Unobtainium

I like movies, I really do. I'll watch pretty much anything, but I'm hardest on the film with most hype, and right now, that movie is Avatar. You've probably already heard all the jokes about smurfs and Dances with Wolves that dog it a bit, but for every joke about how corny it is, I've also heard how it's groundbreaking, and how it has a pro-environment/anti-military message. I didn't see the movie that had any of that though. Maybe that was only in the IMAX version.



Let's just set aside the fact that all this movie succeeds at is being a vehicle for James Cameron's advances in digital effects. Oh, and the potential for really cool action figures and Happy Meal toys. After that, there's not much left but the gross racial politics, and the glorification of war. The Navi (Development Meeting: "Dudes... they're NATIVES, so we can just call them NAVI!") represent indigenous people through a dramatically watered down cultural filter only to be rivaled in recent films, by Jar-Jar Binks and a yellow-faced Queen Amidala. Round up all the tropes - these simple people are one with nature; these simple people don't need the trappings of modern life; these simple people are helpless; these simple people need our sympathy and protection; these simple people will be saved by a white everyman - and you end up with a story that aims to make the viewer feel better about their place in the world, by reminding them that there's always someone worse off that we can bail out.

For the rest of us, we get to sit through a series of imperialist renditions of a world in need of a civilized savior. We get 2.5 hours of the essential "native", replete with headdresses, spears to be chucked, unjust arranged marriages, leather thongs, and accents from the deepest darkest corners of the globe. You can paint those CGI faces blue, but it's pretty clear that they are a reddish-brownish-black underneath it all.

There's no redemption in this film. The bad guys aren't really bad - they're just trying to make a living. The good guys are so alien that they are unnaturally blue animal-people. We're supposed to be so enchanted by floating bits of ash coming alive for our 3D glasses, that we forget that even the most rudimentary action film should have suspense and tension. There aren't even any laughs. Well... if you count the guffaw inducing monologues bashing the "Sky People", or the subtitled Navi dialogue in Rainforest Cafe font.... those laughs don't count.

I want the world to crave another kind of fantasy in film, and to be able to recognize cheap, plastic junk when they see it. Do you want a movie with a pro-environment/save the forests message that is inventive and visually stunning? Watch Princess Mononoke! Do you want to see an anti-war movie? Watch Grave of the Fireflies! If Avatar is the new Star Wars, then we're all doomed. I knew that we were in trouble when the Spice Girls were the new feminists, but I never imagined how much worse it could get...

I'm going to stick to what I know and love:

Lars von Trier, making movies that take your imagination to the darkest, scariest places humanity can go, to remind you to keep a wide berth:



And documentaries like The Cove, that remind you that as good as you think things are, there's depravity out there, and if you're willing to put your liberty on the line you might be able to make a difference:



There are real atrocities that are committed against real people, real animals and real landscapes. Numbing the collective conscience against the real stuff is killing us all.

And it makes me cranky on Christmas Day.