Here’s another review of the movie — AVATAR :
http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/12/not_right-wing.php
Not Right-Wing Friendly
The political import of Avatar — and there’s no waving this aspect away because it’s right in your face start to finish, and especially in the third act — is ardently left. It is pro-indigenous native, anti-corporate, anti-imperialist, anti-U.S. Iraq War effort, anti-U.S.-in-Afghanistan (and anti-troop-surge-in-that-country, or strongly against the thinking of President Barack Obama and Gen. Stanley McChrystal), anti-rightie, anti-Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld, etc.
Yes, it’s very teenaged adolescent in its super-imaginative wacko visions and exuberant energy levels, but politically it’s pure Che Guevara (more the Motorcycle Diaries or Che-in-Cuba version than Che in Bolivia), Naom Chomsky, Hugo Chavez, Howard Zinn, Gore Vidal, Oliver Stone, etc. Cameron is an earth-hugging lefty from way back (the flagrant despise-the-arrogant-rich current in Titanic being but one example) so this should come as no surprise to anyone. I for one am cheered and heartened.
If Sarah Palin sees Avatar and then sits down and actually thinks about what it’s saying (which is always a dicey proposition, I admit), she’ll hate this movie. Because Avatar hates her and her kind. Some righties will pretend to like it (”great popcorn flick! took my kids!”), but they’d have to be in major denial mode not to recognize that Avatar is much more MSNBC than Fox News. It really spits on the Fox News philosophy/worldview. If Cameron had for some inane reason put a Fox News-type character in the film, he/she would end up with a Na’vi arrow through his/her chest, trust me.
Call it the most flamboyant, costliest, grandest left-liberal super-movie anyone’s ever seen — a political tract that cost Rupert Murdoch God knows how many hundreds of millions to make and yet is totally pro-loincloth, pro-native, despise-the-greedy, hug-the-earth, worship-the-earth, down with the soulless short-end, down with the us-first, masters-of-the-universe thinking behind the Goldman Sachs/Timothy Geithner culture and up with the eternal/spiritual in all cultures and all corners of the globe. The tragedy of the Vietnam War echoes all through this film. Somewhere Ho Chi Minh is smiling.
Cameron explains the anti-imperialist current to John Anderson in a forthcoming N.Y. Times Sunday piece: “I’m...a child of the ‘60s. There’s a part of me who wants to put a daisy in the end of the gun barrel. I believe in peace through superior firepower, but on the other hand I abhor the abuse of power and creeping imperialism disguised as patriotism. Some of these things you can’t raise without being called unpatriotic, but I think it’s very patriotic to question a system that needs to be corralled, or it becomes Rome.”
Spoiler: I leave it to the community to decide whether there’s a huge 9/11 metaphor in Avatar or not, but I felt one (although politically it makes no sense in the context of the film.) Call it a reverse 9/11 image. I’m not talking about the destruction of a man-made super-structure but a natural one. I’ll leave it at that and wait for reactions.
I’ll pass and watch The Longest Day again instead.
10-4 that!!!
dances with smurfs
Not relative, but I love how spell check just can't recognize "Obama", haha.
Why not make a movie about a rational civilization that simply buys the unobtainium? I don’t think that movie would cost 300 million dollars to make.
If true it will take awhile to break even. Who had all that cash to toss around? Libtards don’t work, conservatives who do have been insulted by this bunch.
Ferngully 2, staring Cameron the Insane Fruit Bat.
James Cameron=Mort Liddy for all the Atlas Shrugged followers.
It’s funny how pretty much every character in that book exists today in some form.
I hope it fails in a big way. But people are probably too stupid to be annoyed by the blatant preaching and hatred of themselves.
Interesting what Orson Scott Card had to say about Cameron as well:
“Mickey from St. Louis: What was it like working with James Cameron on the novelization of “The Abyss”?
OC: Hell on wheels. He was very nice to me, because I could afford to walk away. But he made everyone around him miserable, and his unkindness did nothing to improve the film in any way. Nor did it motivate people to work faster or better. And unless he changes his way of working with people, I hope he never directs anything of mine. In fact, now that this is in print, I can fairly guarantee that he will never direct anything of mine. Life is too short to collaborate with selfish, cruel people.”
http://timp.net/osclistgallery/transcript990831.htm
Somehow I’m not surprised...
This was what I took away from the trailers:
A white militaristic high-technology society wages war against primitive otherwise-peaceful people of color in order to strip-mine their land.
A half-white/half-person of color sent to infiltrate the primitive people of color comes to realize that the people of color are morally superior to white civilization.
And, cue the predictable ending.
Since these Hollyweirdos hate Western civilization so much, why don’t they do without the pillars of Western civilization:
1. Judeo-Christian belief that humans everywhere are all of one blood, and created equal in the sight of God. (A belief not commonly found among primitive tribal societies.)
2. Science and medicine. The next time some Hollyweirdo gets sick, they should treat themselves with trial-and-error roots and berries instead of the products of Western science.
3. Technology and inventions. The Hollyweirdos should turn off the electricity, do without refrigerated food and either walk everywhere or ride horses. And, no more movie-making using Western inventions of cameras and film.
This sounds about as entertaining as Broke Back Mountain.
This has got to be one of the best film reviews I’ve ever read. Interesting to it back to back with Roger Ebert’s (which was gushing with praise of course). Now I’m intrigued to see the movie just for the sake of seeing how wrong Ebert is. Also to cheer on the space Marines and to see how hot the blue chick is.
My grandson saw this movie about four months ago. He said visually is was overwhelming but the story was “lame lame and lame”.
I am looking forward to the new Sherlock Holmes film. I’ll skip Avatar