The film, ‘Avatar’, has been hailed as a movie classic and by some as the ‘greatest movie of all time’. It stole away the box office records, made a splash on 2010 movies, and has been on everyone’s mind. It’s been hailed as a work of proverbial genius. The graphics and costume designers of the film certainly deserve official recognition for their outstanding, if at times overdone work. That is where praise should end, however. Rather than being seen as the greatest film ever, it could be argued that ‘Avatar’ was a racist film with a trite plotline. The film was holistically quite banal and overdone. The morals espoused in Avatar promote the idea of a white outsider coming into an indigenous culture, teaching them and eventually leading them to victory against other white people. Considering the main character, Jake Sully, is a white man, and the Na’vi are all portrayed by ethnic actors and exhibit characteristic of a colored tribal society, this racist mentality seems to hold credence in explaining Avatar’s story.
This story has been done over and over again. ‘Dances With Wolves’ with Kevin Costner and ‘The Last Samurai’ with Tom Cruise both have a nearly identical plotline. The white man enters a foreign culture, falls in love with their way of life and one of their women, and wages a violent war against the evil culture he came from. It may be a story worth telling but it has been done already. To earn the title of ‘greatest movie of all time’ one must develop a slightly more sophisticated plotline than one that has already received so much exposure. It’s sad to see movies today degrade into action-packed visual stimulants. Whatever happened to stories with meaning, substance, and originality? Apparently they are gone by the wayside. The title of greatest movie of all time is today relegated to movies that appeal to our baser instincts for explosions, sex scenes with aliens who grow phallic dreadlocks, and simplistic good versus bad plot lines. Yes, we know white culture is evil and cutting down trees is bad. Thank you, James Cameron.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/dec/11/avatar-james-cameron-film-review
It should also be noted that the acting was poor. And there may have been a reference to 9/11 in the scene with the tree.
Oh, and the fact that he called it “unobtainium” instead of something a little more creative.
Or the fact that Cameron may have ripped off the entire plot from a 1993 British comic, which was in the same collection as Judge Dread. And that one of Judge Dread’s writers is a friend of Cameron’s. And the fact that Cameron finished the rough draft to Avatar in 1994… Seems like too much of a coincidence to me.
Great review, perhaps you’ll enjoy this…
http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2010/01/05/pocahontas-avatar/
*sigh* Why can’t people just recognize “it’s a movie”?
Seriously. Grow up.
Yeah, Jafar, and I could say the same thing about “Jesus Camp” (which I won’t) and you’d have a similar reaction to what I had: a breakdown of why the movie was bad and bad for society.