I don't get out to the movies much. Weird work hours, two preschoolers, long commute, makes it hard. So I usually don't get to see movies until they're out on DVD, if at all. I finally got around to renting Avatar to see what the fuss was all about. Fun movie. Lots of action, visually stunning even on my crappy TV, not the grand and amazing thing it was made out to be, but fun. Reminded me of a mix of Dances With Wolves and Braveheart, with some obvious Cameron touches.
For anyone who missed it, the basic story is as follows. In the not-horribly-distant future humans discover a habitable planet and name it Pandora. It has Earth level temperatures, but the atmosphere is toxic to us. The entire surface of the planet is a vast jungle, teeming with life and inhabited by the Naavi, a humanoid race that looks like 10 ft tall blue cat people. Humans discover a valuable mineral on this planet (called, in a horribly cheesy touch, Unobtainium), and start mining it. The Naavi don't like that so much, and so begins a conflict that closely parallels how the US treated Native Americans, us land-grabbing and driving them back and them fighting a guerrilla war with primitive weapons and stolen guns.
A paralyzed former soldier named Jack gets recruited to be part of the Avatar Project. Avatars are genetically-created human-Naavi hybrid bodies that a person can project their consciousness into via a machine that looks like a coffin filled with unflavored gelatin. The point of the Avatars is to give humans a way to interact directly with the Naavi. No big surprise, Jack falls in love with having a 10 ft tall body that can walk. He meets a female Naavi on his first time out who 1) doesn't kill him on sight because of a floating flower, 2) happens to be basically a princess, and 3) takes him home to Mom and Dad.
You can figure out where it goes from there. Humans do bad stuff, Naavi get pissed, Jack and Princess fall in love, Jack goes native, two secondary characters (who you don't like at first but you like more later) die, big climactic fight where things look bleak and then turn around, humans leave, and they find a way for Jack to be a Naavi permanently. Roll credits.
It was a very fun, if predictable, movie, but something about it got under my skin just a tiny bit, something I couldn't put my finger on right away. It took until a couple of weeks afterwards for me to figure it out. The Naavi are depicted as being very spiritual, very All Life Is One, Earth Mother, give thanks to the spirits kinda people. And yet they never seem to even attempt to extend this spirituality to humans. Humans are depicted as, and assumed to be, irredeemable, motivated by nothing but greed. Even one of the better humans, when confronted with one of the biological wonders of Pandora, replies "I need to get a sample", seemingly motivated by nothing but intellectual greed. Even Jack, in the beginning, really only loves being Naavi for the opportunity to walk again.
This is not to say the depiction of humans was wrong, that's not my point. My point is that, if the Naavi were so spiritually advanced, where was the attempt on their part to extend the olive branch? Why did the Naavi automatically assume that humans were not part of their Circle of Life, not connected to their Earth Mother? Why did the Naavi assume the irredeemability of humans?
Any race that truly embraces Oneness would automatically extend it to all living things, not just those contained on their little planet. I find the spirituality of the Naavi to be incomplete and inconsistent. Just my two cents.
JCS
