Avatar: A Cinematic Event for the Spiritually and Critically Conscious

[Joanne98]

The immersive experience of Avatar would be enough on its own. That you are taken into a world where you essentially take part in the journey and evolution of a hero that deals with a supreme conflict just makes this film even more worth experiencing in an IMAX theatre.

The story follows Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic war veteran who is asked to participate in a high level program run by corporate and military strategists after his brother dies. Sully accepts and travels light years away to the planet of Pandora.


Humans cannot breathe the air on Pandora but through an Avatar Program they link to an avatar which is a hybrid of the indigenous people of Pandora that happen to have features of the individuals they are linked to.

Ultimately, Sully is offered the job because he is a genetic match for an expensive avatar that was designed for his brother. He signs up to help scientists learn about the indigenous people of Pandora, the Na'vi.

The scientists inform Sully that linking to his own avatar will give him the ability to walk again, an experience that becomes quite liberating.

Scientists carry out a mission designed to figure out why Na'vi/human relations are so tumultuous, a corporate-military management corporation ultimately oversees the scientific project.

The project exists, for the most part, because it may yield information that can help the Resources Development Organization gain access to the planet's natural resource, Unobtanium, which the corporation can use to save a dying planet Earth from its current energy crisis.

Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) epitomizes the corporation with his "ends justifies the means" approach to acquiring Pandora's resources for planet Earth. Selfridge is very much interested in finding a way to "wag the dog" so blowback against his corporate enterprise can be kept to a minimum and that's why he is willing to help supervise the mission of the scientists.

Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) exemplifies the military as a cold-blooded imperialist warmonger who will only be content when he successfully dominates the "savages" of Pandora. Quaritch cheerleads Sully's involvement in the Avatar Program under the assumption that Sully will force the"savages" to submit to their operation.

The combination of corporate and military forces puts on display a terror evocative of the current conflict over resources in the Middle East and the corporate/military aspect is a clear dystopian element in the film.

Eventually, Sully becomes separated from the scientists when attacked by a planetary creature called a Thanator. He later is faced with Viperwolves, and as he is about to be torn to pieces, a member of an indigenous tribe on Pandora known as the Omaticaya, rescues him.

Neytiri, his rescuer, takes him back to her people and from here on the central conflict of the film manifests itself: Can one of the "sky people" learn the ways of the indigenous people or will he betray and exploit the Omaticayan people as sky people have traditionally done since their first days on Pandora?

Avatar is very much a film that relies on the universal motif of adventure and transformation known as the Hero's Journey.

As Joseph Campbell might describe it, Sully's destiny summons him and transfers "his spiritual center of gravity from within the pale of society to a zone unknown." Destiny leads him to reconcile his role as an enabler of the exploitative colonialist corporate army whose supreme goal is to claim a natural resource beneath the Hometree that the Omaticayan people inhabit with Na'vi people's culture, spirituality, and their connection with the land and animals of Pandora.

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http://www.opednews.com/articles/Avatar-A-Cinematic-Event-by-Kevin-Gosztola-091220-634.html

[fasttense]

1. I just have a problem giving my money to Rupert Murdoch’s Fox studios. n/t

[Joanne98]

4. Yeah I know me too.

[Psephos]

5. Interesting. How do you explain that the film's storyline repudiates everything Murdoch stands for?

BTW, do you realize how Murdoch acquired Fox?

In 1978, the studio came under the ownership of Marvin Davis and Marc Rich. Yes, the infamous Marc Rich pardoned by Clinton in the last half-hour of his presidency for evading $100 million in taxes.

By 1985, Rich had fled the U.S. to stay out of jail, and Davis sold Rich's half of Fox to News Corp. Six months later, Davis sold his half of Fox to News Corp., as well.

You have a problem giving your money to Fox, but Fox owner Marc Rich had a problem giving HIS money to the US Treasury. But because Clinton was banging his big-boobed ex-wife, Rich got the same deal Geithner got. Pretty sweet, huh? ;)

You can thank Dems who acted like the worst kind of pugs for Murdoch's ascent with Fox.

[TransitJohn]

2. Counterpoint: When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like "Avatar"?

Critics have called alien epic Avatar a version of Dances With Wolves because it's about a white guy going native and becoming a great leader. But Avatar is just the latest scifi rehash of an old white guilt fantasy. Spoilers...

Whether Avatar is racist is a matter for debate. Regardless of where you come down on that question, it's undeniable that the film - like alien apartheid flick District 9, released earlier this year - is emphatically a fantasy about race. Specifically, it's a fantasy about race told from the point of view of white people. Avatar and scifi films like it give us the opportunity to answer the question: What do white people fantasize about when they fantasize about racial identity?

Avatar imaginatively revisits the crime scene of white America's foundational act of genocide, in which entire native tribes and civilizations were wiped out by European immigrants to the American continent. In the film, a group of soldiers and scientists have set up shop on the verdant moon Pandora, whose landscapes look like a cross between Northern California's redwood cathedrals and Brazil's tropical rainforest. The moon's inhabitants, the Na'vi, are blue, catlike versions of native people: They wear feathers in their hair, worship nature gods, paint their faces for war, use bows and arrows, and live in tribes. Watching the movie, there is really no mistake that these are alien versions of stereotypical native peoples that we've seen in Hollywood movies for decades.

And Pandora is clearly supposed to be the rich, beautiful land America could still be if white people hadn't paved it over with concrete and strip malls. In Avatar, our white hero Jake Sully (sully - get it?) explains that Earth is basically a war-torn wasteland with no greenery or natural resources left. The humans started to colonize Pandora in order to mine a mineral called unobtainium that can serve as a mega-energy source. But a few of these humans don't want to crush the natives with tanks and bombs, so they wire their brains into the bodies of Na'vi avatars and try to win the natives' trust. Jake is one of the team of avatar pilots, and he discovers to his surprise that he loves his life as a Na'vi warrior far more than he ever did his life as a human marine.

Rest on io9

[Recursion]

13. +1

[BrklynLiberal]

18. I agree with the point of this article..and am saddened by the history and reality it

describes...but I am drawn by the technology that is being demonstrated in this film.
I think the story itself is not what attracts me. I saw Dances with Wolves and already know that story.
In this case, it is the presentation that fascinates.

[Cartoonist]

21. No racial guilt

It's not about race, it's about culture. Not the same thing. Whoever wrote that has a problem with his own racial identity, not the film-makers.

[yurbud]

3. I'm going to see it today.

[dcsmart]

6. sucken-fish-heads, morning after...poopy...

[bertman]

7. My only quibble is with the characterization as "corporate-military". It is clearly stated

early on that the military-looking types on Pandora are contractors. One more nod to our current situation.

One small detail that I particularly liked was the Colonel's comment that he had read Sully's file and seen that he had been Force Recon in Venezuela. Another prescient nod to a war allegedly fought in that South American nation by U.S. Marines.

I've only seen it in regular theaters. It is magnificent. Can't wait to see it in 3D.

The poster who's all exorcised about "white guilt" needs to get over it. This is a fantastic flick about a FANTASY world.

[yurbud]

9. Venezuela and Nigeria--the next couple of oil wars. We'll go to Sudan too.

All the talk about Darfur is just a warm up.

[yurbud]

10. I just saw it in 3D--it's a game changing movie. The first time CGI characters were believeable

and the first time 3D worked in a movie.

It is easily the best movie of the year.

[bertman]

16. Thanks for that information, yurbud. I was imagining it would be mind-blowing in 3d.

Can't wait to see it in 3D.

[BrklynLiberal]

19. I am looking forward to the technological experience...

[dcsmart]

8. a butt is a terrible thing to waste

[Lost Jaguar]

11. Haven't seen it yet, but...

...the plot reminds me very much of Ursula K. LeGuin's book, "The Word for World Is Forest." I applaud any effort to address our country's history of imperialism, even if it is done indirectly. Often science fiction must be the genre to transmit lessons for folks who might ignore a more overt message.

As for the poster who spoke of the white hypocrisy, I understand the feeling. Once again, white guilt is funneled into a slick presentation, and yet the transgressions continue. However, I remain hopeful. Humanity does seem to have evolved, if only a little, since the bad old days. Perhaps our karma as a culture will make the difference. White male Christians have been on top for so long that they've forgotten what it was like to be oppressed.

Let us pray for those perpetrators of suffering, even if they may be ourselves, to become aware of the consequences of their actions and learn compassion and love.

[Recursion]

12. I found it facile, shallow, and preachy. A new "Billy Jack". Couldn't stand it. NT

[bemildred]

14. A last, desperate attempt to save the movie business with CGI.

Cameron was perfect for the job.

[bemildred]

15. Well, probably not the last.

But possibly the most expensive.

[Inspired]

20. Seriously? It was visually stunning.

[BrklynLiberal]

17. I am looking forward to seeing this.

even tho Rupert will be making money from it.

[knixphan]

22. You can support Cameron, if not Rupert

In any event Jim made a great flick. It deserves to get box-office rewards, plus the VFX Oscar.

[proteus_lives]

23. It was absolute dreck.

Candy for the eye but wooden acting, a unimaginative plot (Dances with Wolves in Space) and one-dimensional characters.

There's no subtlety left in Hollywood.

Here's a funny link: Avatar in five panels, I just saved you $10.

http://www.geekologie.com/2009/12/spoiler_alert_avatar_the_movie.php