Anything for that cheap financing —and those VAST
market favors —-eh Jim?

ANYTHING!

SPOILERS!

- All the characters are one-dimensional and well-worn cliches. The insane military sargent bent on unthinking violence. The amoral corporatist only interested in exploitation and profit and willing to do anything to ensure it (i.e. Paul Reiser in another Cameron flick: Aliens), the gaia-worshiping, respect-for-the-land, communal natives. There isn’t a single character in this movie who has any depth or complexity. I’ve seen saturday morning cartoons with deeper character development.

- the plot is completely derivative and you see all the turns coming. The film isn’t merely a paeon to Dances With Wolves…it IS Dances With Wolves. And Dances With Wolves was an over-long, preachy pedantic film too. Mixed in is the mindless enviornmentalism of Ferngully, the ridiculous natives-with-paleolithic-technology defeat the technologically-advanced-space-faring people from Return of the Jedi, and the feminism and Gaia-mysticism of Disney’s Pochohantus. There is nothing original in this movie. You know Jake is going to get lost and seperated from the group. You know he is going to start out helping the humans but experience a conversion as he goes through the totally-deriviative manhood rituals. You know there is going to be a member of the native tribe that resents Jake but eventually comes to be an ally and a friend. You know Jake is going to win his way back into good graces by conquring the big red dragon introduced earlier in the movie. Even the ‘moving your spirit into the avatar’ is telegraphed with the failed attempt with Grace. There wasn’t a single plot device or plot resolution that I couldn’t have told you was coming after the first 15 minutes. After you get past the stunning visuals (which are certainly stunning), you see a movie pitched at the level of 8 year olds. Captian Planet episodes were more interesting than this story.

- the political references are annoying and take you out of the story even if you’ve managed to somewhat engross yourself in it. I’ve been amused reading some of the above responses which actually suggest this isn’t a big F-U to George Bush. First, Cameron has explicitly already admitted this. Second, seriously, how can you miss it? From the seargant’s speech about combatting “terrorists” to the reference to a “shock and awe campaign” to the unobtanium = oil analogy…Cameron couldn’t have delivered this message less subtly if he had put a big neon sign in the background saying “George Bush Sucks!” Really, this isn’t even debatable. They are as annoying as the were when Lucas horned them into his Star Wars prequels. What it is about the Hollywood Left that it feels the need to propagandize for partisan beliefs is beyond me. Which isn’t to say that art can’t have a political message. I don’t like the nature-mysticism-environmental nonsense message…but at least it is contextual to the story. The Bush stuff isn’t…and indeed it takes away from the anti-corporatist message that Cameron starts will.

All in all, I enjoyed watching the film. The visuals and special effects were stunning. The action was good…even though the movie ran too long. But as a story Cameron’s Avatar leaves much to be desired. The plot is derivative and cliche-ridden. The characters are all cartoonish (no, not just the ones who are CGI) and one-dimensional. And he lays the dumb Hollywood politics on way too thick.

C.

D.GOOCH

Aside for politics, this is a phenomenally well-made movie, and for those who find faults in the craft of script, please tell us how you would, from your armchair, improve upon it!

I loved it. The audience was applauding and cheering at the end of my viewing. Weather they were genuinely thrilled from watching the movie or were just a whole theater full of cameron fanboys I’m not sure. Either way, they seemed to enjoy the movie as much as I did.

The 3d was amazing. Hands down the best 3d movie I’ve ever seen. Admittedly that isn’t saying much because I’ve only seen a handful of 3d features, but the fact still stands.

Just an awesome experience overall, I wholefully recommend it… In 3d of course.

There are no governments in the movie. There are only corporate men and corporate security mercs. There is no hint as to what the Earth government is like and no hint as to what the Earth military is up to other than Sully’s estimation that, back on earth, the army and marine types are “fighting for freedom.” The film makes an explicit point that the men we see in this movie are corporate employees, mercenaries paid to be the “stick” end of corporate relations with Pandora.

It seems a ridiculous stretch to propose that a movie where there is no President, no Congress, _and no country’s military_ is some kind of obvious slam-dunk metaphor for current affairs. It seems far more likely that the movie is exactly what the filmmaker says it is – more a general commentary on colonial greed. The organizations involved seem more akin to something like the East India Company, even, than the U.S. military in particular. Even if you want to stretch it and say it’s a metaphor for corporate influence on Bush’s government (certainly a valid topic for skewering) it begs the question: why not, then, have a government puppeted by a corporation in the movie? The bad men in this movie are corporate stooges pure and simple; there is no government involved, or at least, if the government is there they get zero screen time and no lines.

The closest thing I can see in the movie to a current-events comment is the 5-second bit where the Colonel dude mentions pre-emptive strike and uses the word “terror,” but even if that’s a specific stab at the rationalizations made by the Bush administration, that’s just a 5-second facet in a very glittery and broad-based snowball aimed at shortsighted greed in general, across the course of human history. IMO. Just sayin’.

Given the 100% corporate nature of the bad-guyness, honestly I think you could make a better case for it being about Microsoft or Halliburton than about any particular President or government.