Dear Internet,
Since any and everyone with an opinion, has an opinion about James Cameron's Avatar... here is mine.
(There will be spoilers ahead).
Avatar is yet another massive accomplishment for James Cameron. He has undoubtedly made a crater size impact on the film going community. Now I am all for this, people going in to films and really giving their all to the film (re: man who died "because of the movie" and "Avatar Blues".)
However it gets frightening when Cameron's message -if one can even call it that- in this film is, that it's completely fine to ignore your reality and live in your fantasy.
Sam Worthington lackadaisically plays a parapalegic ex-marine Jake Sully who gets assigned to a mission that his brother was on, who is now apparently dead. So, Jake decides to give his all to the mission. He encounters Dr. Grace Augustine, who is appropriately non-plussed at their meeting; she was expecting a intellectual, and, well, Jake is not that. Dr.Augustine is played convincingly by Sigourney Weaver, but then as she transforms into her Avatar, she becomes nothing more then a bargain store version of Jane Goodall. But I digress...
When Jake is transported into his first Avatar experience on Pandora. Actually, before I go into that, I would just like to add that by naming the planet Pandora, you know exactly what to expect. Names can either help the story (i.e. Truman Burbank) or hurt, and because of cliches, this unfortunately adheres to the latter.
Now I will give credit where credit is due. Cameron pioneered a magnificently beautiful world, with amazing technology to back it. It is true that because of the technology adapted for the feature, we can get a better sense of the character's emotional development, which I have the utmost respect for. Here is Marshall McLuhan's take on the reason why this technological feat is so successful: "The machine turned Nature into an art form." He's simply stating that with any new advent, -in this case for the technology let's call this hyper-realism (i.e. it feels so pure and natural that it could be a representation of earth pre-industrialization)- the once less appreciated subject(nature in this case) becomes appreciated again.
Something sort of amazing unexpectedly happened while I was watching this film, I ended up getting emotionally invested to the land itself. This emotional investment, to me, was much more significant than the character's flat-lining for me. I didn't care what happened to the people, but I was crushed when Pandora, and more specifically home tree, was eviscerated.
That doesn't make up for my biggest grievance with the film. The character of Jake was completely unweighted to his real life, and therefore decided to spend the rest of his life in this fantasy world. Also, as a very reliable source pointed out to me, Neytiri doesn't care at all about Jake's previously life... it's completely unrealistic to "show" how much in love they are, when in actuality they love the idea of each other. (Side note: sex scene totally unrealistic, if the Navi and the animals on the planet have entirely different biological elements, WHY DO THEY HAVE THE SAME REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS? If animals are breathing through gills in their neck, it should be a little different I believe.) (Side side note: Navi= Blue Monkeys? Terrifyingly racist comment, well done Mr. Cameron, excellent writing.) For more observations like this head over to Film Studies For Free's take on this and specifically the multiple allegories within Avatar. My personal favorite goes to "Avatard" by Sconce.
So as I mentioned earlier, Cameron's message to everyone is this film basically amounts to " Everything sucks right now, so go live in your fantasy." This is problematic for me, because ultimately, that's what we all do with film. We use it to escape, get taken to new heights, then come back down to reality. We take what we choose to take from the story and move on... in some cases, we move on a little enlightened, or with an altered perspective. it's very dangerous (especially with all the problems in the world right now.) To have people just escape.
In a slightly different manner, the same escapist (and idealist) themes are explored in the Imaginarium of Dr, Parnassus. (You can all see my loving of that movie posted below). The main difference is after the escapism is experienced, they always come back to the real world and are presumably better at coping with their real life obstacles, rather then dodging the bullet completely. They always come back and are rooted to the actual world. As you see play out with Dr. Parnassus, the world goes the multiple ups and downs, but he doesn't give up. He keeps going... and although he is far away from being able to visit Scrumpy again... he still goes on telling stories. I realize, however, that this is romanticizing narratives in general, and I agree that I completely fall for it.
But nonetheless, I think that Imaginarium is the healthy solution to escapism, where as Avatar is just a hedonist escape. It is all based on indulgence for every character that enters Pandora, that wasn't already there; Jake is just there to exploit the use of his legs, (and a couple other things), Parker and the Colonel, well their motivation is obvious, (and unobtainium??? very subtle Mr. Cameron), Grace's motivation, I believe, is the only genuine one, but ultimately gets quelled because scientists are apparently incapable of negotiation. Which leads me to another point, i'm sick of seeing movies where the only negotiation; is death. This happens in this movie and it seems very rushed.
Cameron again does an excellent job at taking you away, however he could have had much better character development, and many more interesting conflicts. But, who am I to tell you what to do, go watch both movies.. And choose for yourself.
-JY
That doesn't make up for my biggest grievance with the film. The character of Jake was completely unweighted to his real life, and therefore decided to spend the rest of his life in this fantasy world. Also, as a very reliable source pointed out to me, Neytiri doesn't care at all about Jake's previously life... it's completely unrealistic to "show" how much in love they are, when in actuality they love the idea of each other. (Side note: sex scene totally unrealistic, if the Navi and the animals on the planet have entirely different biological elements, WHY DO THEY HAVE THE SAME REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS? If animals are breathing through gills in their neck, it should be a little different I believe.) (Side side note: Navi= Blue Monkeys? Terrifyingly racist comment, well done Mr. Cameron, excellent writing.) For more observations like this head over to Film Studies For Free's take on this and specifically the multiple allegories within Avatar. My personal favorite goes to "Avatard" by Sconce.
So as I mentioned earlier, Cameron's message to everyone is this film basically amounts to " Everything sucks right now, so go live in your fantasy." This is problematic for me, because ultimately, that's what we all do with film. We use it to escape, get taken to new heights, then come back down to reality. We take what we choose to take from the story and move on... in some cases, we move on a little enlightened, or with an altered perspective. it's very dangerous (especially with all the problems in the world right now.) To have people just escape.
In a slightly different manner, the same escapist (and idealist) themes are explored in the Imaginarium of Dr, Parnassus. (You can all see my loving of that movie posted below). The main difference is after the escapism is experienced, they always come back to the real world and are presumably better at coping with their real life obstacles, rather then dodging the bullet completely. They always come back and are rooted to the actual world. As you see play out with Dr. Parnassus, the world goes the multiple ups and downs, but he doesn't give up. He keeps going... and although he is far away from being able to visit Scrumpy again... he still goes on telling stories. I realize, however, that this is romanticizing narratives in general, and I agree that I completely fall for it.
But nonetheless, I think that Imaginarium is the healthy solution to escapism, where as Avatar is just a hedonist escape. It is all based on indulgence for every character that enters Pandora, that wasn't already there; Jake is just there to exploit the use of his legs, (and a couple other things), Parker and the Colonel, well their motivation is obvious, (and unobtainium??? very subtle Mr. Cameron), Grace's motivation, I believe, is the only genuine one, but ultimately gets quelled because scientists are apparently incapable of negotiation. Which leads me to another point, i'm sick of seeing movies where the only negotiation; is death. This happens in this movie and it seems very rushed.
Cameron again does an excellent job at taking you away, however he could have had much better character development, and many more interesting conflicts. But, who am I to tell you what to do, go watch both movies.. And choose for yourself.
-JY
I appreciate everything about this post. I'm sure you have gotten an idea on my opinion of this film, but I think you bring up really good points about realism.
ReplyDelete-Britt