Hope the sequel lives up to the first part

Rating: 9/10 (30 January 2018)

This was a film of two very distinct parts that reminded me of Waterworld. Part one presents a fascinating new world and one learns about its internal logic. Part two is a standard violent US action movie.
The opening part of Avatar is a beautiful film of an alien world that exists on a spiritual level that is beyond the comprehension of the humans sent to exploit the planet's mineral wealth. Consequently, the human efforts to subjugate the population can be seen as the vile and ruthless commercial exploitation that it really is. The willfull destruction of the natives' tree home is one of the most shocking movie moments I have ever seen. Soldier Blue's massacre of Amerindian women and children was considered shocking at the time - and still is, given that it really happened - but one would have hoped that humans reaching out to the stars would've evolved beyond such base drivers as conquest and resource exploitation.
I suppose violence is inevitable in responding to creatures with such base motives and it is to the credit of a handful of humans that they take the other side (traitors to the human cause... really?), but the unequal struggle between primitive and space-age technology was a tragic waste of so many lives.
I won't give away they key about how the tide turned, but in demonstrating their superior ethics and allowing the defeated humans to safely leave the planet, the natives paved the way for the sequel. Sadly, that sequel is most likely to be based on the return of humans with overwhelming force, hellbent on extracting bloodthirsty revenge. I really do hope that Cameron manages to come up with something more spiritually uplifting in Avatar 2.