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[scarylullabiez]

If you take it as just an action adventure movie, it's spectacular. Try to put anything else on it, and you're fucked.


We saw this at my theater, and my theater puts on what is easily one of the best 3D presentations in San Diego. A step or two up from RealD or Tru3D. So that was brilliant. Visually, this movie is stunning, but everyone is talking about that, so I'm not going to, even though I want to dedicate several paragraphs to the creature design.

Here's why I loved it:

• The internet is a Goddess. No really. That's the only meaningful theme that can be extracted this movie without making your brain hurt. Pandora has a naturally occurring system of data transfer that all or most of its life forms can access by plugging into it with small tentacle-like things on their bodies. Bodily ethernet cables, if you will. Individual beings, both sentient and non-sentient, can also connect and share data with each other directly this way. (LAN party!) The Na'vi ascribe the information available via this natural internet to the consciousness of their deity. Seriously. The internet is a Goddess. I come from a household that watches a lot of Law & Order SVU, wherein the internet is a billion-headed hydra of child molesters and hate mongers, so it was really nice to see a positive portrayal of the internet, even if it was only a rough metaphor. XD


• I have this one bulletproof kink that I NEVER get to see in movies, EVER. I never even get to see it in fic. I think it all stems from watching Beauty and the Beast when I was little - that scene where Belle's being attacked by wolves, and the Beast picks up one of the wolves, roars in its face, tosses it aside, and crouches over Belle's body to protect her. It just yanks my crank in all kinds of delicious ways. I love how aggressive it is, and how physical. That position stakes claim, says "I will protect this person because s/he is MINE." Avatar hits that kink twice, and both times, it's the female crouched over the male's unconscious body, and I'm just like ;LAKDFNAEOIRKDFAF. NNNGH. Yeah.


• Along those same lines, MICHELLE RODRIGUEZ. I have loved her since I first saw her in Girlfight, and OMFG, there's this one part where she puts a gun to the side of this guy's neck and says, "Yeah, you know what that is." And I swear, I HAD TO PHYSICALLY REPRESS THE SUDDEN NEED TO HUMP MY CHAIR. NNNNGH. GOD.


• As I said, it's a great action/adventure movie. There are some amazing fight scenes and action sequences and that part of the movie is thoroughly enjoyable.


• Disney-ist. Ending. Ever. The animals of the forest save them. No, really.


• The academic climate in my neck of the woods is still VERY anti sci-fi/fantasy, and I'm aware I'm not helping the fight against marginalization when I say that this movie can be taken lightly because of its sci-fi/fantasy setting, and that's what makes it good. If James Cameron tried to tell this story as any actual current or historical indigenous people vs. colonizing people epic, it would be the usual hot mess of race fail. And it still is, if you want to see it that way. I'm not gonna say whether you should or shouldn't, but you don't have to read it that way if you don't want to. Despite the obvious parallels to events in Western history, the movie is fantastical enough to be enjoyed as just an action/adventure story and nothing more, if you so desire. Take the unobtanium for example. On the one hand, you could interpret the name as meaning any number of SRS BZNSS things, but on the other hand, "unobtanium?" Really? I read that name as more of joke about what an obvious McGuffin it is. That said...

And here's what I didn't like:

• Colonel Quaritch, aka ULTRACRAZYBADASSSCARREDUPMOTHERFUCKERCHUCKNORRISWASMYPRISONBITCHOMGWTFBBQGUY. They overdid it a little on him, is what I'm saying. I would normally attribute this to simply being spoiled for this particular archetype by the likes of Edwards James Olmos and Nathaniel Lees, but...


• Casual is way more badass than deliberate. James Cameron does not understand this. The first time you hear the Na'vi say "I see you," it's part of a casual greeting, and I loved it. I understood it immediately, and it came seamlessly across as a meaningful example of the culture. The scene where Norm is explaining the meaning to Jake is ok, but after that, when they say it to each other all slow and camera zooms in on their faces, it's ridiculous, it loses all meaning and potency.


• I kinda wish there had been a human/Na'vi rape scene, but friggin' Richard K. Morgan has made me want rape scenes in every story that has anything to do with war. He has a line in The Steel Remains where the main character uses some excuse when he's undercover about women of a certain race being wild in bed and the inner monologue is about how that line is the usual justification invaders use for the rape of the invadees. Rape is a prominent theme in that book. It's also a part of war, a part that doesn't get enough news coverage or attention, and yet I think it could get some if it's exploited for cinematic purposes. When the Na'vi ground forces were being overtaken by the human, there's a shot that shows a couple of the female warriors kinda prominently, and I immediately feared for them, and the tension was ratcheted up even higher for me for a minute. Think about it. Since this movie was in no way concerned with making the human soldiers seem, well, human and three dimensional, there's no reason not to include at least the misogynistic sextalk that would inevitably accompany the situation on Pandora, and make those soldiers even more hateful. If Colonel Quaritch had been lewd or made some kind of insinuation to rape when he had Neytiri pinned to the ground under her mount, he would have been even more disgusting and loathsome and everyone would have been even more thrilled when she killed him. I dunno, I'm sure lots of people disagree with me, but I think that movies and pop culture are major contributors to our perceptions about all kinds of topics, war included, and I don't think rape even occurs to the average person when they are thinking about the consequences of war. Plus, give humans credit for our perversity and sexual creativity. That was one of the things I loved about District 9, it gave us that credit, with the inter-species prostitution and rumors about Wilkus.


• CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESE. Omg man, some of this dialogue. Good grief.


• No, seriously. The animals. Of the forest. Save them.

But overall, it was enjoyable and I'll probably see it again. :)

Comments

[mimesh.livejournal.com]

I just came home from the movies and I'm too tired and my brain is still too overwhelmed from the visual impression to express a coherent feedback. So just in bullet points:

I loved your review. I did not recognize the internet metaphor for what it was but I adore that reading.

I agree with many points, but concerning the rape aspect: Only at the very end of the movie I realized how much taller the Na'vi are than humans. They are almost twice as big which would have made the physical aspect of such a violation hard to pull off. To be honest, I was even a bit creeped out by the visual of Neytiri holding human Jack because he looked like a baby in her arms. But I guess that had more to do with the strong mother/child association which I'm not too fond of seeing in a romantic pair than with the actual size discrepancy.

[scary-lullabies.livejournal.com]

One of them could have been wounded or something! Actually, just some of that good old fashioned demeaning sextalk among the human soldiers would have satisfied me. And the size difference at the end tripped me out at first too, but I love how she didn't seem to feel any disconnect. She still loved him as a tiny pale face with skinny legs in an oxygen mask. XD

[cantfindreverse.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who came out of this with, "It was gorgeous and so much fun but not really epic." feeling.

Also glad I'm not the only one who found the protectiveness hot as hell. Not to mention Michelle Rodriguez. Yes. PLEASE.

Like the person above, I love your Internet idea! I didn't even think about that, but it's a great metaphor. It makes me happy to be an internet addict. :)

Interesting point about the rape thing. Though it does make me uncomfortable, it would make perfect sense in that kind of situation, aside from the size/air breathing issues. Some misogynistic speak would have definitely made it feel more real and war-like.

I found it kind of predictable, myself. Every time something came up that was 'foreshadowing,' it was really easy to figure out where that was going to play in. The deaths weren't very poignant for that reason; while I did care about the characters that died, it was so obvious that they were going to be the ones picked off that I didn't get very upset about it. Honestly, I was more surprised by the fact that the nerdy sidekick actually lived.

I kind of felt like it would have been your average fantasy movie (because oddly enough, even with the aliens and the guns and what not, it felt more fantasy than sci-fi) if it hadn't been SO DARN PRETTY.

[scary-lullabies.livejournal.com]

Fleshing out the villains at all would have made the movie ten times more real and war-like, and I think it would have leaned more towards epic. They were such generic bad guys, it was like it was hardly worth killing them. I just kept thinking about the scene in Fellowship of the Ring when Aragorn beheads that Uruk-hai captain or whatever. I didn't see that movie until it had been out for a few weeks, but still, the theater pretty much exploded with squee and excitement at the bad guy's death. I wanted to feel that way when Quaritch died, but it was just meh.

But yes, visually, it can't be beat. XD