Just saw Avatar .. and to my great surprise, I loved it. Yeah, the story was simplistic, predictable, at times, the metaphor was getting a bit thick. Probably the most blatantly "message"-driven movie I've ever seen .. but this didn't bother me in the slightest, as it was a damned good message.
I've seen people describe it as anti-American or anti-white. I don't see it. I found it more anti-humanity, which I fully can get behind, we'd deserve getting our asses kicked by blue people some day. Considering how utterly utterly full of situations analogous to the one in the movie history has been I find it startling to see people deem the (political, not technological) setup of the movie unrealistic. And it's really not just an American thing - Russia, for example, is working very hard to buy indigenous peoples off Siberian natural gas deposits. Attempting to buy the natives' good-will with books and schools and shit, but going a lot farther if that doesn't do the trick. Non-white nations like Japan and China have also hardly been innocent in this respect.
While I knew that most Americans would be seeing Native Americans in the Na'vi .. for me, the analogy worked better with the Maris. The Maris are an indigenous nation of Russia, in whose belief system - and I'm not making this up - trees are holy, as the gods embody themselves in the trees (this is not some kind of new-age bullshit, but a relgion that goes back thousands of years). One of the driving forces behind the Maris' struggle against Russian imperialism has, for centuries, been the Russians' indifference towards their holy groves, tearing them down whenever they desire a road, school or gas station. The single most important Mari poem, that any Mari will be able to recite to you, is as follows:
A peaceful grove stands in my native land
On a large lake’s cool and verdant bank.
Among the trees is e’en the darkest shade,
The sweetest fruit grows in this sunny glade…
Amongst green leaves, the nightingale sings.
Towards the lake run cold glistening springs.
In this grove the grass is always green,
Here the fairest flowers ever seen!
I love this grove with all my heart,
And I curse those who cut it down.
... which loses a lot in translation, as the Mari word for "those that cut down trees" is virtually identical to the Mari word for "Russian" - identical, in fact, in many dialects.
In any case, I don't think it's a coincidence that I've only heard good things about the movie at the university department that I work at - which primarily dedicates itself to the preservation of indigenous cultures and languages of Russia. I very much doubt Cameron has ever heard of the Maris, but it works eerily well.
(So. That'll ensure that I stay on the FSB watchlist
)
But yeah. The plot was pretty predictable, and the characters not very fleshed out, the narrative was simplistic, and the message was kind of sledgehammered. But I didn't mind in the slightest. It's a message that history has sledgehammered too.
I also didn't feel that it was too long - and I'm saying this as a guy that thought The Two Towers was twice as long as it had to be.
The visuals were, of course, stunning. I'm not really sure 3D technology is fleshed out enough, though, for it to make sense to make entire movies in 3D. Maybe it worked better for people with bigger screens (the local IMAX only is showing a dubbed German version - bastards) .. but for me .. the 3D worked quite well in the exterior scenes, but not so much in the interior scenes. Scenes with a bunch of people standing in a room talking didn't really gain much by 3D, and just felt .. distorted, somehow.
My sister also claims that it didn't work very well with her (regular) glasses. Unlike me, she definitely needed the break halfway through the movie.
So I was also more impressed by the CGI than with the 3D. In particular, I was impressed by the seemless melding of CGI with live action.
And Sigourney Weaver was awesome in this. Have I ever boasted about the fact here that she and my mom were flatmates in the 70s?
