Posted on 12/26/2009 12:15:26 PM PST by smoothsailing
December 25, 2009
By Phill Kline
The visuals are stunning, the story borrowed and the message shallow and false. John Cameron's new epic Avatar features a jump in animation technology and a throwback of over 1,000 years to pantheism.
Set in 2154, the movie features a U.S. mega-corporation mining the distant planet of Pandora for a rare mineral that suspiciously looks like a carbon spewing lump of coal. The mining is conducted with smoke belching machinery that rape the planet while the human workers are protected by Marine mercenaries from the mind melding sensual native population of 10 foot tall spiritual beings.
The natives are one with their native planet, including their mother-god Eywa. Eywa is the planet, and the natives reach oneness by entwining fibers from their bodies with the fibers of the planet. This representative sexual union allows them to hear their departed ancestors and gain rhythm with the planet — a séance orgy so to speak. All life on the planet is one, with one spirit and one energy.
Avatar's themes represent the new American "apology" at its best. The movie mirrors complaints about U.S. expansionism of the 1800's that drove Native Americans from their sacred grounds and reflects the "new" history that represents modern America as an imperialistic regime willing to do anything for wealth and power.
The movie's villain, the commander of the mercenary Marine force, reinforces this view when speaking with the movie's hero Jake Sully. Sully is a wounded Marine who lost the use of his legs in battle for the U.S. in Venezuela. The commander was also in Venezuela and mentions he also saw action in Nigeria. Both countries, in which the U.S. has never fought, are oil-exporting countries and the movie assumes are places where we will fight and die in the future.
As any student of the "new" history knows, U.S. soldiers are buried on islands in the Pacific, in Europe and in Southeast Asia and Korea in order to protect our polluting ways.
In the movie, these polluting ways have "killed our mother," the Earth, and now we must bring our imperialistic exploitive and destructive ways to the spiritually focused pantheistic cultures of planet Pandora, named after the Greek mythical goddess and which literally means "she who sends up gifts."
Avatar seeks audience cheers for slaughtering the Marines who are portrayed as bent on killing, cash and forwarding the capitalistic matricidal imperialist ways of the United States.
Sully, is on assignment as a mercenary for the megacorp. His assignment places him deep undercover in the native population. Technology allows him to exist in a native body (an Avatar) such that he befriends and then falls in love with the spiritual princess of the natives. While in the avatar he is also able to run and fly and hunt and love.
Over time he predictably identifies with the natives and goes to battle against the Marines. Offering a prayer to Eywa, the Marine, now native, Sully, asks for Eywa's help in repelling the Americans. In the prayer, Sully states "I know you have chosen me for a purpose...."
Such a prayer represents atheistic Hollywood's dilemma. The only way to reconcile a godless Darwinistic worldview with a deeply spiritual American culture is to convert environmentalism into religion. For what greater purpose for man than to save mother earth, or Pandora? And thus, our purpose in a purposeless world.
Further, as a plea for Eywa's assistance Sully asks the planet god to look into his memories to see how there is no green on earth and how his people have "killed our mother."
Sully's soon to be bride, a native princess, hears his prayers and instructs him that Eywa does not choose sides, a bow to the modern definition of tolerance, but only balances the forces of life and death.
All of this builds to the movies epic battle scene. US Marines moving in with carbon belching high tech machines to face the arrow firing natives. The battle looks lost for the good guys (the natives not the Marines) until Eywa chooses sides and she chooses Al Gore environmentalism. Suddenly Pandora's animals join forces and attack the U.S. forces. The attack is led by giant, aggressive, hippo-resembling beasts with giant anvil heads.
Nature prevails and evil capitalism and man is defeated. Eywa thereby expresses the only truth respected by the left, a truth worth choosing sides for — a truth worth killing for, mother earth. China's forced abortion policy as spiritual expression.
But Sully still has one more critical passage. He desires to permanently inhabit a native body, his Avatar. To do this he must join forces with Eywa and possibly be reborn into a native body. He is warned that all is Eywa's choice — he may be reborn as a native or he may not for as all of us know — it is always the mother's choice.
As the natives join in a ritual touching and chanting that has a cultist quality, Jake Sully is laid before Eywa, becomes one with the planet through the intertwining of the fiber of his Avatar and the planet and is reincarnated as a 10 foot dragon subduing arrow flinging environmentalist.
Avatar represents the left's first epic introduction of the new Darwin spiritualism. Since Darwin cannot survive in the West's spiritual culture, Darwin has now become god in the form of mother earth. Every living thing on planet Pandora is a god. And so, the new left has reached back in history to leap ahead of the scientific age. In the new religion, man is not god as in the age of reason and science. Rather, all is god and thereby nothing is god. But at least we're spiritual.
All this provided just in time for Christmas, oops, the Winter Solstice.
At least my theatre audience did not applaud when Sully's eyes came alive in his Avatar body at the "climatic" (predictable) end of the movie. In fact, the movie did not draw cheers or tears at any point. Perhaps we were still fixated on Hollywood's tossing our Marines around in the jaws and claws of Eywa's warriors — Freudian expressions of the left's desire for that all-powerful environmental protecting global police force.
Call me unenlightened, but when I see a Marine battle an anvil headed beast called forth by a planet-god — I root for the U.S. Marine.
© Phill Kline
>This is SO sad! I love Sci-Fi, I LOVE Special Effects, I love a good Movie, and I LOVE innovative film making. But as soon as a movie gets “preachy” (in ANY direction) it is ruined for me. This one sounds particularly manipulative, not to mention idolatrous. I loathe an agenda-driven script!
True. But interestingly enough preachy characters, manipulative characters, and/or agenda-driven characters can help make a good story.
A minor correction. The brother who died wasn't a Marine. He was a scientist who spent time preparing for the science-based mission.
Fact: The CO of the Mercks ‘asked’ the Jyrene to keep him informed.
The CO told the Marine that the 'Corporation' would buy him a set of legs in exchange for intel.
Fact: The ‘hero’ of the story was being paid to be a ‘corporate spy’, not a ‘soldier’.
And, when the Corporation learned that the Na'avi wanted nothing that the humans had to offer, the corporate decision was made to use the mercenaries to drive to the Na'avi out of their home so the corporation could mine the alien planet to get the mineral ($20 million per kilo) what they wanted.
The Na'avi were given a choice. Leave your home or die defending it.
It is kind of humorous to see folks here siding with mercenaries who are killing solely for the sake of corporate profits.
They weren't left stranded. They were trusted by the Na'vi, and thus, were allowed to stay. Those who wanted to leave on the Corporate transports were free to leave. Those who stayed behind made that choice for themselves.
I love a good story, and character development is really important.
The first three Star Wars were cool (4-6), but the “message” in 1-3 got so overbearing and transparent that those were ruined for me, even with the more advanced digital effects. A line was crossed somewhere in Episode 4 and it went downhill from there. I guess it is almost a spiritual thing with me. As soon as I feel I am being manipulated, my enjoyment of the movie shuts down. LOL! Oh Well. I’ll just go and make my own entertainment. Ha Ha Ha. I have a set of drums in the Living Room, so there is always something to do.
Life is 24 hours a day without some common sense you will never make it.
Dude, you got suckered by “Dances With Smurfs.” You should hide your face in shame.
At least “Dances With Wolves” was related to injustices that actually occurred, rather than envirowacko fantasies.
While you’re watching with open eyes, bill, look for another oft-used plot:
“The primitive non-white needs the help of the white man to find moral clarity and carry out even basic functions like self-defense.”
Seriously...all the main villains and the infiltrator Sully are white folks and all the aliens are wearing cornrows and voiced by non-whites. The aliens are getting their buts kicked until the white savior comes along. Additionally, some people have pointed out that it’s racist in another direction, i.e., the white is evil until he becomes non-white, and then he becomes a shining star of morality.
It’s sort of like Tarzan, if Tarzan had been written by contributors to Daily Kos so that it ended with the gorillas fighting Halliburton.
See post 47. Are these things not also true?
We’re not siding with mercenary murderers, we’re siding against Hollywood scumbags who want to equate American and capitalist values with mercenary slaughter.
Would you be suspicious of a supposedly intelligent food critic who gave a bad review to a restaurant because 13% of their food was contaminated with dog crap?
Two words: Manifest Destiny. American capitalists were using the US military as mercenaries to slaughter natives long before Hollywood started making movies.
What was Dances with Wolves about?
Irrelevant.
Dances With Wolves was about past sins that were real.
Dances With Smurfs takes things people do that are good and right and make them out to be sins. Moreover, the political point of view it pushes doesn’t just want those good things stopped, but wants to enslave people.
“I was rooting for Daniel Day Louis all the way in Gangs of NY” Amen! His best role in my opinion..
Did you see the movie?
So, are you saying that driving natives out of their homes and/or killing them to steal their natural resources is good and right?
Where in Avatar is the message of enslavement?
Have you seen it?...Has anyone seen the new Sherlock Holmes movie?
Please. Expound upon these past sins and how they are different from what was presented in Avatar.
Yea, I saw the movie. The “bad guys” were the white Americans.
The only American Rambo killed was the evil sherriff in the first one. He didn’t even kill the evil mercs who left him behind in Rambo II. Maybe your memory is better than mine, but I don’t think so.
The only American Rambo killed was the evil sherriff in the first one. He didn’t even kill the evil mercs who left him behind in Rambo II. Maybe your memory is better than mine, but I don’t think so.
I saw the movie, I just didn’t fall for a bunch of leftist porpaganda like you did.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.