I read some time ago that Hollywood is moving towards 3D films as a way of bringing people back into the cinemas. Avatar 3D is a promising start.
Let me cut to the chase. The storyline for Avatar is quite basic and somewhat predictable. I’ve heard it said elsewhere that there are really only 7 storylines these days which are recycled in various forms. That said, my interest in films these days are in the re-telling of those basic story lines. It’s like going to a fine dining restaurant and complaining that they serve chicken. Well, yes, it is chicken, the same stuff you can make at home, but how they present the same meal is what makes it special.
Avatar, as a story, is relatively simple. Without giving too much away, it’s essentially about a group of invading humans looking to profit from a foreign planets natural resources. An ex-marine finds himself drawn to an experiment in which he uses an avatar to mix with a local tribes ‘people’ known as the Na’vi (and while this isn’t a new plot development the mode in which it is done is relatively novel). Initially sent in to spy he falls in love with the ‘people’ and eventually saves them from destruction.
The scenery is as lush as I’ve ever seen in a movie and the cinematography has been done very well. In 3D the scenes burst to life and draw you in very quickly. The dense forest of Pandora is teeming with exotic flora and fauna and those scenes are almost worth the ticket price alone. Almost 3 hours of movie making passed before I knew it.
But some have labelled the movie as propaganda. After seeing the movie I understand this concern to a point. While I didn’t think it that preachy or as a bad as this reviewer made it out to be, there were other elements which had me thinking:
Firstly – the use of the terms ‘shock and awe’ and ‘pre-emptive strike’ echo closely the rhetoric used to justify the Iraq War (whether or not the war itself was justifiable I’ll leave alone for the moment). That these terms are used by the relatively one dimensional ‘American Military’ characters certainly gives you James Cameron’s view on said war.
Secondly – the Na’vi people have a semi-pantheistic relationship with their home planet, Pandora. Their ‘deity’ is not so much an external and personal being, but rather an impersonal life-force (type) akin to Gaia mythology. Cameron weaves this theological narrative through the story in a way which presents the Na’vi as living harmoniously with their environment and the Military (read America) as living recklessly. If there is any propaganda in this movie it’s this idea of environment vs industry/money.
At this point I think it’s fair to say that this ‘environment vs industry’ message is pushed firmly and subtly within the narrative of the movie. The Bible teaches that man is to be a steward of creation and under the command to subdue it (cf Genesis 1:28). Avatar presents the Na’vi as peaceful stewards and the Military as reckless subduers. The Bible’s message is one of balance. We are not like the Na’vi who have such a relationship with their land that they deify certain aspects of it. And we are not like the Military who care nothing of the planet (creation) itself. Not only this, but we also look forward to a day when creation will be released from its bonds and made anew.
Those (minor) points aside I think the movie was worth the ticket price. Certainly in 3D it gave me plenty to marvel at.
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I’ve posted some recent thoughts regarding the movie’s robbing of God’s glory. Please find that post here.
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