Earthling soldier goes to faraway planet, which is being mined for a precious mineral. (This is in the future.) He goes undercover, infiltrating a tribe of troublesome natives who are holding up the progress of the mining. But while among them he discovers…
Well, you can see where this is going. Earthling soldier discovers what wonderful creatures the natives are; he falls in love. He ends up … But that’s enough in the way of spoilers. You can work out the remainder yourself. Add the usual obstacles facing underdoggies-versus-baddies, the need for a big battle scene and a triumphal finale, and you can guess the rest.
So many years on from Titanic, his blockbuster-to-end-all-blockbusters (some hope!), director James Cameron’s new film, Avatar, will doubtless be burdened by huge expectations. Luckily for him, it is coming out in a year without major competition on the blockbuster front — no new James Bond for Christmas, no Harry Potter, no enormo-franchise retailing its third or fourth instalment.
And Cameron has latched on to the 3D technology (if that’s not too elevated a term) that seems to be all the rage at the moment, so perhaps that will give the film an extra lift. Financially speaking, that is; it doesn’t really add much value to the film as such.
After years of work using the latest in computer-generated imagery (CGI), with motion-capture and so on and so forth, Cameron has created a visually enticing world that keeps one watching for the next eye-tickling frisson. The film looks good, beautifully realising the alien world it has created and almost transcending the cartoony feel of CGI. But perhaps all that techno-wizardry distracted Cameron from focusing on the storyline (which he wrote), or developing it in directions other than the usual formulae of Hollywood storytelling.
It is, indeed, predictable, almost on a scene-by-scene basis. Many, many moments in the film, moments going as key transitions and the like, are the same moments you’ve seen in a thousand other films. How many times have we seen the underdogs triumph against apparently overwhelming odds? Or a person presumed dead come back to life? Or an unlikely love match developing out of initial hostility?
You could compile a long list of movies with scenarios, storylines, scenes, moments and trajectories from which Avatar descends, starting with an old western or two and moving through movie history all the way up to The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings. So many new movies, so few new stories.
At least Avatar puts a new twist on the idea of remote-controlled versions of ourselves, or the remote control of others. This is the virtual-reality idea of virtual selves extended, as seen recently in Surrogates and Gamer, too. In Avatar, former marine Jake Scully (Sam Worthington) is one of those controlling a new body via brainwaves, from within a machine rather like a sunbed.
He has been sent to the planet Pandora, which the earthlings (or is it just the Americans?) are ruthlessly exploiting for its massive deposits of unobtanium. Yes — unobtainium. (Presumably a bit like Wolverine’s unbreakable inner metal, adamantium.) Jake will be using an avatar to infiltrate the local natives, who are resisting the invasive exploitation of their planet. This is not the avatar of Hindu tradition, a god incarnated, but a genetically modified version of a Pandora native. The natives are the Na’vi, and they seem an amalgam of many native peoples the world over, except they are tall, blue, rather manga-like creatures with catlike tails, elfin ears, round yellow eyes and flat noses.
For the head of the avatar programme, Dr Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), this impersonation is vital anthropological work, if the Na’vi can be seen as anthropic. She’s hoping for interspecies understanding, but the military-corporate types running the mining operation just want enough on-the-ground information to be able to outwit the pesky natives standing in the way of their enterprise.
If it all sounds a bit like a metaphor for colonialism, perhaps it is. It is, however, more India under the British Raj than South Africa, say; the humans don’t intend to settle permanently. They just want to make their money and get out. Maybe it’s a bit like Iraq.
At any rate, the colonialist-exploiter scenario is not there to say anything meaningful about American imperialism. It’s just the set-up that distinguishes goodies from baddies (exploiters bad, natives good) and to trace the protagonist’s change of heart.
There’s a great deal of emotional manipulation and, ultimately, great gloopy waves of sentimentality, as we come to see that the Na’vi aren’t just savages standing in the way of progress but a unique, sensitive, lovely bunch of creatures who don’t deserve to be treated like … oh, take your pick: Hereros in German South West Africa, Native Americans in North America, Iraqis …
At least an American audience will be able to experience some anti-colonial, anti-exploitation feelings while watching this, whether or not they recognise them as such. Perhaps some moviegoers will even draw parallels with the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. Mostly, though, I suspect they will just be pulled into an escapist storyline with wonderful visual accoutrements and give Iraq not a thought. It’s ironic, I suppose, that you can use an echo of the real world to help people escape that world into fantasy. Maybe it works because it’s comforting to have reality reframed as fantasy.
Worthington is, er, worthy as Jake — he’s a personable actor, with the inner strength and solidity that came across well in Terminator: Salvation fully on display here, even when half his face has been morphed on to that of an avatar. Weaver is also good, as might be expected. It’s hard to tell how good the actors playing the Na’vi are, but they seem okay. The Na’vi do a lot of things you might expect from native peoples, like a bit of African-style sangoma stuff and so on, but I imagine that involved more computer work than actual acting.
Avatar is certainly a thrill for the eyes, hampered though they will be by the inconvenience of having to wear those clunky 3D glasses. Personally, I don’t think the 3D gimmickry adds anything; Avatar will look just as good in 2D, and the narrative won’t be any different. I eagerly await the DVD, which I’m sure will contain some very interesting material on “the making of …”. As with Titanic, that may be more interesting than the film itself.