Avatar or Avatar?

[merithyn]

They seriously call the element they're looking for unobtainium?

Sweet Christ, even George Lucas thinks that's cliched hackery.

Oh, the film is nothing if not full of cliches. From beginning to end, we're slapped with them... but it's James Cameron, the King of the Cliche'.

[jimmy olsen]

They seriously call the element they're looking for unobtainium?

Sweet Christ, even George Lucas thinks that's cliched hackery.

Oh, the film is nothing if not full of cliches. From beginning to end, we're slapped with them... but it's James Cameron, the King of the Cliche'.

Slapped? That's more like getting punched.

[citizen k]

Their "god" wasn't a being, but rather a center point for a pantheistic world, much like our brains for the body. For those who haven't seen it, basically, the entire world is connected through a series of neurons that allows all creatures and nature to interact with one another much like the cells in our bodies do. So by killing the trees, they were actually killing a portion of the brain of the world.

So basically, Gaia theory taken to its ludicrous conclusion.

[Barrister]

I have to echo everything that's been said.

The story is cliched hackery, right down to "unobtanium".

And I still loved it.

Not sure if Avatar, or Watchmen, was my favourite movie of the year.

[Tonitrus]

And now, of course, the accusation that it is just another, racist, "white messiah comes to save the savages" film....

Some see racist theme in alien adventure 'Avatar'


By JESSE WASHINGTON

(01/11/10 00:12:31)

Near the end of the hit film "Avatar," the villain snarls at the hero, "How does it feel to betray your own race?" Both men are white - although the hero is inhabiting a blue-skinned, 9-foot-tall, long-tailed alien.

Strange as it may seem for a film that pits greedy, immoral humans against noble denizens of a faraway moon, "Avatar" is being criticized by a small but vocal group of people who allege it contains racist themes - the white hero once again saving the primitive natives.

Since the film opened to widespread critical acclaim three weeks ago, hundreds of blog posts, newspaper articles, tweets and YouTube videos have made claims such as that the film is "a fantasy about race told from the point of view of white people" and reinforces "the white Messiah fable."

The film's writer and director, James Cameron, says the real theme is about respecting others' differences.

In the film (read no further if you don't want to spoil the plot) a white, paralyzed Marine, Jake Sully, is mentally linked to an alien's body and set loose on the planet Pandora. His mission: persuade the mystic, nature-loving Na'vi to make way for humans to mine their land for unobtanium, worth $20 million per kilo back home.

Like Kevin Costner in "Dances with Wolves" and Tom Cruise in "The Last Samurai" or as far back as Jimmy Stewart in the 1950 Western "Broken Arrow," Sully finds his allegiances soon change. He falls in love with the Na'vi princess and leads the bird-riding, bow-and-arrow-shooting aliens to victory over the white men's spaceships and mega-robots.

Adding to the racial dynamic is that the main Na'vi characters are played by actors of color, led by a Dominican, Zoe Saldana, as the princess. The film also is an obvious metaphor for how European settlers in America wiped out the Indians.

Robinne Lee, an actress in such recent films as "Seven Pounds" and "Hotel for Dogs," said that "Avatar" was "beautiful" and that she understood the economic logic of casting a white lead if most of the audience is white.

But she said the film, which remained No. 1 at the box office domestically for the fourth straight weekend with $48.5 million and is second among all-time top-grossing films worldwide, still reminded her of Hollywood's "Pocahontas" story - "the Indian woman leads the white man into the wilderness, and he learns the way of the people and becomes the savior."

"It's really upsetting in many ways," said Lee, who is black with Jamaican and Chinese ancestry. "It would be nice if we could save ourselves."

Annalee Newitz, editor-in-chief of the sci-fi Web site io9.com, likened "Avatar" to the recent film "District 9," in which a white man accidentally becomes an alien and then helps save the aliens, and 1984's "Dune," in which a white man becomes an alien Messiah.

"Main white characters realize that they are complicit in a system which is destroying aliens, AKA people of color ... (then) go beyond assimilation and become leaders of the people they once oppressed," wrote Newitz, who is white. "When will whites stop making these movies and start thinking about race in a new way?"

Black film professor and author Donald Bogle said he can understand why people would be troubled by "Avatar," although he praised it as a "stunning" work.

"A segment of the audience is carrying in the back of its head some sense of movie history," said Bogle, author of "Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies & Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films."

Bogle stopped short, however, of calling the movie racist.

"It's a film with still a certain kind of distortion," he said. "It's a movie that hasn't yet freed itself of old Hollywood traditions, old formulas."

Writer/director Cameron, who is white, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that his film "asks us to open our eyes and truly see others, respecting them even though they are different, in the hope that we may find a way to prevent conflict and live more harmoniously on this world. I hardly think that is a racist message."

There are many ways to interpret the art that is "Avatar."

What does it mean that in the final, sequel-begging scene, Sully abandons his human body and transforms into one of the Na'vi? Is Saldana's Na'vi character the real heroine because she, not Sully, kills the arch-villain? Does it matter that many conservatives are riled by what they call liberal environmental and antimilitary messages?

Is Cameron actually exposing the historical evils of white colonizers? Does the existence of an alien species expose the reality that all humans are actually one race?

Although the "Avatar" debate springs from Hollywood's historical difficulties with race, Will Smith recently saved the planet in "I Am Legend," and Denzel Washington appears ready to do the same in the forthcoming "Book of Eli."

Bogle, the film historian, said that he was glad Cameron made the film and that it made people think about race.

"Maybe there is something he does want to say and put across" about race, Bogle said. "Maybe if he had a black hero in there, that point would have been even stronger."

[DisturbedPervert]

"It would be nice if we could save ourselves."

Yes, that certainly would be nice

[Fate]

The movie would have been infinitely better with Will Smith cast as the cripple space marine. 

[Tonitrus]

And in honor of that article, I watched "Khartoum" this weekend.

[Siege]

"It's really upsetting in many ways," said Lee, who is black with Jamaican and Chinese ancestry. "It would be nice if we could save ourselves."

Have they ever saved themselves?

I can't recall right now.

[Siege]

Avatar was great, by the way.

The Road remains the best movie I have seen in the last 5 years.

[Neil]

That's just art reflecting real life.  The simple fact of the matter is that the other races (saving only the Japanese) are helpless without the leadership of the white race.

[Admiral Yi]

Have they ever saved themselves?

I can't recall right now.

Haiti, for starters.

[Ed Anger]

That's just art reflecting real life.  The simple fact of the matter is that the other races (saving only the Japanese) are helpless without the leadership of the white race.

Star Trek TOS is an example of this. A bunch of foreigners being bossed around by an American in a chair.

[Slargos]

Have they ever saved themselves?

I can't recall right now.

Haiti, for starters.

Wait.

Were you serious?

[OttoVonBismarck]

I saw it last night, it definitely doesn't merit Best Picture but it was worth the price of admission and was a fun movie.  The story was horrific in a lot of ways, but it worked for what it was, to be honest as a long time fan of science fiction I've seen many stories that were worse in both film and print media (and many that were better.)

The biggest thing for me was the 3D didn't make me sick, the last time I saw a film in 3D was Terminator 2 and I had to leave the theater.  I have long heard that something like up to 10% of the human population cannot properly process 3D movies because they don't have "full stereoscopic" vision (something that doesn't effect them in daily life because you can still have full depth perception without it because of other adaptations), because of my past experiences with 3D I assumed I was in that 10%.  Avatar didn't give me any problems at all, so maybe the technology is just much, much better than it was in the T2 days.

The second biggest thing is the CG was very watchable.

I know a lot of people hate CG but I've always had the philosophy that it's stupid to hate any technology.  To me, CG is the same idea as using sleight of hand, stunt men, squibs, et al. to portray something as happening that isn't actually happening.  To make film work, there has to be some sort of trickery involved.  You can't shoot someone with a real bullet, so you use squibs, you can't trust that the same people who have are actors will have the skill sets required to drive a motorcycle through a flaming building, so you use stunt men.

In the earliest days of cinema, the best actors were guys like Buster Keaton who could do all their own stunts, and did.  Back then, the art was in such infancy that a stunt man could really take you out of the film because it was painfully obvious as to when they were being used.  In my lifetime, by and large Hollywood has gotten so good at editing that you can't tell at all when a stuntman is being used.

CG is the same concept, it is a way to show the audience something that isn't actually happening.  In the past I've disliked CG because of the same reason that 1910-1920s era stunt men sometimes sucked--CG typically was extremely obvious and took you out of the film.  Even Avatar's CG isn't quite to the level where it doesn't become obvious, but it shows that we're slowly making progress.  Eventually I think CG will be totally integrated into film in a way that isn't so visually jarring, and film will be better because of it.  I don't have much against directors that are doing the necessary development work to get CG to that place.