WE WILL TELL YOU WHAT HAPPENS!
WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD!
We were sitting in the semi-dark. The setting was Xmas week in suburbia, the mall, thronged with mad human traffic, anxious, hurrying shoppers, then a crowded multiplex theater. We knew better. We were way early and got reasonable seats, semi-new fangled 3-D glasses in hand; and subsequently installed on bridge of nose, we watched Avatar.
We could not help but be disappointed, it was spectacular visually, even breathtaking at times. The special effects were other worldly. The companions that we rolled with, a pair of twelve year-old new cellphone owners, gave it a 10. One said it was only his second movie 10 ever (purportedly), tied with Transformers II. James Cameron and his team scored all the visceral points they possibly could, it was eye-popping. Unfortunately, the plot was simplified and rushed to include time for as many cool visuals as possible. In the end, this emphasis on the spectacular over the subtle compromised and distorted the vision of the entire movie in a manner both poignant and tragic.
The Avatar could have been so much better as two or three movies. The story was barely nascent before it was climaxing. Major characters go undeveloped, like the gritty female pilot who frees the former U.S. Marine now Avatar and his scientists collaborators. She is a linchpin, the one military person on their side. But she is hardly sketched, she has about six lines before performing her crucial, heroic act. There is no basis for understanding why she might free them. Why does she take this action that is ostensibly against her own race, the human race, and in favor of the native population? It ultimately leads to her death in a battle where she sides against the human race and her military cohorts in a battle to the death, her helicopter painted with the Na'vi war paint!?! Huh?
The failures of the plot are all the more frustrating because there was plenty of fascinating material here. This could have easily been a brilliant trilogy with spectacularly mad character development. The main character, Jake Sully, the Marine now Avatar, is underdeveloped, too. There is barely any explanation of his brother's death and its effect on him. There is no time for exploration of his relationship with Sigourney Weaver's scientist. Similarly his relationship with the evil colonel is on fast forward. It felt like Jake Sully was be-bopping back and forth between sides, so fast it was hardly swallowable.
Another underdeveloped relationship is the one between Jake Sully, the Avatar Marine, and the future lead medicine woman. It suffers from the same problem, not enough time invested made it feel oversimplified and contrived. It was a cliched blockbuster love story. Why does she fall for him so fast? She is powerful, a future tribal leader. Her brother, the future chief, thinks the Marine-Avatar is a demon, and indeed he has these crazy passing out spells. Their romance is based on what? It could have been so much more developed, and more nuanced in two or three movies.
On top of these gaping character holes, there was lots of fascinating background they left out or skimmed over rapidly. For instance, they hinted at the whole pyschotropic weirdness of being an Avatar, the going inside another creatures body with one's own mind, but they did not explore it (a 12 Monkeys like opportunity missed). They barely discoursed on the nature of being interconnected with a horse or a flying dinosaur as part of one's own being and seeing, consciousness and senses, as the blue people are able to do. And what about the opportunity to delve into Jake Sully, he is a paraplegic! This was visually addressed only. No of the delicate psychological territory was probed. Even in the movie's visuals his morphing into the Avatar and the joy of regaining his legs is addressed in platitudes rather than the subtleties and complexities such an issue might have deserved. It was a missed opportunity to be sure.
There were other great back stories like Sigourney Weaver's efforts at a school and her understanding of the Gaian botany of the planet that are only mentioned in the barest way. This final one about the interwoven, interconnected botany and zoology of the planet, Pandora, and all the creatures on it becomes the centerpiece of the saddest part of this far too screamingly fast paced story. Violence triumphs.
Because there is no time to explain the Gaian nature of the planet Pandora in full, no effort to consider what it means to be a Na'vi, the story is left with other way out than orgiastic violence. This was tragic on many levels, but most poignantly because of the reaction of the kids in the theater: cheering on gruesome violence.
The Avatar's plot briefly summarized: evil American corporation shows up on unbelievably beautiful and verdant forest planet to mine valuable metals with massive bulldozers. They come backed by helicopter flying Marines. The helicopter and jungle visuals are eerily reminiscent of Vietnam movies. The natives resist. They are reluctant to move out of their ancestral home. Negotiations are given a very limited time to succeed. When they don't, helicopter flying Marines show up and blast the natives, families and all, with rockets, machine guns, and flame throwers out of their ancient tree that doubles as the village. The natives are decimated and flea. The Avatar subsequently returns to his Na'vi body from his human state, captures the most powerful flying dinosaur and returns to rally the Na'vi for war.
As a sidenote: Cameron, et al., offered up one more Hollywood movie cliche that reinforces status quo, in this case the patriarchy. When Sully return to rally the Na'vi for war, the Avatar's mentor, trainer, wife and the future head medicine woman is now reduced to the status of cheerleader and translator, while he the outsider, alien, possible demon, rallies the Na'vi tribes for war.
But, as we have said, the deepest, most disturbing tragedy here is the ultimate triumph of violence. The juxtaposition of National Guard and Air Force commercials playing in the multiplex before the movie started with James Cameron's failure to find a vision other greater violence as a solution was stomach churning in its implications. The Na'vi in their use of bows and arrows, their speech patterns, their face paint and costumes, their apparent enmeshing with nature could not have been more American Indian in their depiction.
It was if the plot said simply, "Well if the Native North American Indians had been a little better armed, the evil (white/European) exploiters would not have been able to drive them off the land. The Na'vi just had to get better weapons, first machine guns for riding on their flying beasts, then a helicopter gunship on their side, only then, they could win. Ahh whoops, unfortunately, the plot twists and this level of weaponry is only enough for a tie. The Marines were still going to be able bomb their most sacred tree. But wait, the planet, Pandora, can still out escalate them, all of the creatures of the planet in the penultimate moment of the movie, are seized by an epic collective moment of violence. All the creatures of the alien world join in the attack on the human Marines, the wild alien dogs, the enormous multi-colored rhinos, the other dinosaur like flying creatures and phantasmagoria. It was nuts and vile.
Even if Cameron, et al., were really going to hypothesize a Gaian planet inspired counterstrike, a storm, an earthquake or a massive electric shock delivered by the tree roots would have made far more sense then the gruesome spasm of violence that concluded the movie. This Hiernonymous Bosch like vision, madness and violence fused, had the young folks in the theater cheering the deaths of American Marines at the hands of the natives the Blue people, the Na'vi, and the grotesque alien beasts.
The message was practically Old Testament in nature, that less than righteous violence is trumped by more righteous violence with the hand of the All-Mighty on its side. Was there no other way out, Mr. Cameron? The natives could only triumph through violence? It did not seem thus to the Clarion Content. It was intertwined with the speed and pace of the movie, plot sublimated to visuals. In two hours and forty minutes could something other than violent escalation have trumped? Maybe not, but in two movies, surely a much better message could have been sent. The planet and its plants could have begun gradually sabotaging the foundations of the Marines base and its walls. The wind disrupting their flights. The rain soddening their days and bogging down their bulldozers. The tale could have been told that something other than greater violence triumphs. In fact, it was well positioned for Gandhi-King non-violent resistance wins moral.
Unfortunately Hollywood's message was, as it is all too often, "He with the biggest stick wins. My violence is more gratuitous then yours, ergo my side wins because my side produces more shock and awe." Back in the real world, Art is not just a mirror for society, for it is all the more multifarious and complex than that. Art is a hall of mirrors, angled in different ways reflecting slices and sections, angles and perspectives depending on where one stands, processing through some four billion human consciousnesses worldwide. That reflection, refraction and interpretation cycle that it is constantly on-going between humans and our Art is going to inevitably distort some of the artist's original message. The audience is not present in his or her head, but Cameron's vision gives little space to capture any positivity out of this movie. For Cameron and his team, greater violence is the answer.
The Clarion Content cannot help but consider the conjuncture between Hollywood and the election of President Barack Obama. Hollywood backed Obama in way that was important, surely fiscally, and perhaps too, in a more content rich manner, a way that influenced his vision and policy. What then about the meshing of Hollywood's visions and Obama's actions? Is it more than coincidental that like Cameron fails to find away out of the Avatar other than hyper-violence? For all the schools, the aid, the visions of Na'vi's peaceful ways and Pandora's Gaian nature escalation of violence is the key to victory. Is it coincidental that Obama similarly for all the lofty rhetoric, aid provisions, road and school building can find no other way out of Afghanistan other than military escalation? How long before the tweens and teens that made Avatar a 200 million dollar movie already make this same connection? Greater violence is the answer.
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