Avatar (James Cameron): Another Indian Wars Movie

As you probably know, Avatar is the last James Cameron's Movie. Just released in the Italian movie theatres, yesterday I went to Caserta and saw the 3D (IMAX 3D) edition. The following is my review of the movie.

With this review, I would like to share my opinion regarding why Avatar both opens a new frontier in filmmaking on one side but fails in being a story worth seeing.

Avatar is set in the year 2154 on Pandora, a moon in the Alpha Centauri star system. Humans are engaged in mining Pandora's reserves of a precious mineral, while the Na'vi—a race of indigenous humanoids—resist the colonists' expansion, which threatens the continued existence of the Na'vi and the Pandoran ecosystem. The movie's title refers to the genetically engineered bodies, made of both human and native genetic codes, used by the movie's characters to interact with the Na'vi.

The movie is being touted as a breakthrough in terms of filmmaking technology, for its development of 3D viewing and stereoscopic filmmaking with cameras that were specially designed for the movie's production.

Cameron wrote the story in two weeks while still working on Titanic.

This is the second 3D movie I've ever seen. The first one was Disney's A Christmas Carol.

My first impression, when the movie started, was "is Avatar really in 3D?". Going on in the 3 hours experience of Pandora I realized that Avatar can be both presented as a 3D movie as well as a 2D one. Why? That's because everything is directed in 3D, in the sense that the best part of it is entirely in computer graphic 3D with actors actying in front of 3D cameras but if you have seen the movie you will have noticed that there are very few 3D effects for the pubblic.

The main saving grace of this 3D movie is the quality of it's images: they leave you breathless!!

Now, what I would like to underline is the worst feature of the movie: the story (or plot).

While seated seeing scenes passing through the screen, I had the feeling that everything in the story of Pandara was absolutely predictable. I was right: after 15 minutes from the beginning and on regular intervals I "felt" what would have happend next, just to see few minutes later that I really new the story and correctely predicted the very end of the movie.

What I was really disappointed by was the ever-coming-back-from-history of Pocahontas coming back even in this movie.

Now that almost every North American Natives (or American "Indians") is death, we have the permission, or maybe the duty, of praising the courage of those tribes living in the USA before the Nation was even thought of. And why not? Even leave the Natives win the war against the death and distruction carriers alien enemy.

If you haven't got yet the point, here's a comparative scheme of the Avatar story with the best known one from Disney's Pocahontas (that shares some point of interests with real Pocahontas history).

Pocahontas

• She's the only dauther of a tribe's chief;
• She saves from death John Smith, an Englishman;
• She is enchareged of making the stranger becoming part of the tribe after he's left alive for the chief's choice;
• (just in the Disney's version) She falls in love with John Smith.

Neytiri

• She's the only dauther of a tribe's chief;
• She saves from death Jake Sully, a human in an Avatar body (she knows he's human);
• She is enchareged of making the stranger becoming part of the tribe after he's left alive for the chief's choice;
• She falls in love with Jake Sully.

Na'vi, just like American Natives, live in the wilderness, in touch with nature, feeling and respecting nature and all beings.

Therefore they don't need more tecnology of what they really use to survive: arrows and blades are enough to hunt.

Obviously the live in tribes, believe in the power of nature, worship it like it was a god, believe that deads' spirits come back to her (the Nature).

When fighting or hunting they paint themselves. When they have to prove themselves they are tested, and that's the only way to be considered "adult" (but this is really common between almost every primitive tribe).

Both American Natives and Na'vi have something the white men wanted: land in the Colony case, stones in the movie.

We should know that history always repeats itself and that if you have tecnological advantage your enemy is gonna lose. In fiction, however, it usually happens that who is in tecnological disadvantage is also the hero of the story. So, in some way, he is gonna win an otherwise impossible match.

In this movie, as predictable, Na'vi are gonna win the fight against humans for the survival of Pandora and Na'vi themselves: just what would have happened to Native Americans if the world was "just".

So, in this case, tecnology can't save humans, and that's something I believe was taken directely from the Star Wars Saga (see that one of the few peaple allowed at staying present in the Avatar movie prodution was George Lucas, the mind behind the Star Wars Saga; I believe he was allowed to be there for two main reasons: 1) Lucas, to create his first movie Star Wars: episod IV "A New Hope" had to create a new camera and special effects sistem just like what happened in the case of  Avatar; 2) something for this movie was taken from Star Wars) .

In the end, Avatar is a good movie but it lacks of a good story.

Having again a story of evil imperialism with antinomian denial of letting a stranger conquire and destroy someone's country isn't that fun. The simplicity of the plot is also a great deal.

Cameron has announced that if Avatar would have been successful (as it was) there would be a couple of sequel he wanted to work on. Now he confirmed that the Avatar Saga will be a trilogy. I really hope he will do the same great job in producing the next movies BUT IMPROVING QUALITY OF THE PLOTS.

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