I just don’t understand cross species love.
I wanted to love the King Kong remake, but I couldn’t buy a romantic plot between a human female and an oversized gorilla. When Family Guy episodes focus on Brian the dog hooking up with human females, I don't laugh. It’s like asking me to believe that I could fall in love with a horse. In fact, what if someone made a full length movie of Mr. Ed where the plot hinged on Ed’s burning desire for his keeper’s wife?
Talk about forbidden love…
In “Avatar,” James Cameron’s sci-fi special effects opus, a marine who is lacking the use of his legs gets hooked up through sci-fi machinery to become a Na-Vi (as in “native” – a blue alien creature that is an obvious reference to Native Americans). He becomes them to learn about and ultimately exploit them. That’s because their home sits amongst a highly valuable energy source on their planet called Pandora. Things get all twisty though when our hero falls in love with the people, ways, and an individual of the Na-Vi.
No mention of “Avatar” is complete without talking about the amazing technology the movie employs. “Avatar” is visually dazzling and it makes a good case for 3D films. It looks (mostly) stunning with bizarre winged creatures, insects, and horses. The rainforest type setting with light up flooring a la Billie Jean is lush and imaginative – we believe it could actually exist but recognize it as alien all the same. In addition, the human’s technology and aircraft all look inspired but somehow familiar. Cameron’s Pandoran world is grounded in enough reality that it never feels so far away.
But as good as “Avatar” looks, we’ve seen it before. If “Avatar” were a book, you probably would be bored. This is a tired story, filled with obvious allegories and unintentionally humorous stereotypes. The American’s (though I don’t recall nationality ever being mentioned – it’s an organization run by a corrupt company) march in to get a much needed but costly energy supply. The company has no qualms marching in and destroying a civilization with their own customs and ideals to get this energy source. The company tries to reason with the Na-Vi but they can’t do it and get exactly what they want. So, when one tribe/culture/person won’t work with your country, what else to do but use lots of firepower and brand them terrorists! (The line “we’ll fight terrorism with terrorism” even makes an appearance from a crazy white guy drunk on the mission). It felt too obvious and silly.
While the story is ultimately uninteresting, it is obvious that James Cameron is a gifted director when it comes to action. The climactic ending sequence is riveting, even though it is fairly obvious about how the movie will end. The scenes are shot coherently and cleanly, and we never have to wonder just what is going on (there are even multiple “300” type slow-mo sequences that probably made Zac Snyder blush). I also feel the need to mention that James Cameron likes blowing up large objects. Cameron goes titanic on a massive tree delivering similarly spectacular results and devastation.
Spirituality is also a big component of the film. Like the believability of Cameron’s visual world where things look like ours but aren’t the same, the spiritual connection he strives for is Pandoran but it borrows from a lot of animism. The trees, animals and flowers all seem to have souls and spirits. It is perplexing to me that people find a spirit inside nature but somehow are closed off to the idea that nature points to its actual Creator. Granted, the people and world of “Avatar” are made up, but we are kidding ourselves if we don’t recognize that all creative endeavors inherently express some type of worldview.
It would be unfair to say that “Avatar” is like a beautiful woman with no brains, because “Avatar is not a garbage film. “Avatar” is just an average film. No amount of visual pop and creative 3D can overcome how tired the story felt. How could I be held in suspense if the ending was in plain sight before it happened? How am I supposed to care about the characters if they feel like stereotypes that have little depth? And seriously, do you really expect me to buy into a love story between an alien and a human (complete with a brief sex scene)? Sci-fi and fantasy enthusiasts may get more out of the experience than I did, but once was enough for me.
