Avatar: An old story retold....again

I went to see Avatar last night, and while I can’t say it’s a great film, I would have to say it was definitely worth seeing. I decided that if I was going to see the movie I might as well go and see what all the hype regarding the 3-D was all about. I have to say that while I wasn’t ‘blown away’, the 3-D was impressive. However, I felt it was ultimately unnecessary to the film. I also found that the glasses dimmed the picture noticeably, similar to wearing weak sunglasses, so that the colors of the film were muted. One of my daughters got a headache from wearing the glasses. I, myself, felt a little eyestrain from trying to refocus on things, but nothing that made it uncomfortable. The few times I removed the glasses I was surprised to see how much more vibrant and bright the colors were. I would have liked to be able to experience that with the 3-D. Still, one can’t blame Mr. Cameron for that. He pulled out all the stops and spent an obscene amount of money getting the technology to its current level. I have a feeling, that if the technology ever fully matures, it is going to owe a great debt indeed to James Cameron.

The CG was second to none. So long as the Na’ vi weren’t shown in the same frame, close up, with an actual human face the illusion is amazing. I cannot stress enough how impressed I was with how realistic the Na’vi looked. When they interacted with their environment and each other, it looked completely natural. The likenesses of the actor’s avatars looked incredibly good, especially Sigourney Weaver’s. I would’ve been able to tell it was her had I been presented with a picture of the avatar and not told who or what it was. It’s that good. The facial expressions were equally impressive. I am VERY excited thinking about were this will lead us. I know, I know, all this digital wizardry is a slippery slope…before you know it, we’ll be seeing movies starring Charlie Chaplin and Humphrey Bogart again. I hope that those who make films will have the integrity not to abuse the tools that will enable them to do just about anything they want, but, in the end, it will be the audience that will curb such abuses.

As for the story, where do I begin? I’m going to resist comparing it to Dances With Wolves, because I defy you to find a site reviewing the movie that doesn’t. Suffice to say it’s VERY similar. I’m immediately reminded of some of the war films of the late 70s and early 80s that depict the brutality of war on the native populace, although in most cases even these films blame the senselessness and stupidity of war itself or the faceless superiors that started the war to begin with. The violent psychopath is the exception not the norm and the common soldier, while certainly capable of great violence, is usually portrayed as a sympathetic character, sickened by the carnage before him and what war has driven him to do. To be fair, I am not suggesting that all of humanity is noble if just given the chance. There are those out there that will pull the wings off of flies simply to see them suffer and probably more than a few people who love nothing more than to visit misery on there fellow man and will use the excuse of war to indulge their every dark and twisted fantasy. For the most part, Avatar portrays the average military man as just that; not simply over-zealous, beer swilling, frat-boy bad, but blood lusting, village burning, baby eating evil, to the point that you half-expect them to start twisting their mustaches and snickering as a locomotive eviscerates the fair maiden. I mean, you start to think that, yeah, human society as a whole is pretty screwed up, but why would they do that? Not because of some moral outrage, but because NOT doing it seemed to make more sense and much more practical.

It was like watching a bunch of orcs from the Lord Of The Rings gleefully killing serfs, burning down their hovels and generally tearing shit up only to be cut to ribbons as comeuppance and saying, “Well, they’re friggin’ ORCS, what do you expect?”. The film uses a very heavy hand in getting its point across. I get it; corporations are bad, unfettered consumerism and waste are raping the planet and you feel the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are wrong. OK, you don’t have to beat me over the head with that message every 10 minutes.

The plot itself revolves around a mining expedition to Pandora, an Earth-like moon of a gas giant orbiting Alpha Centauri A. Pandora is smaller than Earth and hence, has lower gravity. It does however have a denser atmosphere, which I’m guessing is due to the gas giant’s magnetic field, which protects the moon from the star’s solar-wind, much the way Jupiter protects the atmosphere of its moon Titan. All of this does little to affect the evolution of the flora and fauna of Pandora. Nearly every plant and animal has clear analogues with those found on Earth. In fact, other than size, most of the trees look similar to the trees outside my window. There are panthers, horses, wolves/coyotes, pterodactyls and elephant/rhinos, not to mention sentient, symmetrical, bipedal humanoids that act and look just like any number of terrestrial aboriginal peoples, despite their feline-like appearance. I can’t tell you how disappointing it is to have a movie with this sort of budget, this level of technology behind it and the amount of hype this movie has enjoyed only to have it feature a race that is only one or two steps above the average Star Trek:
NG episode. I have read that the Na’vi originally were supposed to be much more alien looking, with multiple limbs and so forth, but it was decided that people would have a hard time relating to them. This may be a fair
assumption, but with the success of the District 9, which featured a very non-human and purposely ‘unpleasant’ looking (albeit, still bipedal) alien, I can’t help feeling they could have really made the Na’vi something otherworldly.

I also found the predominance of Caucasian faces odd. I know this is supposed to be an allegory to 19th century imperialism, but plenty of other cultures practiced genocide and oppressed less advanced cultures, although perhaps not with the commercial efficiency the Europeans employed. Still, am I to believe that, 150 years from now, only Caucasians work for ‘evil’ corporations and are warmongering brutes? Other than Sam Worthington, Michelle Rodriguez is the only Marine that is opposed to the wholesale destruction of the indigenous population’s society and culture. I wonder if it was simply coincidence that Jake Scully’s character, who is supposed to be an American I believe, is played and Australian.

There is a great article about this sort of thing by Annalee Newitz at her site IO9, called When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like Avatar.
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Since I am unlikely to make as good an argument as Ms. Newitz, I’ll leave it to her. Read the article. I found the science for the most part to be very believable. If one is willing to believe that interstellar travel is going to be feasible in 150 years, then it will probably look similar to what is portrayed on screen. I do however wonder what the cost of transporting all that mining and military hardware 4.37 light years at around 70% the speed of light is(ifmy rudimentary math skills are correct), but I suppose with ‘unobtainium’ (I’ll get back to the name later) worth $20 mil per kilogram, maybe it is worth it. Somehow, even with the invention of anti-matter drives, I doubt it. I just seems to me that if you can produce enough anti-matter to accelerate millions of tons of material to nearly the speed of light all the way to another solar system, you have got to be able to figure out away to make some ‘unobtainium’ back home.

I’m also curious about Jake’s inability to afford the procedure in which he’ll regain the use of his legs. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if they can combine human DNA with whatever the alien analogue of DNA is and create a hybrid that not on functions properly, but is capable of ‘linking’ with the indigenous animals, is a biotech miracle. Forget the fact that you are CONTROLLING the hybrid from a remote location via a MIND LINK?! All this and you can’t just walk down to the corner drug store and put on a patch of stem cells that cure spinal injuries? That’s a bit of a stretch.

There are no ‘force-fields’ which is good and it’s interesting that humans are still using projectile weapons. My guess is that it’s supposed to give the film and humans a grittier appearance, and it works. The Halo games use the same approach and it works in that context as well. You already know these weapons and what damage they can do. You don’t need to suspend disbelief when you hear the report of an assault rifle; you duck by instinct. It’s a visceral response; something a ‘laser-blaster’ just can’t elicit. I’m curious why there are no robots or drones. They are able to remotely link into the avatar bodies, why couldn’t they remote into the mobile power suits? It stands to reason that there would be an effort to reduce the amount of human casualties. The fact that we use Predator drones today should bear this out. Just take a look at the The Ripsaw MS1 Remote Gun Tank . The battle field will be crawling with things like this in about a dozen years. In 150 years shouldn’t there be a single marine directing a whole platoon of Asimo’s big brother carrying laser-rifles? Hell, why not some robot troopers similar to The Phantom Menace. Sure those things got their asses kicked by a bunch of Gunguns, but I don’t for a minute believe that it would play out that way at all were it a real.

It does make one wonder; will our own REAL future, in some respects, look far more advanced in comparison with what Hollywood imagines? We may not travel to other star systems, but I have a hard time believing that in 150 years we won’t have some sort of directed energy weapons. Even the Army’s ‘Pain-Ray’ that they have been itching to deploy overseas seems to be a little more advanced than firearms, and with Pandora’s denser atmosphere, more effective than it’s Earthly counterpart. I have to admit though; I wouldn’t have found it as believable if they did use energy weapons.

As for ‘unobtainium’; anyone who has read more than a few Sci-Fi books over the years knows this is a catch-all phrase for any fantastical element that doesn’t exist in reality. Kryptionite, adamantium, vibranium, dillithium, mithril; each a perfect example of what I’m talking about, only someone took the time out to think of a name for them! Using unobtainium was either incredibly lazy writing or some nerdy wink and nod to show his Sci-Fi cred. Or maybe Mr. Cameron was looking to copyright the term itself.
There’s tons of other stuff that rubbed me the wrong way, but it’s ‘fantasy’ not science fiction, so I guess you have to give it a pass. You want GOOD ‘hard’ Sci-Fi, you go to 2001 or Silent Running. However, it’s hard to get GOOD fantasy Sci-Fi. Star Wars: A New Hope is the gold standard of the genre. It’s hard to make good space opera that compares to the original three Star Wars movies. The prequels are proof of that.