AVATAR

If you want pure immersion without having to think too much, then AVATAR is the film for you. The narrative alludes to other sci-fi action films such as, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Minority Report and Alien (1 -4). The CGI - 3D computer graphics is absolutely amazing, probably the best that your going to see for a while. In fact, I think I spent most of the film just luxuriating in the fact that what I was seeing was so life-like - at one point I tried to touch a rather beautiful and fragile form that was floating just feet away from me. Occasionally throughout the film bits of debris would float above your head or a person in one of the scenes appeared just in front of you. I couldn't resist removing the 3D glasses just to see what the film looked like without them. The colors were more vivid and the whole film looked a lot clearer without the glasses, except that the 3D areas appeared slightly blurred. It's best to watch the film in 3D as intended!


Avatar comes at a moment in which we are just getting used to the idea of virtual avatars in arenas such as Second Life, but here in this film an avatar is a genetically engineered real body operated by implanted human consciousness. Why are avatars necessary? Basically human beings have destroyed their own planet and having located the planet Pandora, which contains a valuable mineral, they decide to infiltrate the Na'vi tribe who occupy it so that it can be plundered for all it's worth. The Na'vi, with mostly human morphology, have blue bodies, are extremely tall and athletic, have large ears, a tail and feline faces. Their weapons of choice are knives and bows and arrows and they live in harmony with an immense tree deity that has a root system that provides an inter-connectivity to all things. When the Na'vi were using their bows and arrows I kept thinking of all the films I'd seen as a child with the U.S. cavalry attacking Native American Indians, who were depicted as savages, but who had complex and significant belief systems, rituals and sacred places.

The avatar sent to infiltrate the tribe, learn their language and cultural system is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a marine who has lost the use of his legs in an accident. Becoming an avatar enables him the illusion of being able-bodied, albeit for the short time of his avatar experience. Indeed, Jake, who must lie prone in a pod, can move around the planet with his avatar body.

The avatar body is in fact a slave body, constructed purely for human use and as such may be read in relation to those other bodies throughout human history that have been used for our own desire. Old fears about genetically engineered cloned bodies, constructed purely for the use of those who may need organ transplants resurfaces in this film in which bodies are important purely for their use value. But there is more to this because Jake, as outsider (dis-abled) - as less than worthy (in many people's eyes) is, like those other less than worthy Na'vi, considered dispensable (collatoral damage) in the white man's desire to perpetuate his own future needs.

The most significant aspect of this film is that Earth, or what counts as Earth, is a series of rooms filled with a myriad of screens and computer technology or the the ubiquitous presence of machines and weapons, this stands in marked contrast to the complex and beautiful living things in the jungle of the Pandora planet. It seems that Earth is no longer beautiful - raw, beauty is elsewhere! Significantly, some emphasis is placed on the fact that earthly communications and technology systems provide a connectivity, but 'nature' also has a connectivity that is unparalled and this is demonstrated by the way that the Na'vi communicate with each other, the creatures in their environment and their deity. This film may be read as science versus spirituality and the pitfalls of both.

I understand the allure and powerful feelings that might be gained from large groups of people enanating one thought into the universe, however, I still have mixed feelings about the chanting of people who evoke a god-like presence to intercede on their behalf (in Avatar also alluded to as Star Wars and the Matrix). For some reason I was not annoyed by the repetative chanting of the five notes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind or the use of it by scientists to contact the alien species.

Although Avatar is great to look at, I was left feeling that I'd seen it all before and heard the message, which is being repeated ad nauseum. But maybe that's what all the chanting was all about - the fact that we keep saying the same thing, but no-one in power is listening!