomy becomes so over the top by the end, that the film's beauty is completely overwhelmed by the ugliness of its irrational hack job of a message. The only thing missing was an ending with some stupid sentimental gesture like throwing a priceless gem into the ocean--which is effectively what he's done with the talent he (or somebody) obviously has.
This movie actually "reveals" the primitive worship of supernatural-Nature as a religion--a religion as irrational and based in blind faith as any other "revealed" religion that has preceded it.