I had plotted and schemed all week, determined that I’d get all my necessaries accomplished early so that this afternoon I could dole out the fifteen bucks and witness this much talked about movie. Tomorrow, and for three weeks, I’m heading into the world of doggie minding – a world that takes considerable amounts of my energy and time ensuring that my little friends are happy and cared for, and I wanted to see the no doubt oscar winning film before it leaves the big screen. Besides, any film Evo Morales endorses has to be good. I figured it’d be worth the three hour investment.
So today, after my favourite Friday morning activity of tea and Street Newz business, after chatting with a homeless woman about the frustration of living on the streets with increasing police presence, after cycling halfway to Vancouver to deliver the SNZ mailout to the main post office, after a delightful Indian buffet lunch at Sabri (whose prices have increased from $6.95 a decade ago to $9.95 now – and yes, I can blame the Liberals), I dropped the $15 at Silver City, donned the blues brothers 3D glasses, and settled in for the Avatar Experience.
(I sure do love my electric bike, without whom I wouldn't have accomplished all that so readily.)
Spoiler alert: You might not want to read any more if you haven’t seen the movie yet.
I cheered when Neytiri killed the little Dick fascist Cheney character. Hurray! I was the only one in the sparsely occupied theatre clapping, but the British woman behind me giggled as if with relief as I did it. Maybe the rest of them were cheering for the US military machine, the Zionists, the evil Canadians killing indigenous peoples in Palestine and Afghanistan and all over the world, I dunno. Maybe that’s not really what the movie’s about …. maybe that’s just my interpretation of it. I was definitely wondering how people could dare to suggest that all the movie’s got going for it is special effects, that its story line is weak.
Sure, real life imperialist efforts enact radically different psychological warfare abilities than those questing for Unobtainium. The Pandora killers had some pretty rad technology to work with, if you’re into flying death machines and robots, but their tactics were rather lame. They didn’t, for example, pretend to be doing anything other than what they were doing – destroying anything that got in the way of their quest for the valuable mineral “Unobtainium.” I guess that’s what they get away with when there’s absolutely nobody watching (kind of like how they turned the TV cameras away from the real violence of war after people complained so loudly about Vietnam). They didn’t try to co-opt the indigenous people through divide and conquer techniques, pretending to care about some of them (those they can buy) so they could bend the will of the top guns and have their way with all of them. They didn’t send agents in to encourage the Pandora people to forget who the real enemy is and instead turn on each other. They didn’t even offer trinkets. No, the Unobtainium Mineral Military Corporation just went in there and blasted the living shit out of the people, destroyed their nurturing Home Tree, and proceeded to attempt to kill forever the spirit of the place.
I’m still not sure what they wanted the unobtanium for …. I remember it had a significant market value (god bless the free market), but did it have any real value to the humans? To the Pandorans it’s the mineral that enables the mountains to float … perhaps the alien invaders just wanted to spoil their fun. Stupid alien invaders.
Actually, on second thought, perhaps the aliens did use some psychology in their quest. I suppose the Avatars were originally meant to betray the Omaticayans, but when they had a chance to live among them, learn their culture, witness how the forest was actually alive, after they fell in love with them and their world then they couldn’t bring themselves to participate in the mining project. Still, I’m not sure how much of that was intentional on the part of the scientists, how much they knew …. only Jake, with a military background, was actually feeding information directly to the evil corporate slave, Colonel Quarich.
I’ll have to think all that through some more. Weak plot my ass. It’s an incredible film all around. Too bad about the slovenly types who threw all their crap on the floor of the theater. What’s that about?!!
What also disturbed me was how much I wanted that alien Quarich guy, and all his little pawns, dead. I gave up justifying the murder of sentient beings when I became vegan, so my brain isn’t used to feeling that venom. But today I felt it again … I wanted all those corporate mining crusaders dead and gone. I cheered wholeheartedly for the Pandorans in the final battle, smiled when they sent their prisoners packing.
And of course, Hollywood loves a happy ending. If only real life were so just. Though there’s always the possibility of the next round of alien invaders for Avatar the sequel.