Homo Sapiens and Greed

Rating: 10/10 (31 December 2009)

I was very moved by this film. I saw it as an allegory of what the whites did to the natives in North America, South America, Australia, New Zea land and Tasmania (especially there)--almost complete genocide for the sake of monetary profit by corporate magnates. And since corporations are the real power in developed countries: they have carte blanche to kill as needed. They usually are clever in creating a body of lies that help to dehumanize the victims. (Easier to kill 'em).
The way to drive such a principle home, which means into the heart AND the head, is to show both sides. So we see the natives, Navi, in their culture which includes art, mythology, dance, music, and meaningful rituals. You can come to love any culture (even white European) if you are exposed to this side of humans. And in so doing, it would become horrible to wipe them out for the sake of a fat bank account back home. That is what Cameron does. He gets you on the side of the humanity, in this case, the Navi. (We already know about the dark side of homo Sapiens but it is well sketched in here by the mercenary grunts. I think DANCES WITH WOLVES tells much the same story. There the corporate element stays in the background which was OK for that film.
I was like a little boy visiting a heaven-like world with "people" who were conscious of other things besides money and power. In the back of my mind I wondered that any race could be that harmonious. North American "Indians" treated other tribes horribly in most areas like on the the Plains and conducted raids and wars where there was much cruelty. (See the film THE BLACK ROBE, for a New England version of this.) Were the Navi like that? And what if they were? I guess the question is greed. Given the means would some Navi have exterminated other tribes and gotten rich? They didn't seem to need to be rich.
So are all intelligent bipedal creatures alike? I once heard a theory about why there are no space travelers from beyond--if they became as intelligent as we, they'd also encounter the same jealousies and greed that we have, thus preventing them from combining their resources and cooperating--the infighting would bar them from space travel.
A wonderful epic film. The love story was poetic. The creatures were beautiful and scary. So were the plants. The hero started off a klutz but grew on me. And I liked hearing Wes Studi's voice again. He was the "bad" Indian in DANCES as he was in LAST OF THE MAHICANS.