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Is director James Cameron's "Avatar" a visually stunning film that's not to be taken more seriously than an afternoon's entertainment at your local multiplex, or is it another in a long line of films illustrating Hollywood's racial insensitivity?
Let me get back to that.
First let me tell you what "Avatar" is all about. Set on the futuristic planet of Pandora, "Avatar" is about a native people, the Na'vi whose planet is being exploited for a valuable natural mineral, unobtanium, by a colony of money grubbing humans. The humans, who include a non-money grubbing staff of scientists are trying to negotiate mining rights to the unobtanium, but if that doesn't work, they're not above taking it by force.
Sigourney Weaver is Dr. Grace Augustine, the head of a science team who've developed a way for humans to become one of the Na'vi using computers and a home grown Na'vi body. Or something like that.
The scientists do it to learn. The military do it to "win the hearts and minds" of the Na'vi and get their unobtanium without a fight.
Sam Worthington plays Jake Sully, a paraplegic Marine who becomes part of the experiment when his brother who was scheduled for the program is killed. As Jake becomes accustomed to the nine foot, blue bodies of the Na'vi, he becomes enamored with the Na'vi people, their spiritual connections, culture and traditions.
He also falls in love with Neytiri, the daughter of a clan leader whose people are destined for annihilation if Jake can't convince them to leave their home that sits atop a huge unobtanium deposit.
If this plot sounds familiar to you--and if you're a fan of Kevin Costner it should--that's because this is a 3-D digital space version of "Dances with Wolves." I'm not the first to point that out, but that's because it's way beyond obvious.
"Dances with Wolves" however was a better film because the characters, especially the Native Americans were much more well rounded
Don't get me wrong, "Avatar" is a gorgeous film. See it in 3-D if you see it at all because it's a glorious, visual achievement. "Avatar's" weakness is in the paint by numbers plot which even with the magnificent visuals, had me sleepy by the two hour mark.
An example of the laziness of the plot? The bad guy is such a cardboard bad guy, I didn't care when he and Jake finally went at it. My only real sense of suspense was to see who would live, who would die, and what beautiful Pandora landscape I would see next.
The blandness of the love story is only saved by the chemistry between Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana, even in nine foot blue bodies and heavy Na'vi makeup.
Also the name of the valuable Pandora ore: unobtanium.
Un-obtain-ium!?
I know this is supposed to be a special effects movie but put a couple more hours into the script why don't you?
The only thing worse would have been if they'd written Jake acting like a 14 year old boy like so many of these kinds of movies do. Jake is a man and he acts like a man. Neytiri is a woman and acts like a woman.
What the filmmakers did spend time on was the Na'vi language. It's quite beautiful and comes off sounding very real.
And as Clarabela at "Just Chick Flicks points out, unlike many CGI movies, the digital pyrotechnics are seamlessly integrated. Possibly because a lot of the Na'vi's world looks almost like animation instead of CGI:
Director James Cameron went through great pains to create a realistic world for this movie. He even hired University of Southern California linguistics professor, Paul Frommer to design an actual Na’Vi language. Too bad for all the Trekkies who learned Vulcan and Klingon. Now the have another alien language to learn. So with the 3-D glasses and state of the art CGI (computer generated images), you forget that most of this movie was made on a sound stage.
Now to the controversy. There are some in the blogosphere who are upset with "Avatar" because they say it perpetuates the stereotype of the white, hero savior coming in to save the natives.
At io9 there's the post, written by Annalee, a white woman by the way, "When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like Avatar?":
These are movies about white guilt. Our main white characters realize that they are complicit in a system which is destroying aliens, AKA people of color - their cultures, their habitats, and their populations. The whites realize this when they begin to
