Avatar: New Age Space Smurfs

James Cameron’s Avatar is set in the future. A corporation from a dying earth is seeking to exploit the mineral resources of the beautiful planet Pandora occupied by the indigenous Na’vi people whose major city lies above a huge mineral deposit. A scientific team launch a ‘hearts and minds’ campaign to try and persuade the ‘noble savage’ Na’vi people move and allow mining to commence. To break cultural boundaries, they create ‘Avatars’, artificially created alien bodies to be ‘driven’ by human operators. If the team fail, a large military force stands ready to force the Na’vi from their home. The story sees a former marine controlling an Avatar ‘goes native’ before he organises the Na’vi resistance in the inevitable battle to come.

3D Falling Flat?

Avatar was supposed to usher in a new era of 3D cinema. Instead shows both its strengths and weaknesses of this technology. Avatar is supposed to be an immersive experience, inviting you into the life of the tribe. To a certain extent, with the costly use of 3D animation as well as cutting edge motion capture technology, it succeeds. However, despite the huge expense, Avatar still looks like an animated film and when not jumping out at the viewer, the 3D effects often resemble a 1990s ‘Magic Eye’. Moreover, the design concept of the Na’vi people is weak. Although beautifully rendered, these 12ft blue aliens with strategically placed dreadlocks accompanied by ‘tribal music’ struck me as silly and possibly offensive. As of yet no technology can replace a good script and good characters.

Pandora v New Creation

Avatar carries heavy handed, if open ended, allusions to the war on terror, mission, colonialism and the ecological crisis. The new age Na’vi religion (a kind of theistic pantheism where everyone is connected to the mother god called Eywa) is prominent. It praises the power of nature and calls people to integrate with their surroundings rather than impose their will upon it. It stresses the importance of the collective rather than the individual (the Na’vi representing an ideal humanity in perfect relationship with each other and their surroundings). However, Eywa never lives among her people, remains impersonal, contactable only through strange ritual and interested only in maintaining ‘balance’. Whereas the idealistic world of the Na’vi can only ever be an aspiration in a fallen world, we have hope in a new creation characterised by a perfected relationship with ourselves, with each other, with the environment and with a personal loving God.