"Avatar" — movie review

Movie: Avatar
Length: 162 min
Rated: PG-13
Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Giovanni Ribisi
Director: James Cameron
Producers: James Cameron and six others (as history will likely remember the list)

Once again my dear wife Valerie and I viewed this together. In IMAX. In 3-D.

But first, a little....

Phillips Family Film-going History

When our now-grown kids were tiny tots, we devised a way of discussing movies we saw. We had to. How, as Christian parents, do you talk about a movie like "The Little Mermaid," for instance, without sounding like either (A) non-Christian parents, or (B) complete pickles?

Our solution: we discussed movies on two levels — as a movie/cartoon, and as a "sermon." That is, was it fun and well-done? Did it have a generally good message, or a generally bad message?

Let's stay with "The Little Mermaid." Classic good movie, bad sermon. Fun to watch, fun art, fun songs; terrible message. A paint-shallow, willful, foolish girl falls in love at first glance, endangers everyone, just about gets her father killed out of her selfishness — and ends up getting her way, with no consequences visited on her and no lesson learned. (Contrast "Beauty and the Beast": good movie, good sermon.)

Bringing us to Avatar.

Spoiler-free review

The art and the acting. Technologically and artistically, Avatar is simply a wonder. The same processes that put Gollum right in the scene with flesh-and-blood actors now create a world and a race of beings, display it in 3D, and make it all seem very real. The music enhances the action without distracting, and the actors range from just-adequate-for-the-task (Sam Worthington as Jake Sully) to excellent (Zoe Saldana as Neytiri, completely in motion-capture CGI).

It's a beautiful world, with jungl... er, rain forests, waterfalls, mountains, lush vegetation, seas, deserts, and all sorts of alien bugs and beasties. The native humanoids are alien, yet humanlike, and quite beautiful in their way. It's all literally luminous.

The story. Avatar's plot is involving enough, but neither particularly complex, layered nor surprising. Unfortunately, there probably is a lunatic-leftist sermon lurking a molecule or two under the surface, but I mostly found myself able to sneer it off and enjoy the movie. Mostly.

What is the sermon? Hear Roger Ebert burble like a giddy child: "It has a flat-out Green and anti-war message. It is predestined to launch a cult." Yeah, well... whatever. As I'll explain below, I think Ebert's exaggerating, though he's probably right about Cameron's lunatic intent. An evil corporation partnering with with ex-military militia sets out to exploit a pristine planet, more than happy to kill a few thousand innocent, technology-free natives if need be. Whether you see America in any way analogized is (I think) viewer's choice, but it probably was in Cameron's mind.

The PG13 is deserved. There's some bad language and some violence, though it isn't lingering. My vision isn't the crispest, but my dear wife assures me that there are some fleeting glimpses of blue female nipples in CGI. The natives are very tall, very thin (no Na'vi exhibits so much as an ounce of spare body fat), and very sparsely-clothed. There is a scene where two characters embrace, removing no clothes, and one announces that they are now "mated for life." I think if you're an adult, you think "Oh... they just had sex, right then and there? Eeh." And if you're a kid, you think, "Oh, so now they're married."

Spoilery review

The movie. Jake Sully has lost the use of his legs in military service, and this militia gig offers him the opportunity to get his legs back: first virtually, then literally. There seems to be a passing slash at inadequate (American) health care in the future — evidently The One had not totally revolutionized everything into Utopian wonderfulness — but Sully (A) will get to walk in the person of his native avatar, and then (B) is promised his actual legs back if he completes his mission satisfactorily.

What is Sully's mission?

His assignment is to infiltrate the giant, blue-skinned, uncooperative natives, the Na'vi, whose village resides on a massive deposit of the insanely-precious metal Unobtainium (I love that name). The corporation has tried education and trinkets, and has failed to move them. Now their technology has combined human and alien DNA to grow actual alien bodies, which are linked up with human minds. Jake's identical-twin brother was to be one of them, but the brother died, so Jake is taking his place.

The avatars are amazing feats of cinemagic, technologically brought to real life. They also resemble their human counterparts; Sigourney Weaver's avatar is very clearly hers, down to Weaver's elfin little mouth. Through a thrilling sequence, Jake's avatar makes contact with the natives, and is brought into their tribe.

What follows is fairly predictable, not entirely convincing, and somewhat disturbing. At first, Sully's all gung-ho to exploit the natives' confidence, discover their secrets and sell them out. Then suddenly, with no signs of transition, at the end of the three-month process, he shows up all conflicted, in love with his trainer (Neytiri, voiced and realized by Zoe Saldana), and ready to sell out his people.

But first, suddenly Sully proposes to cartoonish villain Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) that he is about to have an opportunity suddenly to begin trying to persuade the Na'vi to move. He is given an inadequately brief opportunity. Oopsie. Really should have thought of that earlier. Rats.

Of course Sully fails, of course the military moves in too fast, of course his friends feel betrayed (because — surprise! they were!), and of course there's a slaughter. So of course he feels awful (or so we guess; Worthington is a handsome fellow but not a great actor, or he's not given much to work with here — though that seldom stops truly great actors), and... boom! We see him killing humans! And leading the Na'vi to kill lots more! And a few humans join him, to kill other humans too! Yay, mostly-happy ending... from that perspective.


Do you think some sympathetic characters die? Of course. How about the villain? You betcha. And our hero, does he get to become Na'vi forever and stay with his bride. Sure! Is there a neat little deus ex arboris at a critical moment? Yeppers. And are the evil businessmen and militia sent packing? Oh yeah.

Which is why my dear wife brands the plot not too deep, and quite predictable.

The "sermon." I had read that Avatar was about pantheism, Gaia-worship, and evil America. I disagree... sort of.

This is science fiction, not a parable. Or so I take it. In science fiction, you get to create new and different worlds, which (to me) is the fun of it. Here the planet Pandora hosts a massively-interconnected organism. The tree-roots literally link up with each other, and the native species also can literally and physically (i.e. not spiritually) connect with each other. So it isn't Gaia-worship, because we're dealing neither with Γαῖα nor Γῆ (i.e. Earth). It is a different planet.

Also, the connection is physical, and involves only Pandora. So we are not dealing with pantheism, which is the false notion that material reality is not real, but is instead God in self-manifestation. The Na'vi name the collective consciousness of the trees Eywa, and Eywa has a will and consciousness — which, again, is different from the god of pantheism. Similarly, though the term "avatar" comes from Hinduism, here the avatar is a physical projection of one mind. When that mind is withdrawn, the avatar collapses.


Is the film anti-military? Well, the soldiers there are ex-military; they are hirelings to the evil corporation. They are not the American Army, nor Navy, nor Air Force, nor Marines. So on the face of it, no.

However, Cameron does throw in some expressions like "shock and awe" and "bringing terror to terrorists" that make one suspect that this was the intent of his febrile imagination. Being a Hollywood hypocrite, he may well still cuddle the fever-swamp myth that Bush liberated Iraq to get their oil (— which, if so, how's that working out?), and he may mean this to be perceived as a morality-play on that fiction.

If that's Cameron's intent, I think the most appropriately insulting response would be simply to cock an eyebrow, shrug, and say "I don't see the connection." Because I don't, unless it is made in the soft padded cells and what passes for thought among the "truther" Left.

Therefore, I don't receive Avatar as a sermon about pantheism, Gaia-worship, Hinduism, America, the war on terror, nor eco-fascism.

Now, I think that may be in the authorial intent. But if so, it failed to reach the screen. It's like J. K. Rowling suddenly announcing that Dumbledore was a homosexual. Hunh, funny — the Dumbledore in the books wasn't.

So if Cameron wants to go around his cocktail parties, high-fiving hypocritical nutcases who live high on technology and free-market capitalism, babbling pantheistic and Gaian nonsense, enjoying freedoms bought and guarded with soldiers' blood, while maligning the very goose that lay all those eggs — well, whatever. If Cameron wants to feign horror at imaginary characters redefining imaginary Na'vi to make them okay-to-kill, while proudly supporting the real killing of real human babies through similar redefinition... well, all of that makes him and them jerks and fools, but it doesn't do much to the movie. Enjoy the myth while you can if that's your thing, James. Eternity is going to be a long, long time; and as matters stand, you won't be "king of the world," nor of anything else.

Briefly, then: Cameron may well have intended a heavy-handed parable preaching the joys of pantheistic Gaia-worship, and the evils of America, George Bush, the war on terror, the military, and capitalism.

If so, Cameron failed miserably, pathetically, and laughably, because there is no actual connection. The Na'vi are not like Muslim extremists nor their enablers; Pandora is not like Earth; and these mercenaries are not like our troops.

But if you take the film as a cool sci-fi action story, then it's quite a wonder, and mostly a fun ride.

Within the context of the movie, then, three elements did not work for me:

1. Sully's abrupt, un-nuanced, transition-less transformation. Without even a hey! presto! Sully morphs from HWAM (hireling-with-a-mission), perfectly happy to deceive and sell out these blue-skinned aliens, to a Na'vi freedom-fighter. In one scene, Sully is spilling Na'vi secrets; virtually in the next, he's bound up heart and soul with the Na'vi cause, and now perfectly willing and happy to kill dozens or hundreds of human beings who (A) were being exactly what he had been just three months prior, but (B) had not been afforded his insights into Na'vi culture or cause. Sully, shallow and selfish from start to finish, never once tried to enlighten either race as to the other. Similarly...
   
2. Sully himself. I don't know to what degree it's a talentless actor or thoughtless writing, but he's a shallow character, and I found myself unable to sympathize with him. Sully uses the corporation, then he uses the Na'vi, then he uses the planet. Not much emotion plays across that face or body-language, and not much of substance passes those lips. A Sean Connery, a Tom Cruise, a Kevin Bacon, a Jimmy Stewart (to cast a broad net) — any of them could have shown a conflicted person in spite of shallow writing and direction. Worthington didn't. Zoe Saldana brought all the depth, and Worthington wasn't up to her performance in any way. Pity. So both #1 and #2 issue in the fact that....
   
3. It's disturbing to see Worthington's Sully suddenly and unhesitatingly killing humans. When the villainous Colonel asks something like "How does it feel to be a traitor to your own species?", the viewer is forced to grant that he actually has a point. Sully had made a last-nanosecond, lame attempt to persuade the Na'vi to move — but he made no attempt to persuade his fellow-humans not to kill all these beings nor raze their homes. If he'd had his legs and had not been given the avatar (thanks to the corporation whose employees he's now killing), Sully would have been right next to the mercinaries, shooting and bombing and killing.

Should you see it? Up to you, but now you know what you're getting into.

Final thoughts. It is sad to think that many film-goers will gaily make the leap and unreflectingly "buy into" a sermon on pantheism, eco-worship and America-hatred.

But here in the real world, the universe is not God. It is created by God. There is a vast and unbridgeable chasm between Creator and creation, with the latter dependent on the former, and the former infinitely transcending the latter.

In the real world, God is an infinite person, with character and a will. His will has been expressed permanently, fully, sufficiently, and in words. He has visited His planet — not in a tree, but in a person, in the person of His Son.

In the real world, salvation has been accomplished. But it was not accomplished by a selfish fool hypocritically killing his own people. It was accomplished by God the Son allowing Himself to be killed by His own creatures, that on their behalf He might accomplish and achieve salvation, and then call them to enjoy that salvation through His saving message.

Now, there is a story worth telling and re-telling.