Visual Epic - Independent Day in Reverse

Rating: 8/10 (11 January 2010)

So for once it is us, the Humans, who invade another planet! Tired of these powerful aliens who come and wreck our planet and treat us like vermin. For once, stress that comes from the prospect of being eliminated and toyed with is not on us.
Just for that this inter-galactic action adventure is worth a view.
As someone noted, this movie is not a deep intellectual exercise.
The themes are all old and one could say this movie had elements from movies such as "Dances with Wolves" (Soldier switches sides once he is exposed to the enemy and empathizes with them), "10000 BC" (Walk through the jungle with dangerous exotic creatures everywhere), "Apocalypto" (The warriors), "Last of the Mohicans" (The jungle, the warriors, the native tribes, the romantic vibe", and so on and so forth.
There have even been Star Trek Next Generation episodes, where the space-ship was actually a living creature! So from that perspective there really was nothing new. What was new was what I noted above, for once we get to be the aggressors, albeit the evil ones. Feels good to be superior in technology to at least one alien entity.
The Navi people are shown to be child like Innocent in one sense, very spiritual as well as they are one with nature, but also brutal in the sense on moments notice the leader of the tribe was going to decide whether the "Avatar" lives or not.
What is hard to believe is that human consciousness and morality would reverse going forward. With all the opposition and Wars to invasions, unless the "un-obtanium" was curing some kind of plague, it is impossible for me to believe that humans in general would turn away from private looters raiding and brutalizing this alien world. One could draw a comparison to Halliburton led wars to acquire oil, but it is not really same. Navi would have to have done something horrible to humans, in order for even looters to come up with justification for uprooting and brutalizing them. Since they are incapable of threatening Earth, such a case would have been hard to make.
I also feel, no matter what, the way Navi recognized that 'Avatars' were in their words, "souls in false bodies", they would be so comfortable with the idea and just accept them, and the leader of the tribe would appoint his daughter to educate the 'Avatar' in their way of life. Why? Why wouldn't they believe they are spies and here to endanger them? Anyhow, James Cameron knows how to make the movie exciting enough for us to enjoy and want to see it multiple times! Good entertainment value and gives something to think about, even though it doesn't have emotional content to move you, it is thrilling enough to enjoy and a visual spectacle!