Vampires? Yeah, we’ve got that. Oh, and Michelangelo too
Welcome to Pandora, strangest planet in the universe, a planet where women can play b-ball as well as men,1 where Botox droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven, where all the chicks look like Cindy Crawford2 and all the dudes like Brad Pitt, only more ripped.
After disgusting just about everyone on this planet with his monster, monster success Titanic, Old Cameron, as they call him in China,3 decided to find new worlds to conquer, and man is he succeeding. According to the latest box office results, close to 80 percent of the $15 trillion lost on Wall Street last year has ended up in Big Jim’s hip pocket. And the cash has only started to flow.
Despite the near-unlimited rigmarole associated with Avatar, 90 percent of the flick — make that 99 percent — comes down to the relationship between Jake (Sam Worthington) and his dream chick Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), and it’s the basic mama’s boy fantasy, of escaping from the workaday world of frustration and failure, where everyone is cooler than you, where, in particular, no chick will give you the time of day,4 into this Garden of Eden where this totally cool kick-ass chick will totally fall in love with you and like teach you until you are totally cool too, riding around on a four-winged dragon and generally bringing the piss on everyone who ever pissed on you.
There’s lots and lots of backstory, sidestory, and allegory, and a whole new language that Jake has to learn (though he rarely bothers to speak it),5 super-intelligent trees with 1048 cholinergic (or is it choliambic?) rhizoid synapses,6 sensitive scientists, sniveling corporate shits, and army brutes,7 but, really, none of that’s important. What’s important is Jake and Neytiri, totally cool and totally blue, up among the mountain tops, where troubles melt like lemon drops. Join them, dude. You’ll be glad you did.
Afterwords
Vampires? Well, if you’ll notice, all the Na’vi have prominent, pointed incisors. We never see them bite anyone, much less suck blood, but they totally could.
Michelangelo? Well, the scene where the human Jake almost dies and Neytiri holds him in her arms is highly derivative of the famous Pieta statue of the dead Christ in Mary’s arms. In a fascinating letter, Michelangelo described how he depicted Mary as a young woman rather than a mature one (obviously, she would have been in her fifties when Christ died) and made the figure of Christ smaller than life size, to emphasize the filial relationship.8 Neytiri, of course, is about twice as big as Jake.
You could definitely write a book or two on all the manipulative tricks that Cameron pulls in Avatar. For instance, the Na’vi all have very big eyes, to make them look young and innocent, like the kick-ass9 Japanese school girls in the anime flicks, with their short skirts and super powers, but they also have elongated legs and torsos, and small heads, to make them look tall and heroic. And Jake and Neytiri are an interracial couple, except that, since they’re both blue, we don’t really see it. Oh, and the asscrack-covering tails. Genius!10
And the hypocrisies! Don’t even get me started on the hypocrisies! The Na’vi are heavily derived from the New Age version of the American Indians — folks who live in peace but who somehow also manage to be “great warriors” (how do you do that without killing lots of people?), who live in harmony with Nature except when they aren’t, you know, killing things. They couldn’t eat soy?
I first saw Avatar at Washington’s Uptown theater, which has the area’s biggest (non-IMAX) screen, projected in 2-D, apparently because the Uptown’s curved screen can’t handle 3-D. It works surprisingly well, but 3-D is a lot more fun, even if you have to settle for a less than monster screen. DC’s IMAX screens are located in the Smithsonian, and they rarely get first-run films, but, presuming Avatar does make it there, I’m definitely going.
Even in 3-D, I don’t think Avatar comes close to Old Jim’s Terminator 2, to my mind perhaps the greatest thriller ever made. All of the human stuff in Avatar is pretty second-rate, and much of the climax is absurd. In addition, Pandora’s critters don’t hold a candle to the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park III. I watch T-2 and JP-3 a couple of times a year at home. Seen on a small screen, I think Avatar would be awfully slow. But there’s definitely going to be a sequel.
- I’m reliably informed that Barack “No gurls allowed” Obama laughed his ass off at this one. [↩]
- Yeah, the tits are small, but the thighs go on forever. [↩]
- The Chinese have been booting Cameron around the Internet, and booting 2-D versions of Avatar out of theaters, to make room for a Confucius biopic (talk about must-see!) the authorities wanted to push. The 3-D and IMAX versions of Avatar were, apparently, too cool to cancel. [↩]
- And how can they, when you’re afraid to ask for it? [↩]
- When Jake addresses the Na’vi in his big, kick-ass speech, leading them to slaughter (their slaughter — bows and arrows against machine guns? — not a good idea), he speaks in English rather than Na’vi, because, obviously, he’s addressing the theater audience and not the Na’vi. [↩]
- But if they’re so damn smart, why can’t they talk? Or at least, you know, move? [↩]
. The evil Colonel Quaritch, swinging his stainless-steel butt in his bad-ass “amp suit,” ought to have “Do me, bitch, do me” tattooed on his rump. But which is more butch, raised letters or engraved? I confess, I’m conflicted. [↩]- Freud, who had his own Oedipal thing going with Michelangelo’s Moses, would have loved this. [↩]
- Is this my third “kick-ass”? Fourth? I’d better slow down. I only get five per issue. [↩]
- Neytiri’s necklaces, which never quite show nipple, aren’t bad either. [↩]
