Nothing new but the CGI Smurf-elves...

Rating: 6/10 (20 May 2010)

Well, I just hit the halfway point of Avatar. (It came out today for rental from Netflix.) While I shan't deny the effects are outstanding, I have to say it's most derivative and manipulative move I've ever seen. Derivative because I see direct steals from Michael Mann's "The Last of the Mohicans," the obvious Disney "Pocahontas" rip-off, "Pathfinder," "Titanic," and at least a dozen others. There really isn't anything original so far. Cameron even steals from himself, with Michelle Rodriguez reprising Jenette Goldstein's "Vasquez" part from "Aliens" (and why is it that the the kick-ass military chick in Cameron films is always Hispanic and has a tough but submissive male partner?); the military exoskeletons taking on the powerloader part from "Aliens", and of course, Sigourney Weaver playing Ripley with a PhD.
It's manipulative in that everything about Pandora is beautiful and organic; while everything about the the humans is ugly and technological. One can't help but sympathize with the Smurf-elves: they're beautiful, they are one with the fauna (literally, with those built-in USB jacks in their hair), they give back to the spirit of the land, etc. The humans, however, are for the most part ugly, scarred, self-absorbed, ignorant, and pitiless, and you just know that Cameron is gonna have the big bad Earthers try to trash the pretty Smurf-elves before this movie is over. One can only surmise that the purity of the Smurf-elves will overcome, albeit abetted by the creatures of the land they are so close to spiritually.
I hope something interesting happens soon, else I fear I will lose interest. In fact, I guess I already have, as I've stopped to write this...
Update: I've finished the movie, and I am not too terribly surprised that I nailed it. Cameron hasn't really made an original movie since Aliens- everything has pretty much been rehashing his same tired themes over and over again. More unfortunately, the blissninnies (thank you for that great word, Col. Jeff Cooper!) all want to accept the civilization=bad, nature=good, as evinced by the misguided Global Warming alarmists.
As teenage movie fodder, this sits right up there with Pearl Harbor, Titanic, Indiana Jones 4, and Transformers 2 as a movie that will make more money than anyone can believe, and still be little more than smoke and mirrors. What is sad about that is the people who love it will never realize how sad and shallow they really are.
..Joe