Avatar: Titanic Magic Brings A Brave Blue World

What more can I add to the praise that has been unanimously piled on this awe inspiring, throbbing creature-tryst? It is nothing short of majestic. Avatar romps along, explosive, sensuous, indignant and extravagant. Expensive? Oh, what's a few hundred million? Thanks due to Fox for investing a king's ransom in this holiday antidote to the recession. Imagination is worth everything. Everything. In the end, it may be the only renewable resource we really have.

Avatar has hit the billion dollar box office mark faster than any film in history and no moviegoer leaves disappointed. It has landed solidly in the heart of the audience.  Even reluctant critics have to admit they love it.  How?  Why?

Our world is complicated and vulnerable, so is Pandora.  But in the world of Pandora, we know who the hero is and who the villain is.  In our world, reality is not so simple.  James Cameron is child-like in his vision, appealing to a human yearning for beauty in simplicity. Using elements that are familiar and adorning them with technology no one has ever seen before is in itself not enough.  Cameron's mastery is what makes Avatar such a transformational movie.

The animation is overwhelming but only succeeds because the acting is so true. The secret is that Cameron puts the technology in the service of the acting, not the other way around.

The acting was all completed years before the technology was applied. Cameron worked intently with the actors who stood on pedestals in plain undecorated sound stages while cameras shot their faces and body suits with data points captured movement.  The actors' feelings, body language, voices, interaction and dramatic expression were all recorded and filmed before the magical paintbrush of CGI gave them a layer of alien skin to breathe through.  This is why the Na'vi, the aliens on Pandora, seems so real--they are. When you walk out of the theater after seeing Avatar you feel bigger than you are because the sweep and genius of the movie are inclusive, they include the viewer, us, in this remarkable cinematic accomplishment on the large screen.  They say: This is your world.  All you have to do is be in it.

As I left the theater however, I found myself quite disappointed. Not because my conservative “propaganda sensor” was going into overdrive. No, I pretty much knew what to expect based on Cameron’s resume and the synopsis of the film I read eight or ten years ago. I was disappointed because the film, with its cheesy, hippie message left me feeling empty and unaffected. I thought about all the films I’ve seen, films that cost a fraction of Avatar’s budget, that were so much more effective emotionally. Even if I didn’t agree with the political message.

A big problem with the film is the simplistic and superficial way that it tries to convey its themes. I think a lot of the conservative critics of the film have made a mistake by analyzing it in a similarly simplistic way.