The Lion is Back to Roar Again.

Rating: 8/10 (4 May 2010)

When all is said and done, when you look at Avatar as a movie apart from its social phenomenon, you are supposed to find this a parable for Western politics. Cameron clearly does. Indeed, implicating computer technology for its central role in man-made destruction, Avatar nevertheless utilizes the very same to create some of its innovative and hugely influential visuals. The bulk of Cameron's work displays an apparent distrust of technological advancement which is peculiarly at variance with his elaborate deployment of state-of-the-art cinematic technology. His post-Vietnam and post-feminist action epics---Aliens, the Terminator movies, True Lies---draw upon both technological and nuclear anxiety in the midst of Reagan's resurgent Cold War politics.
Avatar itself is fundamentally hailed for being a technological advancement. It is an exceedingly, outlandishly gigantic visual experience unlike anything we've seen before. It has an explicit Green and anti-war message. The writings on the wall dictate that it launch a worshipping faddism. It contains such visual embellishment that it surely sweetens repeated viewings. It even authors a new language to which I doubt human beings can do justice. It is the quintessential event movie, one of those films you feel you need to see to keep up with social discourse. Setting Napoleonic, Bond villain-esque humans against virtuous extraterrestrial rebels is a hopeful U-turn of the Aliens stencil, but perhaps requires Paul Verhoeven's keen comic-book intensity to drive the reversal into real subversion.
The human analogy on the lush, Earth-like moon of Pandora is a ten-foot-tall blue-skinned species of sentient humanoids called the Na'vi. An Earth corporation is mining a valuable mineral known with mystifying ambiguity as unobtanium. But for us humans to brave outside of our landing domain, we use avatars, Na'vi doppelgangers grown naturally and mind-controlled by humans who lay down wired up unconscious on the ship, which is where the 3-D element becomes more than just an ogling tool and takes on a metaphysical effect. While functioning as avatars, we sense and feel like Na'vi, and have all the same physical skill. The most interesting element of this is how the hero is a paraplegic. Rather than being a self-evident badass, he's been recruited since he's a genetic match for his dead twin brother, for whom an expensive avatar was constructed. In avatar state he is exhilarated by his magnified ability to walk again, not to mention being ten feet tall, and his compensation for this assignment he will be given a very expensive operation to recover movement in his legs. Theoretically he's good to go, for if his avatar is harmed, his human body is elsewhere.
The Na'vi survive in their world by having a deep relationship with it, living as one with nature, and being thoughtful about the creatures they share with. In this and various other ways they symbolize Native Americans. Like them, they discipline another species to have them at their disposal, like giant flying dragon-like creatures. On that admirable note, I found the significance tapering into impatience nearing its obligatory colossal climactic showdown between humans and aliens. After all a character has done that has betrayed the noble Na'vi, returning to them with a demonstration that he has tamed a supposedly untamable dragon-like super-creature, all is forgiven. It's just too sexy for them to stay mad anymore.
Indeed the bigger it all is, the cockier. Every bit of James Cameron's muscle seems to go into making our eyes bulge and genuflect in worship of the 3-D dazzle on the screen. On one hand, it's an outstandingly accessible exhibition of defying capitalism and championing the up-hill battle for the defense of nature, but done with mostly stale dialogue and boilerplate characterization. Essentially, it's a $237 million, 162-minute montage of cardboard allegories and plot devices, made by putting a bunch of screenplays in a blender. But we still say Wow! And why not? If you can get a theater full of people here in the American Midwest to flock to and cheer for America getting conquered by an indigenous tribe in war, then you've got one amazing work of spectacle. It's the experience, more than the allegory, that's worth a nod.