Avatar (2009)

 

100 best Science Fiction films

Popular Mechanics list

#98. Avatar (2009)

 

Why do I dislike this film so much?

 

I mean, yeah, it puts spectacle over substance, is obsessively derivative, with weak, cliché, Characterization and story-telling were sloppy, but I also love “Independence Day” (1996), and “Pacific Rim” (2013) which are guilty of the same things. I think it’s because this film postured profundities that it lacked, while the other two were happy to admit they were dumb.

 

With the exception of Director James Cameron’s very first, and forgotten, feature film, “Piranha II: The Spawning” (1982, and you can’t blame for that one because he was famously not permitted to make any decisions), I liked-to-loved everything he Directed before “Titanic” (1997), but I found him hard to tolerate him there, or most of the time since.

 

I should say that, like Director George Lucas, he now Produces more than Directs, and in those roles he has a few fine films under his belt, but in his few outing in the Director’s chair, starting with “Titanic,” he’s no longer reinventing/reinvigorating old ideas, but reinventing his own wheel, because he’s confused his Mastery of new film making technologies, improved 3D and inventive Motion-Capture CGI (the improvements on that tech were enough to justify a new name, “Performance Capture”), with actual story-telling.

 

This was a passion project for Cameron, he not only Directed, but Wrote, Produced, and co-Edited, and said he’d been dreaming of it since he was a teenager. Its FX achievements were no small thing, but I still found the film’s positive reviews infuriating. They did legitimately focus on the technical accomplishments, for which even grumpy old me am forced to offer unconditional praise, but as for every other aspect of the film the best they can offer is, “At least it didn’t suck as much as ‘Transformers’ (2007) or ‘2012’ (2009)” and God-in-heaven, that just can’t be good enough.

 

Much of Cameron’s career has been about pushing technological limits, both “The Abyss” (1989) and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (1991) represented the absolute cutting edge of CGI, and still hold up today, but they also had the core element of storytelling that made even his modestly-budgeted “Terminator” (1984) so wholly amazing.

 

It does build itself around a bold Political Allegory. Set in 2154, in the same Universe as Cameron’s earlier triumph “Aliens” (1986), and having that film’s Sigourney Weaver in the cast even though she’s playing a different role. It goes after the related themes of a too-powerful Corporation that can dictate to Militaries when they’re interested in the exploitation of some other’s Planet’s resources. This echoes the CIA’s coup in Chile (1973) and, according to Cameron, was supposed to be a commentary the USA invasions of both Afghanistan (2002) and Iraq (2003). Cameron told an interviewer, "We know what it feels like to launch the missiles. We don't know what it feels like for them to land on our home soil, not in America. I think there's a moral responsibility to understand that."  He works the key phrases into the script, "shock and awe," "pre-emptive war," and "we will be fighting terror with terror."

 

In this case it is not the crazed pursuit of a Bio-Weapon that might be in the DNA of a dangerous Xenomorph predator (“Aliens”), but a mineral called Unobtanium, which can do cool, but under-specified, stuff. Unobtanium that can only be found in a distant Star System on a large rocky Moon called Pandora. Instead of the unwholesome, lifeless, Moon of LV-426, wherein Cameron’s Space Marines earlier Battled the non-indigenous Xenomorphs (again “Aliens”), Pandora is dominated by a verdant rain forest and has an undeniably sentient Species that should’ve been negotiated with instead of eliminated.

 

The sentient Alien race are the ten-foot-tall, cat-eyed, blue-furred, nature-worshipping, Na’vi. As the film begins, they have been hostile to the Human presence, so the issue of Human’s cutting a deal with them to strip-mine their Paradise hasn’t even come up yet. One possible way around this impasse is a bold experiment by Dr. Grace Augustine (Weaver’s character). She creates Avatars, Artificial Bodies based on the Na’vi that a Human Consciousness can be down-loaded into. The Avatars could potentially approach the Na’vi, not as Aliens to Pandora, but as their fellows, and build a bridge of communication and understanding.

 

Of course, our one-dimensional Corporate baddies, personified by Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi, who is far more heavy-handed than the near-identical character played by Paul Reiser in “Aliens”), and blood-thirsty Military baby-killers, personified by Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang who, to his credit, gives more to the part than it deserves), have no intention of waiting as long as it would take for those limp-wristed Liberal Scientists to make nicey-nicey with the Flower-Children.

 

I’m not even into the heart of the plot summary, and the narrative stupidities are already beginning to show. The Avatar program is presented as an enlightened alternative to conquest, but it is entirely built on creating a medium of lies. The Avatars can’t be honest brokers, they’re creepily exploitive, like some Joe Schmo who pretends to be Idris Elba to get laid. Perusing that narrative thread could’ve made for more substantive, if uncomfortable, movie, but there’s no substance to be found here. In this movie, the Avatar Scientists are the Good Guys, while the Bad Guys do the exact same thing the Scientists are trying to do, only with violence.

 

Anyway, back to the plot:

 

Into this comes paralyzed Combat Veteran Jake Sully (Sam Worthington). His twin brother was a Scientist on the project with an Avatar built for him, but he died unexpectedly. As a twin, Jake is the only other person who can step into his brother’s shoes, so Jake’s given the incredible opportunity: get a new body and walk again by inhabiting the Avatar.

 

We’ve all seen this story before. Jake defies everyone and goes Native. He finds a sexy Alien girl, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), who makes his broken life complete, and immerses himself in the Na’vi culture. He then rises to a level of leadership among them and leads them into battle against the Militaristic Humans. In a clumsy piece of symbolism, almost all the Humans are played by White actors, while the Aliens are mostly played by Black ones (not that you can tell, as all the Aliens have blue fur).

 

Neda Ulaby amusingly said, “‘Avatar’ rips off every movie in the world but ‘Twilight’ [2008].” Before I dig into this, I should say Cameron’s (or anyone else’s) borrowing heavily from others is usually fine. I was personally enraged when Author Harlan Ellison accused Cameron of plagiarism regarding “Terminator,” because though I see where Cameron borrowed from Ellison’s work, but it’s not as if Ellison, or any other Writer, produces anything without borrowing. Borrowing and plagiarism are fundamentally different, or maybe Anthony Armstrong, Author of the novel, "The Strange Case of Mr. Pelham" (1940), should sue Ellison over the short story “Shatterday” (1980, so five years after Armstrong’s death).

 

The problem with “Avatar” isn’t the borrowed ideas but how they were touched on so lightly, with no advancement of these ideas even attempted, and soon the clichés piled up faster that fallen trees from the Amazon rain forest. And though there’s a lot of ideological hand-wringing, nothing of real substance was ever said.

 

In SF literature, Cameron the most obvious borrowings were from Poul Anderson’s “Call Me Joe” (1957), Ursula Le Guin's “The Word for World Is Forest” (1972), and Alan Dean Foster's “Midworld” (1975). In cinema, there were obvious children’s animation predecessors, namely “Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest” (1992) and “Pocahontas” (1995). Interestingly, though Cameron does list his influences, he doesn’t mention the above, instead citing authors Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, and the movie “Dances with Wolves” (1990). I probably should throw in the Cameron is borrowing from himself too; his earlier and superior film, “The Abyss,” was where he broke with the previous pattern of making Soldiers Heroes, and started getting into the conflict of cultures between those trained to think only in terms of Use-of-Force and those who refuse to accept that violence as the first and inevitable option. Both “The Abyss” and “Avatar” are First Contact films where the Aliens are good and Humans are bad, except for that handful of Humans that can rise above the conditioning of Paranoia and Self-Interest.

 

I have little interest in the (at minimum) four plagiarism cases filed against Cameron for this film (based on my reading, he’s already beaten two, and good for him). But there’s something weird in that the script seems to be a blender of so many earlier works, but the milkshake that comes out has no taste.

 

As for the dicey themes Cameron embraced, they have, in the past, given us great cinema, but he seems blind to their dicey-ness, so he gave us nothing to respect-in-context. What I’m talking about here is the whole “White Savior” thing.

 

The USA is 51% White, and until pretty recently, that majority audience wasn’t completely comfortable with non-White Heroes. Every other group seemed to accept White Heroes most of the time, so as films started addressing the conflicts between the White Majority and everyone else (almost) always did so from the comfort zone of a White Hero standing up for non-Whites against Whites, or sometimes other group of non-Whites.

 

Speaking as a White man, I get how some critics are annoyed by this. How could I not? It’s friggen obvious. But that doesn’t discredit how many truly great films fall into that easy trope, nor how sometimes that trope is an honest reflection of the World we live in. There’s the example of John Heinrich Detlef Rabe, a committed Nazi who, when circumstances painted him into a Moral Corner, and armed with nothing but his reputation and integrity, saved thousands of innocents from a Fascist genocide. Real-World Rabe has been the subject of a few films, but none of them are well known.

 

Where does “Avatar” fit into the trope? Well, Cameron admits the influence of “Dances with Wolves,” so, what was that movie about? A White soldier defies everyone and goes Native. He finds a girl who makes his broken life complete and immerses himself in the Native culture. He then rises to a level of leadership among the Natives and leads them into battle against his own people. In other words, it’s the same story.

 

“Dances With Wolves” faced the same White Savior complaints, but “Dances With Wolves” also committed itself to presenting the Native Culture with some depth and honesty, so, despite the film’s sometimes sappy idealization of the Natives, it also gave us a full-blooded Characterizations of them. And while we’re on the subject, so the White guy was a better-drawn Character too.

 

The biggest problem with the whole White Savior thing is not this, or that, film, but how many of them there are, and how honored they are whether-or-not they’re any good. Given that popular cinema is about a Monetary Investment before the Art is created, and any film that has impact on us can be seen as a substitute for another film that didn’t get made, or didn’t get marketed adequately. While there are films about non-Whites saving themselves, these a fewer and generally marginalized, it is much more likely that ethnic minorities so often cast in roles of utter dependency in White Savior films. To prove my point, here’s an incomplete list of much-lionized White Savior movies, some of which are actually pretty excellent, but when you put them all in a row, even the best ones get diminished because of the tsunami of mediocre or worse:

 

“Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” (1984) is not only a White Savior film, but the single most Racist piece of clap-trap the Director Steven Spielberg ever made. It received an Oscar Nomination for Best Original Score and won an Oscar for Best Visual Effects

 

“Out of Africa” (1985) is the retelling of the love story of Karen Blixen (aka Isak Dinesen) and Denys Finch Hatton, but also bent-over-backwards trying to ignore that Bixen was a White Imperialist ruling over a Native labor-force on the massive plantation she managed to drive into financial ruin. Character Blixen left Kenya in 1931 after seemingly assuring that her child-like Native wards would be well taken care of by their new White bosses – but not so fast. Two decades later came the Mau-Mau Rebellion (1952 - 1960), and the Natives started butchering their Imperialist Rulers with legendary savagery, only to be put down with even greater White savagery. It received Oscar nominations for Best Actress, Supporting Actress, Costume and Editing. It won Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Art Direction, Cinematography, Score, and Sound.

 

“Cry Freedom” (1987) which was supposed to be about the life and 1977 murder of Black Civil Rights activist Steve Biko but instead was focused on White journalist Donald Woods and his family. It got Oscar nominations for Best Score, Song and Supporting Actor, Denzel Washington as the guy who should’ve been the main Character.

 

“Mississippi Burning” (1988), a wildly Historically Inaccurate re-creation of the FBI investigation of 1964 murders of Civil Rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. It may be the only film about the Civil Rights Movement that doesn’t have any central Characters who are Black. Its Oscar Nominations were Best Picture, Sound, Actor, Supporting Actress, and Director. It won Best Cinematography.

 

“Glory” (1989), the best on this list, a rare example of a White Savior film that gave the Black Characters narrative importance and screen time on par with the White ones. It was received Oscar Nominations for Best Art Direction and Editing, and won Oscars for Best Sound, Cinematography, and Supporting Actor, Denzel Washington again.

 

“Dances with Wolves” (1990), which I addressed above. It got Oscar Nominations for Best Actor, Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress. It won Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

 

“Pocahontas” (1995), mentioned above, which had virtually no relationship with the historical facts of the title character, but did closely ape “Dances…” It won two Oscars, Best Song and Score.

 

“Amistad” (1997), another from Director Spielberg. A wildly Historically Inaccurate retelling of former-President John Quincy Adams’ 1839 defense of the Refugees of the Slave-ship in the film’s title. In the real-world, Adams was a committed Abolitionist, but even more, a wily defense attorney, and saved his clients by leaving the issue of Slavery out of the Court Case; had he behaved in like the movie’s version of him, those poor men would’ve Died in Chains. It received Oscar Nominations for Best Cinematography, Costume Design, Score, and  Supporting Actor.

 

“Music of the Heart” (1999), the most significant non-Horror film from Director Wes Craven. It’s about a heroic inner-city Public-School music teacher. It got Oscar nominations for Best Song and Actress.

 

“The Last Samurai” (2003), another film very similar to “Dances…” and utter trash. Never-the-less it got Oscar Nominations for Best Art Direction, Sound, Costume, and Supporting Actor.

 

“The Blind Side” (2009, so the same year as this film), another utter piece of trash. Historically Inaccurate, it was supposed to be about the life of Black Athlete Michael Oher, but instead focused on his White foster-mother Leigh Anne Tuohy. It includes a wholly invented narrative of Evil, Liberal, Government interference in Conservative family values, and tried to argue that Sports Scholarships are the same thing as Education Reform. It received an Oscar Nomination for Best Picture, and an Oscar win for Best Actress.

 

Finally, “Avatar” got Oscar Nominations for both Best Director and Best Picture, neither deserved, but won for Best Cinematography, Visual Effects, Art Direction, which were more justified.

 

Also, that same year, “District 9” was released. Some parallels can be seen between it and the other films listed above, but here all the White Savior clichés are tuned on their ears. Alien Refugees are forced to live in horrific conditions in a Government-run Camp in Cape Town, South Africa. Our protagonist is a contemptable Government Bureaucrat who accidently gets turned into an Alien, and boy, is he unhappy about that.  In addition to being an exceptionally forceful “the other Shoe,” parable, the action is pretty excellent too. It’s a thousand times better than either the “The Blind Side” or “Avatar.” Critic Chris Hayes, compared “Avatar” vs. “District 9,” this way, “When whites fantasize about becoming other races, it's only fun if they can blithely ignore the fundamental experience of being an oppressed racial group, which is that you are oppressed, and nobody will let you be a leader of anything.” This movie got Oscar Nominations for Best Picture, Editing, FX and Adapted Screenplay, but no wins.

 

That notorious curmudgeon, Critic Armond White, totally nailed it when he wrote, “‘Avatar’ is the corniest movie ever made about the white man’s need to lose his identity and assuage racial, political, sexual and historical guilt.”

 

Now, to finally stop complaining, and offer some praise, the best thing about “Avatar” is the completeness of the imagined world, but even here I the need to be a grump. Earlier films, like “Fantastic Planet” (1973) and “Dark Crystal” (1982), had similarly immersive environments, similarly simplistic stories, but didn’t do the White Savior thing. As a result, even though those films had less resources available to them, their worlds were even more immersive because their characters were of their Worlds from the beginning, Worlds so weird to us, but normal to them. Then stuff happened, and their Worlds got even weirder, and when that happened, for us the Worlds got deeper.

 

Is “Avatar” awful? No. It is, as stated above, better than “Transformers” or “2010.” I’ll go farther, it’s also better that “Fern Gully…” or “Pocahontas.” But as it was the labor of some 2,000 technicians and cost between $300 to $500 million to make, so if all it has to say for itself was that it improved on “Fern Gully…” well, that just ain’t good enough.

 

Film reviewers try not to be too Ideological because they know good cinema can serve any Ideology, even those the Critic hates. I love some Conservative-themed movies, and Conservatives like some Liberal ones. Here, even though I can find many Liberals that hate this film for Political reasons, I find myself drawn more to the Conservative haters, because I really feel them.

 

Nile Gardiner wrote that the film was, "cynical and deeply unpatriotic propaganda."

 

Russel Moore, “If you can get a theater full of people in Kentucky to stand and applaud the defeat of their country in war, then you've got some amazing special effects … it became Rambo … in reverse … The American military was pure evil, while the Pandoran tribespeople were nature-loving, eco-harmonious, wise Braveheart smurf warriors.” (Cameron, by the way, wrote an early draft of “Rambo: First Blood Part II” (1985), which was sorta a White Savior film, only the White guy only saved other White guys.)

 

Miranda Devine stated, “It's extraordinary that, while American soldiers are dying in dangerous wars on foreign soil, a mainstream movie would show such cartoonish contempt for them … I am not the first to point out, is that Cameron has used the most advanced technology known to man to create an anti-technology movie about how much better are the ways of the noble savage.” She also was thrilled that “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel” managed to knock Avatar off the top spot in Britain after only one week. Her glee doesn’t change the fact that “Avatar” broke all box-office records (as did icky “Titanic”).

 

It should be no surprise that “Avatar” was intended to be larger than this film Cameron announced that he planned four sequels and plans to Write and Direct all of them. When Cameron has done sequels in the past, he always found new stories in the established settings and Characters, his past sequels were equal to, and in someways greater than, the originals they were based on.

 

As of this writing, he’s already released one, “Avatar: The Way of Water” (2022), and I was surprised, it improved greatly on the original. True, the thin story was held together by clichés and the Characters were no better than stock, but they were clearly defined and enriched somewhat by an expanding circle of relationships. The White Savior Trope took a half-step back as Jake, now chief of the Omatikaya tribe of the Na’vi, is forced to lead them, now refugees following a Human Counterattack, to a safer place under the control of a different Na’vi tribe, the Metkayina, allowing more Na’vi Characters move to the center of the narrative. The ease of this integration of the two tribes reflects Cameron’s continued idealization of this Natural-Loving, Hippie-Dippy, Flower-Child, Warrior People, but also allowed the audience to immerse itself more in the richness and thoroughness’  of Cameron’s life-long Dream-World. Put more simply, none of the annoying aspects of the first film are solved, but all have been mitigated. Also, remarkably, Cameron takes the greatest triumph of the first film, its audacious expansion of what is possible in the visual medium, and expands it even more so, impossibly, this film is even better looking, and the battle-scenes are breath-taking and remarkably sustained.

 

 

“Avatar” Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ziBFh3V1aM

 

“Avatar: The Way of Water” Trailer:

Avatar: The Way of Water | Official Trailer