Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Avatar - B

== SPOILER ALERT ==

10' tall blue smurfs and floating mountains. It was Pocahontas with aliens complete with singing. The corporate human enemy (thank God they weren't wearing US flags on their uniforms) are there to get a mineral they can't find elsewhere and the smurfs are sitting on top of it. I found the plot recycled, and not a single new idea in the whole film, with one dimensional enemies (Mr. Hard Case Soldier, and Mr. Evil Corporate Exploiter made an appearance). Unless you consider golfing into a coffee cup, and a brief I'm a veteran, you're a veteran of such and such back stories. That said the film was visually stunning, probably one of the top 5 films I've ever seen as far as visual spectacle was concerned. The visuals didn't REALLY get in the way of the story, but the floating mountains were a bit hard to take (given the mineral, I'll give that a physics pass, but barely).

If you are bothered by physics or time-lines, 2154 is probably too soon for spaceships with NAFAL to get anywhere except the closest star systems. Given the evident mass shipping of materials too and fro, even granting the base shown was built locally the actual level of technology in the film was disappointing low. We'll assume the corporate types had access to the military equipment of contemporary Nigeria say, but if the mineral is that important, why is there no government oversight?

The biggest problem with the movie is the anti-capitalist anti-corporate anti-technology pro-noble-savage view of the world. Savages are savage. The smurfs don't even use fire. Given the importance of the mineral, the next contact the aliens will have with earthlings is likely to be a few dozen high-yield Cobolt-60 dirty nukes launched from orbit to sterilize the planet, or at least a large swath of it. Hard for flying smurfs to deal with fallout and gamma rays. Of course killing the natives is supposed to "look bad", so perhaps there is oversight after all.

Realistic? Sort of given the content of the movie, and our past contacts with native peoples. Depressing view of mankind, technology and progress? Oh God, yes. That said, the built in neural interfaces for all the critters was cool. I don't plan on unplugging my refrigerator and air-conditioner any time soon, or going to live in the jungle in harmony with the animals. It was a cool view of an alien world, but it was also very preachy.

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