Tuesday, January 19, 2010

AVATAR - An Eco Epic

So we saw the movie Avatar. Spectacular, wow, how did they do that? etc. etc. etc. It really was!


Then I’m thinking to myself, “I’ve seen this movie before…the plot anyway”.

Avatar could be one of Aesop’s Fables and the movie Outlander, Star Wars and Independence Day, Dances with Wolves and the Wizard of Oz. It’s all of those movies and less and is ultimately disappointing.

My wife asks me what the point was. Actually there were three points:

1. To make money (nothing wrong with that – very admirable indeed).

2. To make a shit-load of money – ditto.

3. To make everyone feel a little guilty in the midst of escapism.

It certainly succeeds (and will succeed) at the first two, and given the current eco-mania, many will walk away from this movie thinking that it confirms that humans are blight on Earth as much as the humans are threatening Pandora and its inhabitants in search or unobtanium.

You have to hand it to James Cameron (writer and director) this is the perfect escape movie for the Great Recession, combining the new secular religion of environmentalism and a 3D romp on Pandora to escape your money woes.

The giant blue indigenous people of Pandora are the Na’vi, primitive, noble, and so linked into the ecology of Pandora that it would make Gaia blush. All of the visuals, the flora, the fauna, and the geography are spectacular. The dialogue, plot, characters and everything else is mundane. But it’s still worth seeing especially if you like Sci-Fi action movies.

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