So, look: the conservatives have a point: this movie does not present an even-handed consideration of the case for rapacious, imperial, homicidal, psychotic resource extraction. Probably there are some really cool consumer electronics that were made possible by burning down the ancestral homeland of that indigenous population! Not once does James Cameron’s script discuss the boost in Na’vi GDP made possible by the incineration of their psychic soul tree thing. For shame.
Seriously, though: any conservatives who object to this movie are automatically giving up the game. Are you really taking offense at a polemic against murdering natives and destroying the environment for naked greed? Really: you think your ideological program stands in opposition to the idea of not killing innocent people and stealing their land? I mean, if that’s the war you want to fight, be my guest. We can deal with that. But I sort of thought we had called a truce and agreed that we were all trying to figure out a positive-sum way to reconcile our unbearable hippie nonsense with your corporate overlords’ ruthlessness. We were all going to drink Coca-cola in idyllic natural settings, no? I guess I just think it might be better for you to sit this one out.
But whatever. All that aside, it really was an awesome movie, in the original sense of the word. A lot of comparisons are being made to a lot of different movies, but I think the most relevant one is The Fifth Element. Like Jim Cameron, Luc Besson made a bunch of great movies, then revisited a story he had been mulling since before he could conceive of decent stories. The Fifth Element was a visually arresting, relentlessly kinetic and occasionally emotionally-compelling spectacle, and because of all that it didn’t really matter that its core was totally risible Captain Planet bullshit.
I think the same can be said of Avatar. This movie would be better without narration. It would probably be better without dialogue! But by saying that I don’t mean to imply that it’s trading solely in effects-driven flash rather than story. It’s just that the story is so vast, so archetypal, that the specifics don’t matter, and are consequently allowed to devolve into camp (really: unobtainium?). THIS IS A BIG FUCKING MOVIE. That’s all I can really say about it with any sense of confidence. That, and: go see it. Wear the stupid glasses. You’ll like it.
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