You wanna know which conflictual movie I watched on the 21st?
James Cameron's Avatar. I didn't really know what to expect when I went to see it--I wasn't expecting all the language, that's for sure--but I thought it looked like a pretty sweet movie. And it was. Here's my review:
Summary:
A company of humans have started mining a special resource on Pandora, a planet that takes six years to travel to. Jake Sully agrees to go and work on the planet in place of his recently deceased brother as a scientist to observe the residents of Pandora, the Na'vi. He enters a mentally controlled Na'vi body which was created by combining the creature's DNA with the human's. When he first started observing the Na'vi, he was trying to help the humans to get the Na'vi to relocate because their "Home Tree" was right on top of the richest deposit of the mineral that the humans wanted, but Jake converts to the Na'vis' side when he falls in love and realizes that the indigenous creatures were being wrongly treated. The Na'vi struggle to survive until Jake manages to bring all their tribes together and they fight against guns and steel machines with bows, arrows, and bare flesh. In the end, the Na'vi win with their goddess/mother earth, Eywa, fighting on their side. They kick the humans off Pandora and only allow a special few, like Jake, to stay behind.
There's the entire 2 and 1/2 hour movie in a paragraph. There are a lot more underlying themes and conflicts and moments, but that right there is the base plot. It was enjoyable... I probably won't ever sit down to watch the entire thing again, but I liked it. The naked Na'vi were a little disturbing, but they have loin cloths and blue skin and stripes, so it's kind of just like seeing the Bushmen from "The Gods Must be Crazy." However, I didn't think the language would be an issue with this movie, but it was... it would've done just fine without the language and it makes me mad that they put it in there.
The graphics are phenomenal. Pandora is a gorgeous planet, especially at night when all the plants do this cool glowing thing.
The movie was pleasing to the eye.
There were many things that I didn't particularly like in the movie. For instance, the Na'vi have this weird "connection" thing they do through their braided hair. They can connect to each other, other creatures, and even plants. They can share thoughts through this connection and even control animals. I just thought the concept was really bizarre and kind of awkward. The makeout scene was brief, but still went a little over the edge, I think.
Then there are, of course, the political and evironmental themes within the movie. I'm not gonna lie, there are some strong environmentalist ideas in there. Like, "All life is connected," and the humans, or as the Na'vi call us, "Sky People," are gonna destroy Pandora just like they destroyed the earth (this movie is set in the future; the earth is supposedly one big city at the time the movie takes place and there is no more green left on it.) It's the same Native Americans versus White Man idea. The White Men come to Pandora and take whatever they want without thinking of the consequences.
There are a lot of anti-human ideas as well. The whole time while watching the movie you get this feeling that humans are evil and inconsiderate, which I guess can sometimes be true. According to my brother, it's also anti-God because Jake Sully in the end abandons his human body altogether and transfers his sould to the avatar Na'vi body. There are a lot of heated arguments about the themes of this movie; hundreds of reviews and thousands of individuals' ideas, a lot of conflict, and even contradictions.
Personally, I thought it was enjoyable to watch. It was exciting, and though some people considered it simply repetitive, I thought it was fresh. The Na'vi looked AWESOME. And yeah, the political themes did bother me because I disagree with a lot of it, but if you don't let them bother you too much--nor get brainwashed by them--the themes really aren't a problem because I didn't think the movie was force-feeding them to the audience. It's epic on the big screen, but I would've gladly waited to rent it on DVD when it's released.
3.9 star rating
Now that the review's over... My Opinions on the Political Issues Depicted in Avatar:
I'm not an environmentalist, nor do I think that we should just ignore the needs of nature and misuse/disrespect our God-given home. I do think that environmentalists take it a little too far, though. We need the resources from the earth. It's a commandment to use what we've been given. The environmentalists don't want us to cut down the trees to build houses, but what they're missing is the fact that they, too, live in nice, cozy houses made of WOOD which came from TREES. No, we shouldn't hack down every forest in sight, but reasonable logging is a good thing. We all need the wood provided by the maginificant forests. All the resources we use to better our living standard was put here for us to use; why let it go to waste?
Nobody can deny that what we did to the Indians was wrong, but it's history; there's really nothing that we can do to fix it now except make sure we do not make the same mistake again. People need to move on and let it go; what was done has been done and unless someone has a time machine, a really great ambassador to work with the Indians and a translator so that there are no miscommunications, and a VERY, VERY, persuasive and POWERFUL leader to convince everyone to stop taking over. Yeah, good luck changing history. We can't change history but we can avoid repeating it.
Humans are NOT evil. They were given dominion over everything else in the world (read your bible) and they do sin a lot, but not all of us are evil. There are many more good people in the world unlike the tiny baby-sized handful of good people depicted in Avatar. Everybody makes mistakes; should humans be annihilated, betrayed, and shunned just because of the mistakes they've made? Negative. That's what the Atonement is for. There is such thing as forgiveness and redemption. Using the things we've been given does not make humans evil; excessive use and cruelty to get what you want is, though. There has to be balance. There has to be wisdom and education in the choices we make. But again I say, the human race as a whole is NOT evil.
Okay, I think I've made my point.
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