The tagline says it all: Enter the World

Rating: 6/10 (21 February 2010)

In 1999, the Wachowski brothers made a science fiction action movie which changed the face of action for a good five years as suddenly now every movie had to have this new thing called bullet-time, which is ironic since bullet-time is essentially proto-cinematic and the first "movement tests" of Muybridge circa 1880 were the exact same thing as bullet-time. The theme of The Matrix was essentially technophobic despite its game-changing technological spectacle because it said outright, "Don't take that blue pill, get out of dream land and live in the real world. The sucky, barren, survivalist real world that is so much more worth saving than your tasty steak-filled dreamland." Exactly ten years later Cameron comes out with a movie about saving the environment and the killing off of our connection with the earth, but the entire narrative is developed through the titular thematic component, avatars. And no, not just the Na'Vi avatars. EVERYBODY in this movie has an avatar. The big bad meany boss commando is never more comfortable unless he's in his Cameron-favorite Mechwarrior. The Na'Vi download themselves right into the creatures of the forest. The ore-miner general uses his corporation as his avatar. The problem is that through all of this downloading, virtual recreation, and multiple personalities is that the theme of re-connecting to the world gets lost in the pure desire to log into a different outward appearance of one's self, which is never deconstructed, but in fact reinforced by the Na'Vi's own spiritual uploading of personalities between bodies. The weird thing is that the whole idea that the world of Pandora is a giant synaptic brain really never seems to be of consequence until the battle at the end, except that we're just supposed to believe in it based on what characters say, not what is shown. Whereas The Matrix makes it's downloading program quite clear from the, uh, intro screen. You know, that famous intro screen? Pandora never really makes its presence known except for an action sequence. I'm just sayin'.
The only two quotes that mattered: "I see you now." And, "Now real life felt more like the dream." These are the rough equivalents to The Matrix's "Why do my eyes hurt?" and "Stop trying to hit me and hit me." Therefore, as much as I'm not really as critical of other people about Avatar's storytelling and themes (it's all archetypical and not worth getting upset over or endless comparisons to similar story lines), I just feel it's necessary to point out that wherein the medium is the message, the message of Avatar is "Log in." It's a technophiliac celebration of virtual reality, and functionally so. I do not, in fact, consider that to be a negative thing or really criticize that approach, I just feel with the amount of attention this movie is getting, I have not really heard that acknowledged. So going to those people who are sad 'cause Pandora ain't real--it is, in fact, functionally dialectic to the experience of the film. Wherein fan culture develops through cultural events such as this film, I see Avatar as predominantly an invitation, and it's one that the world has seemed to accept. So now that the game has changed and 3D is the blockbuster motif, it is time to start reappraising fantasy worlds and figure out how to immerse the audience into truly alternative realities than simply escapist worlds.
--PolarisDiB