Culture Blues

Wesley Cheng: Film: Avatar

by Wes Cheng

Few movies offer as satisfying a movie-going experience as Avatar, James Cameron's highly anticipated followup to Titanic. Avatar excels on all fronts from the technical and visual achievements to the engrossing storyline that taps each viewer on a spiritual and emotional level.

Avatar is set in the year 2154 when humans have completely tapped Earth's natural resources and have raced to the stars to find replenishment. As it turns out, several light years away, the planet Pandora is ripe for strip mining of a precious metal. The only thing that stands in the way is the indigenous Na'vi. To fully understand them, humans have created cloneds of the 12-foot blue-skinned natives and control them as "avatars."

Enter our hero, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) who starts as a paraplegic war veteran. He's thrust into the Na'vi world because an avatar was created for his now-deceased twin brother and the avatars are genetically matched to their users.

At first, Jake clumsily stamps his way around the lush planet getting into trouble until he is rescued by the honorable and brave Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). Much of the movie is spent developing Jake and the viewer's understanding of the Na'vi. We learn that there is nothing humans can give them for their land, because it is not theirs to give, much like Native Americans.

These intricacies slowly discovered by Jake are largely ignored by others. Instead of attempting to understand the Na’vi and their planet, the humans - led by war hawk Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) – seek only to conquer. The Na'vi are technologically inferior to humans, so the only thing stopping the demolition of this peaceful race and green planet is the public relations consequences from planet Earth. If you think this sounds at all like current events, you're right - Cameron clearly doesn't attempt to hide his political agenda.

Without revealing too much of the plot, Jake makes a decision that would be highly questionable at the start of his adventure, but the process of him coming to know the Na'vi makes it a foregone conclusion. It is a decision that any decent human being would make given the circumstances, and the way he comes to that decision is one thing that makes the plot so wonderfully developed.

The visuals of this film take 3-D to the next level. The 3D glasses enhance animations of impeccable floating islands and dancing jellyfish rather than simply being used as a cheap gimmick.

And while Avatar is at its heart an action movie, the plentiful action throughout the two hours and 41 minutes, is never mindless or excessive. The audience is actually compelled to care about what’s taking place.

Avatar essentially proves that it is possible for a movie to have everything, which is why in retrospect, it will be viewed as a landmark in cinema.