Avatar? Political? Seriously?

I stand by my review up on Cinema Styles which is to say I found its politics of no real consequence to anything anywhere in or out of the movie.

The politics are the most interesting part of the movie. The movie is a condemnation of selfish, amoral practices like the exploitation of other peoples and the environment, but at a more basic level, it's about humanity's fear of the other, and our instinctual violent reaction to such. Much has been (derisively) said about how the plot echoes ideas from the past, as if those lessons have been definitively learned or history ever really leaves us. What I haven't seen discussed is the idea that sci-fi is about the future. I see the movie as an allegory that shows us our darkest instincts, and warns us that this could be us. It's certainly no stretch to apply its messages of environmentalism, tolerance and anti-warmongering to our present. On another level, it was exciting to see an action movie that mourns rather than celebrates death.

As for accusations of "White Messiah fable," it certainly does skate that line closely, although no more so than other fan-favorite District 9. I'd argue where that movie presents an inferior alien race whose (apparent) salvation is entirely the work of a white man, Avatar at least does the alien race the courtesy of allowing the aliens their own defenses, not to mention culture and character. One gets the impression the Na'vi would have done just fine without Sully, or at the very least stood a fighting chance. It does seem interesting that both films require their protagonist to make a physical and mental transformation. Which change is more authentic, if any, would make an interesting debate.

The film makes an interesting double-bill with Gilliam's latest, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. There's an early scene in that film where a character posits that the universe is kept going on the steam of stories. It struck me that Avatar is one of these stories, showing us the way forward. Slowly but surely, it's our stories that make us better, give us perspective, inspire us to continue on. Is it simplistic? It's a parable, an epic adventure film meant to speak to the broadest of audiences. As a complex narrative, it clearly has its limits, but I think there's room in the world for both this and, say, The Battle of Algiers. As for "cribbing from the familiar," the difference between derivation and homage seems to be "whether or not I like it." (As has been pointed out here.) Other movies this year that could be accused of the same: Inglorious Basterds, The Limits of Control, Star Trek, to name a few.

I thought Avatar was stunning, proof that Cameron is one of the greatest visual storytellers around. (Let's not forget, Cameron certainly isn't the first director to riff on visuals he's previously visited.) I can't imagine how one could see it differently. Never once thought of "Smurfs," no more than I thought of, say, Indiana Jones during Inglorious Basterds to make another completely arbitrary, superficial comparison between two entirely different works. The 3D didn't bother me, even on a second viewing when I made a point of staring at the out of focus bits. (Without meaning to sound too glib, I suspect those who get headaches at Avatar would also find the kids' music too loud.) I thought the added depth was fairly clever at moments; however, I didn't find it groundbreaking or even see its necessity. I suspect the visuals would hold up just as nicely in 2D. There's a clarity to them that's refreshing, a narrative flow within the frame itself that seems all the more fantastic when you consider this year also saw the release of Transformers 2.

Besides the politics, I also found the idea of consciousness-transferring technology/biology very, very exciting, but that's probably a topic for a different blog.

They mattered to me only in as much as their ham-fistedness made me cringe during an otherwise functioning, if hackneyed, plot and script.

I saw Avatar as a damn good argument for 3D, that's about it. It has too much going on and is too ambivalent to have any point.

Forrest, you nailed it. Jim, you've been pwned.

The politics only matter in so far that Cameron just threw in some hip lefty buzzwords to make AVATAR sound au courant. But the truth is the film is too shallow to explore or even care about such issues.

I liked the moviegoing experience of going to an IMAX theater and seeing this innovative film in 3D. But I'm a little surprised at the film's ascension onto some 2009 top 10 lists. Forget that the story is based on Campbell 101 (I compared it to Herbert's sci-fi novel DUNE, but others find easy comparisons between THE NEW WORLD, POCAHONTAS, DANCES WITH WOLVES, FERNGULLY, blah, blah, blah, etc.). The film's visual effects and their ability to transport you are innovative. But from a design perspective the fluorescent color scheme will most certainly date the film in 5 to 10 years.

I'd like to think Cameron invested a lot of time and money of his own into the R & D for this thing, and I give him props for constantly trying to move the medium forward. I can only think of two others at the moment who are constantly giving back in this respect: Lucas and Zemeckis. If one proceeds from this premise, then one can see how he would just be concerned with only the bare minimum of a story in order to concentrate on all of the technichal demands. I'm not surprised that he would fashion AVATAR with an archetypal foundation in such a way as to appeal to the broadest possible audience with the hopes of getting the most return he could for his investment.

Years down the road when the effects virtuosity displayed here becomes mundane, and all that's left is a derivative story, a faddish color scheme circa late-aughts, and mere stabs at political relevance, will anyone be talking about AVATAR as anything beyond a landmark effects achievement back in the day?

Actually, certain parts of the Monkees movie Head were made in a vacuum.

Jim, name three films since 2005 that you knew would visually melt your optical nerves and that delivered in full on all the promises or expectations that you created for it . . .

As for the politics of Avatar, it's kind of interesting . . . one could argue that Avatar is the first American made blockbuster specifically geared for foreign or global sensibilities. It's overseas success is no fluke.

Watching Avatar I excepted that the story was going to be recycled, trite, and hackneyed and it certainly was. There was nothing new, nothing.

But that's not really the point, right?

The point of Avatar is "Hey everybody, this is really expensive! Isn't it cool how expensive this is"? The protagonist even tells us something along the lines of: They hook my brain to this avatar via computer, "which is really expensive". Yes he actually tells us this.
I didn't get a sense that Cameron invested any emotional feelings into his characters other than how great they looked in 3-D and I'm fine with that. It doesn't make it a great movie but I was intrigued by the world he created.
Cameron is a smart enough filmmaker so he must know that the story is what it is. As far as politics goes, is anyone surprised? Really? This is Hollywood. And for the conservatives who critique the film because of it's message, forgive me for being so blunt, but really, just shut up. And I know that many of those conservatives haven't even seen the movie, although they may not need to. I am not anti-conservative at all, in fact I am very right on a lot of issues. But when it comes to the arts I think their obnoxious. If they saw the movie they would see they usual underlining hypocrisy of the film; Cameron is so anti-war, except when it comes to investing millions of dollars to make war look really awesome in the movies so all the kids can go out and buy Avatar toys and blow them up at home.

And again, I am totally fine with that.

The irrelevance - or pseudo-relevance - of Avatar got on my nerves. The story incorporates some contemporary issues, namely mistreatment of the environment and an out-of-control American military, but I felt the childish characterization of the villains made it all kind of worthless. Giovanni Ribisi's corporate leader and Lang's colonel were both such shallow, superficial, and, most importantly, unrealistic caricatures that I felt the movie really had nothing practical to say. I mean, there are what, five scientists on the planet? Avatar is not a 'political movie' but just a run-of-the mill B-movie with expensive special effects.

Funny. I'd think right-wingers would LIKE Avatar, and judging by the box office, obviously a lot of red blooded Americans are seeing it, despite orders from their scribes. Think of Avatar like a Rambo movie, one of the Right's all time favorite's. Look at it this way: couldn't First Blood almost be a liberal film? It's about a guy who grows his hair long, lives out in the woods, wants to live peacefully and be left alone, but opens up a can of whoop ass on the man. This is where the liberal hippy fantasy intersects with the right-wing survivalist fantasy (don't forget that Red Dawn screenwriter John Milius also wrote Apocalypse Now and Farewell to the King, the latter of which has more than a little in common with Avatar, or for that matter the right's other favorite Hollywood star, Mel Gibson, who made Apocalypto).

The other thing is that while Cameron may be liberal in his personal politics, at heart he has a Norman Maileresque macho sensibility, so peaceful warriors who value the life in all things ultimately find their blood lust.

Finally, as Kenny says, I would say it's inadvisable for conservatives to pick a fight with a movie that has a chance of possibly cracking Cameron's own record at the worldwide box office. If they make it into a "liberal" film then they lose their shibboleth of "real Americans" not wanting to see liberal films. Instead, for the reasons I said above, they could be arguing that it's "really" a conservative movie, like they tried with Lord of the Rings, March of the Penguins, and The Dark Knight.

As I sat, being bombarded by Cameron's $500 miliion technology wet-dream, I was reminded most of the subtleness in the social commentary and message of Billy Jack.
Stephen's remark on the ham-fisted messages of Avatar rings very true.
I also thought that the 3-D was ineffective.

The "politics" of any film are not determined entirely by what is said in the film. It's a Wonderful Life's shooting script seems to me both implicitly and explicitly socialist, though sometimes populist, and other times just confused (this mishmash is typical of most Capra films). I submit, though, that words don't matter quite as much as the full-effect: what's the point of the movie? (I don't mean the "message" but rather the thrust or purpose or effect of the film; what do I walk away feeling?) In Capra's film, the point is to soothe depression by reminding weary humans of their ultimate importance in a symbiotically or evolutionarily related cosmos; that is, each person spurs and enables the development of the other, and though George Bailey had likely a much larger impact than any other human being, even the "small people" in the film (and, ironically, there are small people in Capra's "little guy" movies) would have a similar impact. So, in a way, there's a relationship between the explicit political words (George's speech to Potter at the board-meeting: "...they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community," etc) and the structure/tension of the movie.

In Avatar, I don't find that same kind of resonance. Any anti-war film that launches into such aggression against its enemies doesn't understand its own premise: if death, murder, and destruction aren't the answer why should the narrative (the diegetic and non-diegetic elements together) promote such ruthless killing of the attackers? I was hoping for something a bit more pacifist to occur when the Eywha kicked into gear, but all she did was send more armies to kill the "enemy." Pretty blind or conditional pacifism.

Furthermore, the environmentalist message is too distant from the main emotional/aesthetic pleasures one gets from the film: I very much enjoyed the visuals, whether Pandora was in peace or in war. Shouldn't war be ugly? Instead the explosions were half the fun. In a way, Avatar's main strength is its narrative numbness; the plot serves the immediate sensory reactions. It reminded me of the "feelies," the main movie-going experience in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World: there a movie-goer was able to psychically feel/smell/taste all the materials that were on-screen. Of course, Huxley didn't think this was an amazing technological achievement but a brick in the wall of self-amusement and -pleasure that we, as a society, had built, separating us from reality. A prescient idea for 1932. In this light, Avatar is less a pro-environmentalism film and is more anti-environmentalism: 1) there was no "Earth" in this film, it was all a digital facade, and 2) by commodifying environmentalism and placing it in the context of cartoon war, cartoon humanity, a cartoon planet, and a cartoon race of people, the film cheapens the entire concept, making it a consumable idea (and one that can easily be discarded if you like the explosions; shouldn't an "environmentalist" film be impossible to stomach, or at least hard to watch, if you don't agree with its main premise?).

Similarly, the Reitman flick Up in the Air claims to be topical, creeping towards populism, anti-Corporate sentiment, etc. Yet the film ends with an assuring and saccharine emotionalism, where humanity ultimately perseveres over the interests that are controlling their lives. Humanity doesn't persevere by taking political action or fighting back, no; it perseveres by adopting a stoic, non-confrontational, self-empowerment tactic. How timely/topical is that? "Sit back, relax, trust us." Notably the film was partly financed/distributed by Paramount, part of the global corporate machine that keeps the world running by "employing" people.

We need political action in this world, not an "opiate of the masses" that tells us that our lives are somehow SEPARATE from what we do for money. Up in the Air gives a lot of lip service to the idea of "doing what you love," but it couples that with a political stoicism and naivete that devalues those supposedly "real" people interviewed throughout the film. It treats the mass firings in our nation as the cause, not a symptom, of our problems. I am reminded of a lyric in Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George that goes: "Work is what you do for others, leibchen, art is what you do for yourself." Reitman and Clooney can make these films and feel self-satisfied because they have what is essentially self-employment, while the audience sits in the theatre, laughs at the film, quietly understanding that they have NO POWER (at least structurally/politically) and that acceptance of this lack of power is somehow the moral choice. What crap.

Finally, the fact that Rupert Murdoch's Twentieth Century Fox bankrolled Avatar and is now swimming in cash should be enough to upset those championing its "messages." That a corporate machine such as NewsCorp provided "the masses" with an apparently anti-corporate film proves the prescience of Lumet/Chayefsky's Network: subversive ideas can be commodified and recycled as consumer product, at no expense to the corporate overlords who actually run our globe.

For the record, I loved Avatar and would watch it again in a heartbeat, but I found its politics both laughable and unbelievably clumsy. For starters, the anti-war and tolerance it so desperately seems to advocate cease to hold water about half an hour before the end of the movie. Sure, the Na'vi are only fighting in self-defense, but see how quickly they go from nature-loving natives to effortless warriors, WITH NO HESITATION. These people only care about life when it's THEIR life - and screw all the humans who may get caught in the crossfire. They literally murder hundreds of marines right and left. (This film certainly celebrated the deaths of THESE marines!) Secondly, the movie doesn't so much advocate tolerance as assimilation, and demands a paradigm shift in how Sully approaches his worldview. This may be necesssary in the context of the movie, but after all the talk about how interconnected all life on the planet is, I found it kind of disturbing to watch Sully turn his back on his entire race and "go native" by slaughtering marines who were essentially just doing their jobs. Sully himself killed dozens of these people with his own hands, and we're not even supposed to blink. The tone of the movie calls for cheers when he swoops down on the big ole' dragon and tosses bombs and arrows into engines and bodies.

The movie absolutely fails to draw it in nuanced shades of grey, going for the easy "kill or be killed scenario," painting the marines as bloodthirsty cartoons and the corporations as one-dimensional resource-hungry entities. Quatrich is nothing more than that - a cartoon that symbolizes this one-sided view of the military. It's such a transparent effort, too, not to mention the idiotic references to present day scenarios, like "fight terror with terror" or "some kind of shock and awe" tactic. This isn't intelligent commentary. It's copy-paste. I couldn't help but laugh when one of the scientists used the "shock and awe" phrase. It's a little coincidental that they're using the exact same phrase used to describe America's initial attack on Iraq, IMHO.

Not to mention the ending - once the fighting is over, they give nobody except the scientists a chance to stay behind and live on Pandora. "The aliens were sent back to their dying planet." "Sorry, that's all folks, we hate you because you're not us!" This is exactly the kind of problem that caused all the fighting in the first place! What happened to peace, love, and understanding? Not in Cameron's natives-know-all tale. There's no hope for salvation for the marines who were just following order, no siree. (And notice in the "we're gonna kick their asses!" speech by the colonel how all the marines look happy and bloodthirsty. No subtleties or nuance there, whatsoever.)

And then of course there's the white man saves the natives tale. Forrest, when you say that you got the impression that the Na'vi would have been fine without Sully, I have a hard time seeing that in the context of the movie. Sully does everything - gives the white man's technology to communicate to each other; brings bombs and guns to disable the ship; tames the untameable beast(!!), gathers dozens of Na'vi tribes to help him. The Na'vi would have been slaughtered without Sully's help. No question.

So suffice it to say, the movie doesn't offer any more intelligent commentary on the environment than say, "Furry Vengeance" with Brendan Fraser coming out later this year, or any more smart thoughts on war and violence than the bore-fest "Lions for Lambs." (Actually, in its own way, LFL was way smarter than this movie.) But then again, I still loved it.

I think that Mr. Kenny - for whom I have tremendous respect as a film critic - is a little too quick to dismiss "Avatar"'s politics as "a set of characterizations and propositions with which [the audience is] familiar." Sure, perhaps the political ideas bouncing around the film are nothing more than superficial window dressing, but does the fact that people are familiar with and accept these ideas excuse them from scrutiny?

Let's suppose, for instance, that Cameron had instead made a film that, instead of vilifying the military in the name of mindless popcorn entertainment, had made one that vilified another race, such as Arabs. (Actually, you could argue that he has already made this film, and it's called "True Lies") In that case, how could we possibly ignore the political implications. Sure, the director's goal may be innocent popcorn entertainment, but in order to reach that goal he has placed someone on-screen with no purpose but to inspire hate in the audience. Actually, perhaps "to inspire hate" is the wrong phrase - he presumes that we'll take it for granted that these characters are bad and one-dimensional.

Filmmakers have been doing this in escapist cinema for decades now. It is most tangible in the westerns where you can identify the bad guy by the color of his hat, and you're not meant to try to understand him.** Or with "Inglourious Basterds" the "Indiana Jones" films, which take for granted that we'll accept the main characters' hatred for Nazis. I have no trouble accepting any of these characters' intrinsic villainy, because it is presented in an apolitical context.

"Avatar," however, is not apolitical, or even subtly apolitical. Similar to what you noticed with "The Dark Knight," "Avatar" drives home its political points relentlessly again and again and again, scene after scene, bad line of dialogue after bad line of dialogue. I don't think I need to summarize it all here; Brandon S., in particular, sums it all up rather nicely in his comment above. The big point here is that Cameron has indeed simplified the tale to the level of a naive moral fable, and has chosen to cast the dichotomies of good and evil (present in every fable and fairy tale) in a political light. If the audience is willing to uncritically accept the caricatures drawn by this film as quickly as the filmmakers, that is a problem.

So while I cannot comment as much as you, Jim, on the visual problems of the film (I was frankly sitting too close, and am too disenchanted with 3D in general, to offer any objective assessment except that I didn't care for it that much), I can say that it bothered me almost similarly to how "Crash" bothered you: as a shallow and manipulative film that tries to convince its audience to adopt the same blind "holier-than-thou" mindset.

**(Actually, some of the most interesting films of the past decade, such as "No Country For Old Men" and "The Dark Knight," have toyed with this idea of a villain so elementally evil that he cannot and should not be understood, leading to some fascinating discussions.)

I totally agree with what you and Glenn Kenny said, but I think your approach is slightly wrong. The only way to assess such kind of movies is simply to ignore them. It was already launched into peoples brains by gigantic marketing campaign, so now people go and see it. And after that when you go and say "this movie isn't worth it" it simply creates pointless discussion, which for the uninvolved person creates impression "oh, it's so widely discussed from different perspectives, very controversial as well, should be worth watching". And then it goes all over again, but still the score is in favor of the movie.
The only good critique of such kind of movies is silence.

Some commentors here are committing the all or nothing (or excluded middle) fallacy, when they argue that the film isn't really anti-war but pro-war, and/or when they label pro-war as conservative and anti-war as liberal.

While there are some on the right who are consistent hawks and some on the left who are consistent doves, disagreements between most people on the right and the left about war have to do with what the war is being fought for. Nearly everyone agrees that war for self defense, when you're under direct attack (example: WWII, Afghanistan), is justified. However, the right tends to also favor war for geopolitical and economic dominance (examples: Vietnam, Iraq), while the left tends to oppose it. Conversely, the left tends to favor war for humanitarian purposes (examples: Bosnia, Kosovo), while the right tends to oppose it.

In Avatar, the company and its mercs are fighting a conservative's war. The few humans who turn and fight for the Na'Vi are fighting a liberal's war. The Na'Vi themselves are fighting a non-ideological war for direct self-defense.

Jeez, I dunno... on a purely cinematic level, seeing "Avatar" on the big screen hit me in a way that only a handful of movies have hit me. I'm talking "2001" and "Blade Runner" here. When I finally got to see these movies on the big screen, I didn't watch them so much as experience them. "Avatar" did the same thing for me.

Now, of course the difference is that when I watch "2001" or "Blade Runner" on a TV screen, I can still get involved on any number of other levels, even if I'm being robbed of some of the visual sense. I don't know if "Avatar" will hold up as well.

And concerning "Avatar"'s simpler-than-simple plot, one-dimensional stock characters, and very unsubtle anti-war message, I yield to the wisdom of Ebert, who wrote these words about "Titanic" in 1997:

"It is flawlessly crafted, intelligently constructed, strongly acted and spellbinding. If its story stays well within the traditional formulas for such pictures, well, you don't choose the most expensive film ever made as your opportunity to reinvent the wheel."

I watched "Avatar" with the same thought- that people would use the "naturalistic" vibe of the movie and we'd get talking heads branding it as "liberal," "tree hugging," etc...

The funny thing is, any attempt at political messages in the movie is stifled by the fact that its message, much like everything else, is "borrowed" from movies like "Dances with Wolves" (Dances with ET, anyone?) and "The Last Samurai" in which the unsophisticated white guy learns the value of a forgotten and underappreciated culture. And I liked Avatar- I just thought there wasn't anything about its message that hasn't been done before.

But it's curious, now that Cameron is being painted this way, haven't, more than not, Cameron's movies played more to militaristic rather than pacifist tendencies? "Aliens" pumped a lot of Reagan-era military bravado into its story and "True Lies" was accused of painting Muslims as fanatics we were at war with. The only exception to the rule has been "The Abyss" where the military (actually one crazy guy) was the bad guy.

Of course, the people who criticize "Avatar" on this note did the same thing with "Wall-E" and "Happy Feet."

Just saw it last night, so I've had a chance in the past weeks to read a lot of the articles that spoke of the film's politics. Well, I have to say that I am shocked that so much is written about the story of this film. It's an "event" film, a roller-coaster ride, a big cartoon blockbuster. It's all about craftsmanship of the highest level. A story propels it along, but it's in direct service to the technology and the advancement of the art of filmmaking. I always appreciate Cameron for his mastery of pacing, editing, framing a shot, and whenever I use his films as examples in class, it's always about technique. If you want to be a good storyboard artist for action films, he's the guy to study. You have to realize that James Cameron is one of the biggest geeks in Hollywood, and I mean that in a good way. He can draw as well as many of the designers he hires, knows more about visual effects than most supervisors in Hollywood, and makes a lot of his money on patents for his inventions. It's no surprise he sides with the scientists in this movie - he is one. Watch any of his interviews and see how excited he gets about technology. His movies therefore can't be studied like art films or political statements. He's not intending to make his mark that way, and has on many occasions talked about his childhood dream to make movies that dazzle and take you away to another world, like the epic movies he grew up on in the 60's.
I predict that in five years, Avatar will only be mentioned as a benchmark in advancing performance capture and 3D techniques. Oh, it's enjoyable for sure, but I doubt it will be used as a subject of politics in film.

What I find interesting in so many of the comments here is this echoing refrain that the villains of the film (corporate interests and military grunts) are cartoons and caricatures. ‘Unrealistic.’ It makes me wonder if the people posting these things haven’t been watching the news. Or paid much attention to history. We live in a world where a supposedly developed and intelligent country eagerly invades another for the flimsiest of excuses. Where obvious and overwhelming scientific evidence of coming devastation are ignored for… well, their inconvenience, I guess. Where human beings laugh and snap photos while they torture and humiliate other human beings. Where tigers are hunted into extinction for impotency cures. Look at all the genocides that have happened in just the 20th century. Look at the rape camps in Bosnia and Zimbabwe. Look at -I know its cliché, but what the hell- just look at the Nazi’s! Evil is cartoonish. Evil is a carcature. Mass-murder and environmental devastation are not rationally based philosophical standpoints. They are forms of insanity that can’t be made sense of- at least not without a thorough investigation of the socioeconomic conditions underpinning them-, the sort of investigation that could not possibly be carried out in a three-hour movie. Personally, in the face of all this, I find the portrayal of the villains of “Avatar” to be refreshingly realistic.

Putting all that aside, speaking from a purely movie-criticism standpoint (another naïve idea, but one that keeps conversations a little more civil), I still don’t agree that these characters are ‘simplistic.’ Giovanni Ribisi’s character clearly understands deep down that the actions he is ordering are wrong, yet he follows through with them anyway, weakened by cultural brainwashing and the weight of the behemoth of an entire society of greedy, power-obsession leaning on his shoulders. He’s every bit as helpless as every other human in the movie. The colonel constantly harps on what aggressive and primitive beings the Na’Vi are, dehumanizing them and despising them to make his own actions acceptable (a common tactic amongst imperialist and colonial forces. Look at how hard people worked to make Africans seem like lesser beings because believing otherwise would mean recognizing that the underpinnings of an entire economy were based on evil.) What they are –and this is repeated throughout the movie- is insane. Like abuse victims who then go on to abuse their own children, they are both victims and perpetrators. Unbridled greed, disconnection from their home planet, and a culture built upon a foundation of murder and domination (trans. “civilization”) have driven them insane. It is only by abandoning this insanity, by taking up a radically different viewpoint –by becoming another species altogether, in fact- that the humans of the movie can regain their sanity. What people are dismissing as flaws of the movie are, in fact, part of the point. You can disagree with this on a philosophical level or on an aesthetic level, but I don’t think it’s right to dismiss it as shallow or childish. Cameron is making a very specific argument, and while there certainly are films that have made the same point with better nuance and depth, it is unheard of to see such things in a big FX-driven blockbuster, let alone probably the most expensive film of all time. Frankly, I think “Avatar” is the most exciting and complex scifi film to come out since “Children of Men.”

(This is not to say that I actually agree with the argument Camerson is making. I’m just arguing that he IS making a point, a relevant and brutal one. Dislike the movie all you like, but IMHO, it’s a mistake to dismiss it as brainless and toothless.)

Avatar is easily the worts film of the year for me. I found the film quite sickening and not only because of the headache those ridiculous 3D glasses caused me when straining my eyes for 165 minutes! What a ludicrous way to see a movie!

James Cameron has made a movie that glorifies terrorism and is very much a pro-terrorism film. I am sure Al-Qaeda, the Taliban any terrorist group against America will use it as propaganda to snare new recruits. The fact that Cameron has made it so blatantly obvious that the film is an indictment on the US involvement in Iraq in the pursuit of oil or as Cameron so "eloquently" referred to in the film as "unobtainium" (insert laugh track here)! The film revels in the mindless murder of American soldiers that I felt like throwing up. I hate to be one of the families who lose a loved one in the iraq. Even the way the Na;vi people pray to their higher God is akin to the way Muslims pray to Allah. However, instead of swaying up and down on their knees, the Na'vi people sway left to right ON THEIR KNEES! To rub further salt into the bloody wounds, Cameron even has a "human" turn into an "alien" as if that's the only option left for humans or, should I say, the only option is for the American to succumb to the demands of Muslims and convert to Islam!

[i]To rub further salt into the bloody wounds, Cameron even has a "human" turn into an "alien" as if that's the only option left for humans or, should I say, the only option is for the American to succumb to the demands of Muslims and convert to Islam![/i]

The al-Qaeda faction of Muslims that's demanding America convert to Islam wouldn't tolerate either the strong women characters in "Avatar" or the film's Gaia theme.

Brings to mind Bordwell on The Dark Knight:
I began to suspect that Hollywood movies are usually strategically ambiguous about politics. You can read them in a lot of different ways, and that ambivalence is more or less deliberate.

More often, I think, filmmakers pluck out bits of cultural flotsam opportunistically, stirring it all together and offer it up to see if we like the taste. It’s in filmmakers’ interests to push a lot of our buttons without worrying whether what comes out is a coherent intellectual position.

I came across this article that might add a different spin to this discussion,that Avatar really isn't Dances with Wolves but uses a different plot device to tell it's story. Something entirely different, something much more interesting in fact:

"However, it turns out the real plot is a different SF trope..Pandora as a post-singularity world"

It's an interesting perspective because at the end the humans are actually the invading primitives and were used by the Eywa right down to Jake Sully's character.

http://ideas.4brad.com/avatar-isnt-dances-wolves-its-another-plot

"movie that glorifies terrorism and is very much a pro-terrorism film." How does it glorify terrorism? None of the people the Na'vi kill are civilians (contrary to what you might think, killing soldiers does not automatically make oneself a terrorist), and the people who set about raping the planet and attacking the people were the military; so one could argue that THEY were the terrorists! Plus, the scientists who do die, die at the hands of the marines, so if anyone does kill civilians, it aint the Na'vi.

"The fact that Cameron has made it so blatantly obvious that the film is an indictment on the US involvement in Iraq in the pursuit of oil" And that's bad because? What is so bad about questioning involvement in the Iraq war. Numerous films have questioned the Vietnam war. Or should Cameron just shut up? Yeh, that would show Al-Qaeda!

'The film revels in the mindless murder of American soldiers' Except killing American soldiers in war is NOT murder. Or do you also consider it murder when non-American soldiers are killed? BTW, considering that the Na'vi were defending their homeland, what they were doing wasn't IMO exactly mindless. It was self-defence. But then, considering that you don't seem particularly concerned by what the marines did- that didn't make you throw up- I guess you and I are disgusted by different things.

"Even the way the Na;vi people pray to their higher God is akin to the way Muslims pray to Allah." How horrible! Next thing you know, they will start reading the Koran! We wouldn't want that.

This sentence reveals everything one needs to know about you. The fact that you would be disgusted that the Na'vi would pray to God like Muslims pray to Allah indicates to me that you really need to learn about tolerance.

Personally, if you're right about this, I'm delighted. It would go some way towards making up for some of the racism in True Lies.

"To rub further salt into the bloody wounds, Cameron even has a "human" turn into an "alien" as if that's the only option left for humans or, should I say, the only option is for the American to succumb to the demands of Muslims and convert to Islam!" Give me a break. 'Muslims' are not demanding that you convert to Islam; you do know that Muslims and Islam are not your enemie? The only people who might demand such a thing are extremists and the Islam they practice is a perversion of the religion. Incidentally, when you say such things about Islam, you don't sound all that different to the extremists.

But you know, if it will teach you about tolerance, maybe you should convert to Islam!

The politics don't matter. The film presents nothing new and the criticisms of its politics say nothing new either. The popularity of the film just provides a wonderful springboard for people that want to bring up general social concerns. It's very much the go-to marketing ploy of people that have issues that they feel need to be heard (much like the "councils against retard" (sarcasm mine)).

A lot of the racism talk has to do with the white man becoming the hero of the N'Avi. The emphasis continues to be on the fact that the man is white. Well, if you think that makes the film racist, wouldn't it be equally racist if the man was black? Or Japanese? Or Latino? Or Native American? I'm kind of surprised that I haven't seen any claims about racism in the other mega-successful movie of the moment: The Blind Side (based on a true story or not). I haven't seen it the film, but the trailer is a 2:00 film steeped in passive racism.

If I was to select something offensive in Avatar it'd be the occasional quick zoom (an aesthetic stolen from Batlestar Galactica where it felt at home because the whole series was made to feel somewhat novice, like each scene was being documented). Every time Cameron used one of those quick zooms, I was reminded that I was watching a movie. On the flip side, I appreciated Cameron's understanding in how to shoot and edit (other than the quick zooms) a CGI environment. Every shot was crafted to serve the story rather than the CGI artist's ego.

Save your money and rent Princess Mononoke from Netflix. Miyazaki at least gives his Lady Eboshi and the people of Irontown some complexity and humanity.

The sheep in Animal Farm were taught that the principles of Animalism boiled down to "four legs good, two legs bad." The politics of Avatar are about on the level of "Injun right, cavalry wrong." Traditional space opera is a replay of the Columbian epoch, and Avatar is a space opera from the viewpoint of the natives rather than the conquistadors. You can't tie it too specifically to the enemies of the United States right now, but it projects a general sense that we Westerners should be ashamed of our own existence, or at least of our own Darwinian desire to not only survive but expand.

There is no doubt that we're meant to cheer the death of the cavalry, just as when the Lakota rescued Kevin Costner. Since we don't intend to give back any of the continent our forbearers took from the natives at gunpoint, I've never understood our sentimental indulgence in guilt for their having taken it.

Come on people, we all know that Avatar is a remake...

http://kuvaton.com/kuvei/pocahontas_avatar.jpg

And when did Ebert become a theologian anyway? I thought he just reviewed movies.

I've heard that Cameron has been called "anti-American" because of Avatar. I'd have to agree with that statement IF AND ONLY IF you define "American" values as "corporatist" values.

I do think that Cameron is anti-corporatist, and here I define "corporatist" as the philosophy that economic activity is the most important aspect of a society, in that it defines that society's attitudes toward equality of race, sex, religion (i.e., if a black, woman or muslim can become economically successful, it's only because society allows them to be); if there is social justice, it's because everyone has the same opportunity to make money.

When I saw Titanic, there had recently been a flurry of news items, documentaries, TV specials about the ship. Some artifacts had been retrieved from the wreck. Ownership of these artifacts were decided in court to belong to a corporation. And my overwhelming feeling about Titanic was that it had a foundation of a conventional 3 cornered love story, but that the superstructure of the story was a plea to leave the wreck alone.

Avatar gives me the same vibe. On the foundation of a typical "white man's burden" story - Cameron hits all the stereotypes - he has superimposed a plea to respect nature, to stop giving precedence to corporations who destroy the environment and conveniently declare bankruptcy when courts or governments require them to clean up their messes.

So is Cameron anti-American? Political? Only, I think, insofar as Americans conceive of themselves as a corporatist society first.

I have hearded people calling this movie racist do I thought I would see if I could find anyone calling it a political movie.
And low and behold here it is folks calling it a political movie.
I wanted to start a war of words between the Democrats and Conserative over this movie but I can see someone beat me to the punch.
First and fore most this was just a Movie it had no under lying motives are messages.
It was a movie about a greedy corparation after a gray rock worht millions of dollars.
They wanted to move the Navid peacefully if they could but when they did not want to move that is when things went side ways.
Greed wants what greed wants and does not care whom it has to step on to get it,
Sounds Like our President uh.

He can never redeem himself for the politics of True Lies unless he apologises for it, like Spielberg did for The Temple of Doom.

I just finished Avatar. It was a just another very expensive and fantastically colorful "You ahould be ashamed to be an evil American" film from Hollywood. What else is new?