feste_sylvain

We brought the whole family to go see James Cameron's "Avatar" in 3-D today.

First and foremost: this movie is gorgeous. The attention to detail is brilliant, from the pollen to the insects to the richly deep jungle. But even the machines of destruction were gloriously detailed. And the 3-D was not intrusive, but rather totally immersive. Photoluminescense abounded, and it was all given a good reason to be there.

Science nit-picks: As dr_memory pointed out: why were the humanoid denizens of the planet the only ones with four limbs? When every other creature is six-limbed, why were the humanoids different? THe same question applies to their two eyes (instead of four or more) and one neural tendril (instead of the common two).

If Pandora is a moon of a gaseous super-giant, why did it have a jungle and plains climate? A moon of a super-giant is doomed to spend half of its time in the shadow of the big planet, which does not lead to temperatures which allow water to stay unfrozen. (The amount of time our characters spent in the sky showed us that the fauna got plenty of sunlight, and that they depended on free-flowing water. This is fine for the times that the moon is on the sun-side of the planet, but what about the rest of the time?) Sorry Mr. Cameron, but our moon's orbit keeps it mostly out of our planet's shadow; the same does not apply to moons of super-giants.

The social commentary about this story dwell on the race-fail aspects and the "Noble Savage" trope, which are not unfounded. But consider this the modern flip-side of "White Man's Burden"; we colonizers have a history of treating indigenous peoples very badly, and we need some stories to rub this in our face from time to time. I live a first-world life-style on the results of some fairly nasty maltreatment of the people who were here first.

But that brings me back to The Corporation and the major McGuffin of this story, the amusingly named "unobtainium". As Giovanni Ribisi's character tells us, we're here on Pandora because unobtainium brings millions of dollars per kilo on the open market.

But we're never told why.

We have lots of ex-military folks (including Jake Sully, our protagonist) who are being the muscle for the Corporation so they can strip-mine out the unobtainium. Clearly, we're here for profit. The scientific contingent (headed by Sigourney Weaver) is reminded that the profits from the unobtainium funded the whole avatar project and the study of the Na'vi. Fine. The Corporation is driven by profit, and they've brought some heavy muscle to suppress the natives. This is all very cut and dried, and at no time can any of us possibly justify the wholesale slaughter of the native life on Pandora just for greed.

As part of the story which clubs us over the head to be more environmentally aware, we're told that our home planet has become a dead husk, sending humanity all over the galaxy. Fine. So, I ask again, what is unobtainium so expensive for? What does it do?

The head soldier for the mercenaries asks Sully "How does it feel to betray your race?" So let's posit this: what if unobtainium were so expensive precisely because it's needed in humanity's post-planet life support? What if this were a struggle between a rootless species with a strong technological lead versus a rooted species without the technology but with strong home-field advantage?

That would have made this a more nuanced story.

Which is why you'll find no trace of it in the film.

The problem with the story isn't that the "savages" are so noble (and, in fact, their particular alien nature gives a good plot reason for their greater empathy). The problem with this story is that humanity is so ignoble.

Mind you, even if the Corporation and the soldiers had an extremely noble motive for being there, it would not excuse running roughshod over Pandora's native life. That would have been a moral tale worth telling. Finding the moral solution which would allow multiple life forms to thrive would have been worthy of some deep thought.

But the corporations which pony up $440 million to make this movie don't seem capable of telling a story where profits, economics, or their own raison d'etre are anything but villainous.