Blue-skinned, tall lanky aliens with no bones? Predators that throw their heads at you? And planet-raping fascist human interlopers? All those things, and more, in James Cameron’s upcoming sci-fi epic “Avatar”! And oh yeah, it’s all obviously an eco-friendly movie with a “message”, and according to the person who reviewed the 170-page “script” treatment (an admitted diehard environmentalist), that’s one of the script’s problems: It’s too preachy.
SPOILERS BELOW. You can read the full review for yourself here.
Here’s the film’s basic concept:
In Cameron’s film, our hero Josh Sully has his own custom-grown avatar, and it’s a beautiful blue alien.
Josh is a cripple living in your Standard Issue Dystopic Earth #56. This is the Earth with unmitigated dense urban sprawl, lots of steam pipes, formed protein for lunch, and major income disparities. Cameron takes pains to say explicitly that the environment has been ravaged, and the last lion living outside of captivity has just died in Kenya.
Josh’s legs no longer work, the victim of a war no one remembers.
Josh gets approached by your typical Scary Corporate Guys in Suits and the SCGS tell him that he can go to the planet Pandora (no, no problems there, why do you ask? The name? We thought it was cute) around Alpha Centauri if he plays along.
Seems Josh’s recently dead brother was participant in a program to communicate with the native species there, the Na’vi. The Na’vi, crazy unsophisticated, non-industrialized savages that they are, don’t like to talk to us humans. So the SCGS have figured out a way to genetically splice humans and Na’vi. Then the human who is DNA-linked can psionically control the genetic hybrid. The hybrid becomes the controller’s avatar – an embodiment of him or her self.
To cut to the chase:
It’s entirely predictable and obnoxious and most Americans – being descended of ass-raping European colonists – will probably feel a little cheesed off. Cameron’s not exactly subtle with the analogy, the last battle is called the “Battle of Big Rock-Candy Mountain,” not all that far from Custer’s “Battle of Little Big Horn.”
The twists and turns are expertly paced, of course, because Cameron knows how to make a damn movie, and the all-CGI action set pieces he has sketched out have serious wow-potential. There’s a battle of aliens on flying manta rays vs. soldiers in Iron-Man style battle armor.
But the movie has the fatal flaw of being liberal Hollywood preachy at the same time that it insenstively slams the disabled and the overweight. Josh, the cripple, and Grace, who is described as dumpy, are portrayed as never possibly happy or fulfilled in life until they get a chance to inhabit the smooth, wonderfully athletic and no doubt sexualized alien bodies of their avatars. Take that, fatty.
Visually stunning, but story-wise, it’ll end up as simplistic as “Titanic”, no doubt. But hey, anyone who has seen Cameron’s movies already know that he’s no great philosopher, and shouldn’t be surprised.
This thing is still going to rock. Too bad about it being too preachy, though. What is the deal with all the sci-fi movies nowadays going for “the message” instead of just entertainment value?
