“Is Avatar a Native American story?”

Answer: “Not exclusively. I think Americans locate the story there most quickly. But Avatar’s now the No. 1 movie in Brazil, and Brazil has a lot of issues with the displacement of indigenous populations and deforestation. There’s a tribe in India that is getting pushed off its sacred mountain for a bauxite mine. The film is hugely popular in China and people there are getting displaced by the govenment to build dams. So people are relating to it from all these different perspectives.”

” . . . Hollywood may also prefere a film that celebrates America’s fighting men (The Hurt Locker) to one that casts many U.S. troops as criminal invaders. . . .”

“. . . Audiences are just beguiled by Pandora’s humanish tribe, the Na’vi–the lean, 10-ft-till, blue striped people with yellow eyes. They are what humans might have been if they had evolved in harmony with, not in opposition to, the Edenic environment that gave them birth.”

And another important point that is worth making came from the same article. It has to do with have the strong female character:

” . . . Avatar’s closest kin among current hits may be The Blind Side, the female-skewing sports film. Both tell stories of strong women who find rootless young men and give them a purpose around which they build their lives.”

But Corliss gets a little carried away in the conclusion when he opines:

” . . . Avatar (is) a throwback to ancient movie days, when films about men and women seduced the mass audience. And because it works spendidly as spectacle and love story. Cameron’s picture is worthy of comparison to the great old epics. The world beater is also a heartbreaker, if you just open your eyes.”

For me the movie works as spectacle, but not as love story.

“China is pulling the 2D version of “Avatar” from screens across the country amid claims the plot mirrors forced land evictions in the country. Authorities insist that the decision was a commercial one, . . . Critics claim the firm’s plot parallels the removal of millions of residents to make way for property developers. . . .”

“There is sensitivity to the movie’s plot, which revolves around the forced evictions of the alien Na’vi race by humans — a story line that some have said draws unflattering comparisons to China’s own, often brutal removal of millions of residents to make way for property developers.”

“The Vatican newspaper and radio station have called the film “Avatar” simplistic, and criticized it for flirting with modern doctrines that promote the worship of nature as a substitute for religion.

L’Osservatoire Romano said the film “gets bogged down by a spiritualism linked to the worship of nature. Similarly, Vatican Radio said it “cleverly winks at all those pseudo-doctrines that turn ecology into the religion of the millennium.”

“Nature is no longer a creation to defend, but a divinity to worship,” the radio said.

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said that while the movie reviews are just that — film criticism, with no theological weight — they do reflect Pope Benedict XVI’s views on the dangers of turning nature into a “new divinity.”

In a recent World Day of Peace, the pontiff warned against any notions that equate human person and other living things. He said such notions “open the way to a new pantheism tinged with neo-paganism, which would see the source of man’s salvation in nature alone.”

I enjoyed the story, but at times was a bit confused. This is probably due in fact that I apparently have a limited imagination. I can honestly say that I have never really grasped the whole “Star Trek/Star Wars/Lord of the Rings” genre. In fact, I never even got Harry Potter. I remember taking my kids and nieces and nephews to the first Harry Potter that came out and I said to my then about 13-year-old daughter that I just didn’t get this whole Harry Potter thing. Her comment? “Well, that’s interesting since this book is read by millions of children, with the average age of about 10″. LOL, do you think she was trying to tell me something? Again, I digress.

The special effects were wonderful. I was confused a bit with the Sigourney Weaver character. A bitch as a human, but a great friend to the people? I thought the contrast in her character was a bit too flawed. I did enjoy her passion, however, and by the end of the movie I cared about her. Jake Skully, on the other hand, had a similar personality whether human or one of the people. But even then, I thought it strange that when his girlfriend saved him near the end of the movie, by giving him the oxygen which he needed to stay alive, he was as a human (”I see you”) and she one of the people.

How have I survived in an engineering organization where I am employed, where people (engineers for the most part) obviously think outside the box, and really get into this stuff? I think I’ll stick with a good love story (no, not chick flick). A little more realistic and pleasing to the palate.

“The dream of interstellar travel will only become a reality far beyound our lifetimes. But I love the fact that today I can be deeply immersed in not just a plausible, but a compelling alien world just by putting on a pair of 3D glasses and visiting my local theater. Even if I have to drive 100 miles to see it in IMAX, that is nothing compared to interstellar distances! And I love that there is a filmmaker that pays more than lip service to the science in his films, stimulating discussion and thought about distant worlds among geeks everywhere. I was inspired to do astronomy after seeing STAR WARS as a kid. I’m willing to bet that a fair fraction of tomorrow’s astronomers will have decided to devote their life to the discovery of new worlds because of AVATAR.”