by Rebecca McCarthy
I suppose I should warn everyone that this review will be drowning in spoilers, although since this movie is only worth seeing in all of its big-screen-3D-wonder, if you haven’t seen it yet then you are getting what you deserve. I, for one, saw Avatar on opening day. It wasn’t by design, mind you. A friend called and asked if I wanted to go see a cool 3D movie, and the answer to such a question must always be yes. Ever since I was a year old and my parents slapped a pair of 3D glasses on my face and took me to see Jaws 3-D (at which I promptly fell asleep), I have been a huge fan of the 3D movie. Technology and my attention span have both improved since then. Avatar is insanely pretty to watch, which means that at first it completely distracts you from the dusty old cliché that is the plot.
Avatar was so distractingly pretty that for the first thirty minutes I didn’t have a single complaint. I wave my hand in front of my face a couple of times to watch it pass through the little 3D leaves, the effects were that amazing. However, such amazement couldn’t last. My boyfriend leaned over and whispered, “Why can’t the natives ever save themselves?” The crashing sound I heard was my bubble bursting, and I was forced to ask myself just what was Avatar actually saying up to this point? It was kind of like going out on a blind date, I was so overjoyed to discover that my date was gorgeous that I completely overlooked everything he said until my waiter pointed out that my date was trying to eat the tablecloth. Actually, if Avatar was metaphorically eating the tablecloth that would have been more interesting than the truth, which is that the plot was simply over-used cliché and the foreshadowing so obvious that I predicted the rest of the movie before we hit the midway point. The rest of the time I spent whispering to my boyfriend about what would happen next as if I were some kind of cinema oracle. Even that got old.
How is the plot cliché? Well, let’s start from the beginning. First we have our hero who is a crippled ex-soldier brought into this scientific off-world experiment because his twin brother, the scientist, was killed and they have matching DNA. This sets up that our guide for this story is both new to the project (allowing the perfect excuse for every supporting character to explain what’s going on to both the hero and the audience) and still an “every man” that the typical movie-goer can relate to; let’s call him Joe Snuffy.
Joe is sent to this new planet called “Pandora” (hehe, that’s supposed to be funny. You know, the whole mythological box filled with badness that’s opened… never mind, just trust me, it’s funny). There is this super material that we humans are mining that is only found on this planet, let’s call it spice (for all you Dune fans who know the similarities). Apparently a large quantity of this spice just so happens to be sitting directly under the native village, and we humans being the capitalist pigs that we are have sent a corporation with the support of a paramilitary organization (think Blackwater) to negotiate the natives off their land so we can tear down their forest and make lots of money. Humans can’t breathe the air, plus every living thing on the planet is a super-charged killing machine, so the scientists stole native DNA, fused it with a little human DNA, to grow hybrid bodies that they could then jack into using high tech computer know-how. (Is it me, or does that seem a little wrong to you?) So now Joe Snuffy gets to link into the matrix and go running around in the heart of darkness with his borrowed alien legs.
Enter pretty native girl. Since the first native Joe meets just happens to be the daughter of the tribal leader, and she also saves Joe’s life due to some spiritual sign, we will call her Pocahontas. No, that’s too long; we’ll call her P for short. P gets the indigenous people to accept Joe’s stolen alien body into the tribe and she teaches him about her people. They just happen to be naturalists, believing all life is connected and relying upon a great Mother. Well, they believe all life is connected because that happens to be physically true in this world.
By some fluke of evolution or bad design of the great mother, the living creatures of this planet happen to have their brainstems dangling from the outside of their bodies. By wrestling an animal down and forcing a brainstem mind-meld on them a native can make a connection with the animal which makes the animal theirs for life. When we heard this brainstem connection explanation a friend leaned over and asked, “What’s with the bestiality?” I thought it was a valid question.
Back to the clichés, the military types are getting impatient, and so is the corporation head. They gave Joe three months to convince the natives to get out of their big tree and mosey on, and Joe was too busy jumping animals, and P, to even casually mention the potential invasion should the natives not leave. The portrayal of the military in this movie is not a cuddly one, so naturally Joe gets himself accepted by the tribe just in time for the big bad general to decide that he has waited enough. He is going to blow up the big tree.
So where does this leave us? Oh, yeah, when the natives see the humans blowing things up they feel a little betrayed and when P’s father is caught up in the explosion and has just enough dying breath to pass the care of the tribe on to P, she tells Joe that she never wants to see him again. (Or something equivalent to that.) But it’s okay because it was already foreshadowed that Joe has to tame this flying dino-bird that is basically akin to the great white of the skies. P’s great-grandfather was the only alien to ever force his brainstem on this creature, and because his bird was the biggest he was able to unite all of the tribes and was considered a great spiritual leader, so naturally some white guy from Earth will be able to pass as the alien messiah, right?
Do I hear some bubbles bursting? Yes, that’s right my friends and neighbors, Avatar teaches us that the indigenous people have to humble themselves and accept help from the Man so they can fight off, well, more of the Man in order to save their natural habitat. Should I even keep going with this? Cameron tries to take on every possible issue in this movie. Let’s see, first there is the whole “corporations are evil” business, with a nice big helping of imperialist critique layered on, but there is also a lot of environmental talk, especially when Joe tells the great mother how there is no green left and how, “We [being humans] killed our mother.” Oh, I also loved the scene where the mean general is pumping up his troops for war and says, “We will fight terror with terror.” I wonder what James Cameron is trying to say there? Then again, it’s Joe’s prayer to the great mother that gets answered. Why his and not one of the natives’? Why can’t the natives save themselves?
And that is the major problem that I have with this movie. I understand the need to have an outsider as the guide for the plot — the audience needs someone who needs the explanations — but the movie usually isn’t just about that outsider but about the community he enters, and typically the grand events surrounding that community shouldn’t change just because they have a new teammate. This is going to sound horrible, but this is where The Last Samurai got it right. Yeah, it’s a long shot to believe that Tom Cruise would be accepted into the samurai’s culture, but his acceptance didn’t change their fate. Cruise’s character was simply there as our eyes, but the events surrounding everything were bigger than him, as most events are typically bigger than just one man.
So in Avatar this one guy was the difference in this whole war? This one white guy gets on the scene and then suddenly the native race with just sticks and stones is able to overcome the whole supercharged human army? Really? If they could do that couldn’t they have done it without Joe Snuffy leading the charge? It was insulting. Even the ending was so incredibly predictable. (This too seemed like another back-handed insult. So the crippled guy can’t stay crippled, huh? Just had to get him legs.) If all you want to see is the shiny new technology then, yeah, go see Avatar. However, if you are interested in plot and want to see a similar movie, but better, go rent The Last of the Mohicans.
