After the Hype—Avatar Unvarnished

In my family, we’ve had a tradition of going to see a big movie together each Christmas day. We aren’t into crowds, and that has always worked to our advantage. The tradition is not shared by even a sizeable minority of other Americans. We like it so.

This year was more difficult than most. There were no sequel films to speak of, no Matrix, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter installments to take in. After much debate we decided to go see the much-hyped blockbuster, Avatar.

There were good reasons to stay away and good reasons to go. The technology used in the 3D effects was supposed to be enough reason alone. On the other hand, we had on good authority that the story line was as shallow and meaningless as James Cameron’s other blockbuster, Titanic. Furthermore, the whole thing was going to be a liberal screed of far-left, anti-American, anti-western culture, anti-technology, new-age, green-tinted gobbledygook.

Essentially it was like the choice that confronted moviegoers when Al Jolson appeared in The Jazz Singer. The story line blew chunks, but who could resist the urge to see something so groundbreaking?

Now that I have this quandary behind me, (we went ahead and saw the film) I can weigh-in on the relative merits or lack thereof in the film.

In many ways, I did find the film very much like The Titanic. My impression of that movie boiled down to “great special effects…lousy story.” Cameron is all about cinematography and not much about writing a great plot. It would be interesting to see him do something where a decent writer was involved, and he just put the thing to film.

The movie kept me minimally connected. I was engrossed enough to want to see it to the end and yet never awed nor enchanted. This is one of those movies that doesn’t make you think for very long afterward. That is how I rate a great movie. It has an impact longer lasting that a Chinese dinner. Avatar will be one of those where in five years I have to remind myself what it was about.

If you take the movie’s message seriously as some kind of morality play about environmentalism or the subjugation of indigenous peoples, it is full of holes. Western culture did not greet a completely innocent, pristine peace-loving culture in the Americas. The native tribes did not live in harmony with one another. Their women were not liberated equal members who stood shoulder to shoulder with their male warrior counterparts. The simplistic black and white, good and evil categories the movie sets up is simply not like any reality it seeks to portray.

And isn’t it odd too that Cameron is pushing the boundaries of technology while making a Luddite film that demonizes Western man’s accomplishments? Is the paradox rank hypocrisy or a delusional blind spot? Only Mr. Cameron knows.

The gratuitous slaps at the Bush administration, though predicable, seemed off as well. The evil white American men in the film spoke of “shock and awe” and “preemptive strikes” as if the film was drawing an analogy. But unlike the natives in the film, Muslim terrorists actually attacked innocent civilians on 9/11. They were the aggressors, and the US was simply going after Islamic terror where it was manifested.

If you can suspend disbelief and the urge to vomit over the hackneyed, liberal clichés, the movie is worth seeing in the theater. Some have gone utterly hyperbolic by calling it “stunning” and “monumental.” That part to me was overblown. I saw it as the logical marriage between CGI and 3D effects. To the extent that you cannot recreate that on DVD, it is worth the price of admission. If your expectations are not too high, it will be worth what Hollywood is more or less good for, pure, unrealistic escapism and not a scintilla of truth.