No Way Forward and No Way Back: Avatar

November 7th, 2010 | By Rono | 189 views | 1 Comment »

Writer/Director/Producer James Cameron scored one more time with his latest movie, Avatar. We enjoy his typical drama wrapped in a sci-fi setting. This time, he created a whole world on a distant planet to support the narration. Planet Pandora feels just like a foreign jungle complete with the native humanoid population called Na’vi. The story is typical confrontation between destructive corporate greed and good old nature, with a simple love B story.

Neytiri in shock seing the destruction of her hometree, the fire reflected on her face.

No Way Forward

Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is a marine who lost his legs and gets a second chance when he is asked to replace his twin brother Sam for a scientific mission on the foreign planet. His job is to learn to remotely “drive” a synthetically grown Na’vi body and help the corporation managing the whole colonization operation.

Corporate greed: Administrator Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) delivers the exposition speech.

They need Jake to infiltrate the indigenous people to find what would make them relocate. They need to get access to a precious mineral located below their hometree. The problem: the Na’vi do not need anything the humans have to offer. And here lies the dead end.

After a suspenseful introduction, Jake is accepted in their society and he begins to learn their way of life. He even falls in love with the spiritual chief’s daughter.

Jake and Neytiri get closer to one another and fly together for the first time.

He soon finds out living with the Na’vi is the life he was born to live and Pandora is his new home.

No Way Back

Living as a Na’vi pleases Jake starting with his gigantic new legs. There is a real appeal to a paraplegic soldier here. The locals live in tight harmony with their environment in a way that earthlings have forgotten long ago on their dying home planet.

A carrot: Colonel Miles Quaritch promises his real legs back

The mission bestowed by his superiors and the corporation they work for leads Jake into conflict with the Na’vi when he has to admit he was sent to deceive them. Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), his new girlfriend, is particularly unhappy about the revelation.

So Jake ends up between a rock and a hard place: unable to go back to the human camp because he is regarded as a traitor to his own kind, and rejected by the new world he had chosen because he betrayed them and allowed several of them to come to harm.

Showdown in the Mountains

In a all-or-nothing move, Jake must find a way to unite the people and lead them to save their world from extinction. The fate of Jake Sully and the Na’vi is decided in a gripping battle around the spectacular floating mountains of Pandora.

The final showdown: The Na'vi are up against superior firepower

The villain, Colonel Miles Quaritch, nicely played by veteran Broadway actor Stephen Lang, did not impress me that much. He is a formidable opponent, but I do not like the villain who puts on a crazy demeanor and goes after the protagonist even when the battle is lost, against all sense of self preservation.

In theaters, Avatar generated so much revenue (now the highest grossing movie of all time, beating Titanic’s record in about a month or two) that some think they need to criticize it. I have had a heated argument with some wise guys who qualified it as devoid of plot. That made me laugh. Anyway, variety of opinions is always a good thing, particularly when accompanied by a good dose of brains.

For someone like Cameron, having two movies beat the record as the highest grossing movie must feel great. He is still “on top of the world” and we envy that.

Great story.

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