Posted on 01/09/2010 2:43:32 PM PST by MindBender26
Anti-American "Avatar" – A Movie To Miss
We saw Avatar last night, and it is an amazing motion picture in two ways.
Technologically, it is brilliant. It breaks all previous barriers between live actors, animation and computer-generated graphics. Each scene on the distant moon Pandora is more beautiful than the next. The alien animals and foliage are markedly different from what we see on Earth, but not so different as to be impossible to accept. Even the 3-D effects are used brilliantly. There are no flaming arrows or cannon balls shot at the audience as was the norm when 3-D was first introduced into action pictures 50 years ago. When it’s appropriate for a butterfly-like creature to appear floating in the foreground, seemingly so close you could touch it, it quietly appears, then floats off screen.
Avatar is so technically perfect it is impossible to visually differentiate between the live actors and the computer generated characters. You can’t tell the difference between what a camera actually saw and what existed only in the minds of the producers… and on some Hollywood hard drive.
But, pardon the pun, the story is another story.
It is simply another horribly boring and predictable repetition of a story the far-leftist Hollywood crowd loves to tell again and again. American industrialists oppress beautiful but poor 3d World (in this case, 1573d World) natives in order to line their pockets with obscenely obtained riches, while they destroy the indigenous people and their glorious environment.
It’s Apocalypse Now, Syriana, Aliens, Michael Clayton, Alien, The Good Sheppard, The Borne Identity-Supremacy-Ultimatum, and a hundred other contemporary Blame America First movies all over again. It has all the overused stereotypical characters, with no attempt to disguise them.
First we have Jake Sully, the former Marine. Has to be a real red-blooded American with a name like “Jake,” doesn’t he? In case you might forget he was Marine, he wears his Eagle, Globe and Anchor t-shirt everywhere. Jake is the uneducated combat-wounded paraplegic brought to the distant moon Pandora to establish sort of a telepathic link with the wonderful natives, the Na’vi People. The only reason dumb Jake is there is because he has the DNA of his accidentally killed Ph.D. twin brother.
Jake and the other exploiters from Intergalactic Mining purpose on Pandora is to destroy the environment while mining all the $20,000,000 per kilo Unattainium. Yes, they actually called it that. Oscar-winner Al Gore probably wanted them to name the rare raw mineral Bushium, but he can’t have everything.
The Pandorian natives, the iridescent blue Na’vi, are simply wonderful in every possible way They run through the forest nearly naked, fly on the backs of giant birds, are armed only with bows and arrows, say prayers for the game they kill to eat, and they all live in a huge tree two miles tall.
Even better, the Na’vi have a telepathic link to all living things on Pandora. They have some sort of Mr. Spock Vulcan Mind-meld thing going with the trees. Whenever someone is going to die, a 1000 creatures that look like a cross between butterflies, pine cones and jellyfish float down to take their departing spirits up to the Big Retirement Village in the Sky.
Among the Na’vi characters, there are, of course, the wise old father-chief of the tribe; mom who doubles as the head shaman; the young warrior, heir to the Chiefdom who is betrothed to the female lead but loses her to our Marine. Of course, the young warrior sees the errors of his aggressive ways and dies trying to save his people, with a few verses of the Na’vi version of Kumbaya on his blue lips. It’s Little Big Man, The Last Samurai, and Dances with Wolves all over again.
Of course, the Na’vi are all beautiful, as beautiful as blue humanoids can be, and to help with the graphics, are always 9/10 naked.
Just to ensure complete compliance with the anti-American story line, the villain is a retired American Colonel, complete with a buzz cut, scars and a bad attitude. In the climaxial scene, the Bad American Colonel leads his flying saucer forces against the peaceful Na’vi, burning down the two mile tall tree house in the process.
Why? Because the tree sits over the mother lode of Unattanium. Even Stevie Wonder could see that coming.
Entirely predictably as well, Jake rallies to save the Na’vi, almost dies, and of course, is saved by the shaman, gets the blue girl… and a couple million dollars when the movie moves into reruns on TV.
There is so much more that is so bad, but it hurts to go on. It was three hours, $15, and a whole lot of bad temper wasted.
Great Unwashed Obama Voters will see it as a civics lesson. They will love it.
If anyone is winning to give me good odds, I’ll bet, that within 24 months, at least two dozen people will rename themselves the Na’vi, paint themselves blue, and establish a commune in Northern California, within driving distance of Nancy Pelosi’s district.
And of course, they will apply for Stimulus Money as an oppressed minority.
Original subtitle: “Wall Street and Dick Cheney Kill the Smurfs”
The Unattainium term was juvenile as was the use of the Bush-era reference “Shock and Awe”.
I agree. Same for Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Pearl Jam, Springsteen, and on and on. I often say that if I limited my entertainment choices to only those artists with whom I agree politically, I'd be watching and listening to a lot of crap.
So I'll happily enjoy their art and roll my eyes when they start running their mouths.
There is a word for folks who are mesmerized by special effects: children.
Ditto. I always laugh at the people who urge us to see some flick with a weak story line because of the special effects. That's like listening to a symphony orchestra with nice, shiny instruments played by great musicians, but the music is lousy.
I groaned inwardly when I saw Nora Ephron was the screenwriter. I was not disappointed. The anti-conservative barbs were predictably stupid..."if I was a Republican, I would have fired you." I had to be silent because I watching the flick with my step-daughter who is hard-core lib. I doubt she even noticed the anti-Republican statements.
The key: “... get a big buttered popcorn, a drink, kick back, let your mind drift...” What, exactly, are you recommending I drink, PB? ‘Cause, as a buddy & I have posited, if you are drunk enough, every movie’s a fairly-well-made comedy. I’m guessing “The Blue Pocahantas, or The Last Samurai Dances with Ferngully Wolves in Space” would go best with a couple-two-t’ree of the standard well-rummed Coca Colas.
If you have to get drunk to have a good time - have at it.
When I go to the movies I have a Coke with my popcorn.
“If you have to get drunk to have a good time - have at it.”
From what I’ve read, and what a moviefan friend has told me, getting a little drunk may be the key for a fat, old, bald guy like me enjoying the big, blue, cat people.
“....getting a little drunk may be the key for a fat, old, bald guy like me enjoying the big, blue, cat people....”
Be sure to wear your raincoat.
:-)
And no doubt an advertising campaign budget bigger that the last top ten movies all put together.
Apocalypto was an EXCELLENT movie!
As an aside anyone else notice what’s missing in every review of this movie? It’s any mention of the music. Most blockbusters have at least one song that sells or is fairly good. This seems to have none.
That was actually a double happy ending, i.e. the slave-raider crew gets whacked and THEN the honkeys arrive in ships to end the cannibalism and devil worship. It can’t get better than that.
My teenage daughter took me to see the movie just like recent Star Wars and Batman sequels, and I didn’t think of it as anti-American per se. It seems to me that the military force was an international mining company with mercenaries from all over, and the hero is the only person specifically identified as an American (the wounded Marine), although I could have missed some references. Like I am sure other viewers, I kept thinking of historical analogues, like the Spanish explorers in Mexico, and Mongols killing entire cities of 100,000. So, beyond all the special effects which we saw without 3-D stuff, it just seemed to me to be about human nature and not a political statement.
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