The film-making approach for Avatar is spectacular. It looks like nothing else, because it is new. It takes CGI to a whole new level, and CGI characters to the place where they really seem to be "real".
However, the plot is a different matter. Some people found it downright insulting; even while everyone I have read thinks you have to see it. What this post is about is how it gets analyzed from the left and the right perspectives. Since that involves spoilers, it is after the cut.
Avatar from two perspectives
The political right is easier to understand. The movie venerates native populations, excoriates corporations, and makes Gaia real. This (right) review didn't hate it, but does note:
However, the plot is a different matter. Some people found it downright insulting; even while everyone I have read thinks you have to see it. What this post is about is how it gets analyzed from the left and the right perspectives. Since that involves spoilers, it is after the cut.
Avatar from two perspectives
The political right is easier to understand. The movie venerates native populations, excoriates corporations, and makes Gaia real. This (right) review didn't hate it, but does note:
Conservatives have more or less primed themselves to hate this film because of the presumed anti-war politics of the movie. It is there. In fact, it is unmistakable, but it is not as bad as one might presume. It comes mostly later in the movie, when the commander of a military base attempts to rally the humans in response to what he calls "terrorism", talks of making a "pre-emptive strike", and promises a "shock and awe" effort. All of that happens within about a five-minute burst. As for the anti-business, Corporation plot line, that is a retread of Aliens, which Cameron wrote, and Sigourney Weaver starred in.
For the real juice, you have to go to the comments which had gems like this:
That is because they work for one of those Eeil money-grubbing drug companies! In the future, they have no doubt taken all of their evil obscene corporate profits received from doing insidious things into 70's retro-looking tree-hating weaponry vs. investing it in curing cancer and diabetes. Despite the way they suck up to Obama like gastropods today, they are all really unfeeling, Republicans or O'Reilly viewers or similar to that.
I do not care if this thing has effects that would make my eyeballs ejaculate out of my skull. I am done laundering my money through Hollywood and into Democrat war chests.
And:
It's only a movie?
---Wrong.
It is a propaganda vehicle meant to convert the gullible and weak-minded and undermine what this country stands for.
To make matters worse, the money that scumbag makes from this, will be used to fund and elect those that will further destroy this country.
You can go ahead and pretend it is just a movie and that it is pointless not to go since all Hollywood movies have a liberal bias. Just do not expect me to buy into your rationalization and denial of reality.
Remember how they claimed characters like Joe Camel was meant to entice kids into smoking? Well, one could argue it is a leftist message that it is aimed at kids via the cartoon/video game-like CGI.
I am not sure what was sarcastic about that -- maybe the whole thing, but I am uncertain.
On the other hand, Malcolm Sheppard takes it to task for having the white guy ride in to save the day!
Sully saves the day with a miracle drawn from tapping into the planet's consciousness/organic neural net thing at the apex of his hero's journey. All he knows is that the situation sucks and people are bad; something the Na'vi have, by this point in the film, and probably said to the Goddess thousands of times -- with the bulldozers and giant robots fire and everything. The Na'vi aren't magical in the way Sully is, though nobody is, human or Na'vi. Sigourney Weaver can't get bodily resurrected. and she is more with it than Jake is! She pretty much ignores them. This is deeply ingrained, Protestant sorcery at work. Sully is a moral weakling and an ignoramus, but predestination trumps merit, and besides he feels really bad about everything. Jake Sully flip-flops between being the Poisoned Christ figure himself and PC's disciple. This is to be expected since it is about half cultural reflex, which means it was not thought through very well.
This leads to one of the film's failings. Jake Sully is a very, very bad man; and only the implied magic of his existence keeps him from meeting justice. He is venal, treacherous, and even spouts the "I was here to betray you but I fell in LOVE!" But he is Jesus, and he is kind of white, so that is okay.
This leads to one of the film's failings. Jake Sully is a very, very bad man; and only the implied magic of his existence keeps him from meeting justice. He is venal, treacherous, and even spouts the "I was here to betray you but I fell in LOVE!" But he is Jesus, and he is kind of white, so that is okay.
I would normally say that if something was being attacked from both the left and the right it had some merit, but in the case of Avatar, as everyone agrees, it is simply amazing to behold. I think it this case, it may just have a weak stereotyped script, and people can find a stereotype or trope to object to in it without a lot of hunting!
