Not as unique as you think, but it's still an amazing ride

Rating: 9/10 (14 February 2010)

If you know your history and you movie-making history, this is a simple concept brought to you with beautiful imagery and excellent story telling, which is why I marked my review as having spoilers.
I should preface this by saying I have purposely not read anyone else's reviews or listened to reviews of the movie before I saw it. I did not want to have anything spoiled, myself, and I hate reading critics reviews anyway.
The simple story being retold, for the most part, is the fictionalized story of John Smith and Pocahantas, much like Disney's adaptation, but not as "preachy." Pocahantas, for Disney, was not nearly as captivating as Avatar, and James Cameron's vision makes all the difference.
Clearly, this movie is a depiction the "white man" intruding upon the land of the American Indians. It's not difficult to see the similarities. In fact, I'm thoroughly convinced it was done on purpose. There is still a deep guilt that many Americans feel for what has been done in the past to the peoples who were on this land when we arrived.
The only fault I can see in the movie is that Avatar seems to make an attempt at atonement for those sins by punishing the white man for his arrogance, which is why the movie has earned 9 instead of 10 stars for me.
Atonement in this way should not be the goal. We Americans today are no more guilty for events that happened in our country's past any more than the people who live in other nations are guilty for the crimes against humanity made by their ancestors (e.g. Nazi Germany). How we live our lives and treat others based on that history is what truly defines us. Trying to make people feel guilty about historical events is about as unrealistic as trying to make a five year-old feel guilty about a parent who makes the bad decision to rob a bank.
In viewing a movie like Avatar, it is important that we remember our history as well as take the time with our older children seeing it with us and make sure they understand the meaning behind it. This is a story taken from events in our own past being played out in a fictional future that does not have the luxury of America's history lessons to inform its human characters.
No one can say what our world would be like if past events did not play out the way that they did, but if we make sure to keep this story in the context of simply learning from our mistakes and keeping them in our memory so that they do not happen again, I would say that James Cameron has definitely succeeded in doing at least that, despite the smaller annoyance of a misguided guilt trip. ;-)