Avatar The Movie, Is A David And Goliath Story

Written By: mike on October 23, 2010 No Comment

Writer-Director James Cameron (The Terminator, Titanic, Aliens) virtually launched the new 3-D craze with his monumental film, Avatar. It’s a film that works on many levels – action-adventure, culture clash, and spy thriller. But at heart, Avatar is a David and Goliath story that takes place on the far-away moon called Pandora in the year 2154. There the indigenous people, the Na’vi, live a simple life in concert with land. The Na’vi are a blue-skinned people with an average height of 12 feet. They kill only what they need for food, and do it with respect. They commune with the trees and with animals, making an actual connection with them via nerve endings.

Cameron claims to have begun thinking about this story back in the 1970s when his mother had a dream of a giant blue-skinned woman. He likes the color blue, and liked the connection blue skin has to Hindu deities. He’s also fond of the star-crossed lovers theme, similar in Avatar to the one he created in Titanic where Jack, a poor common laborer (Leonardo DiCaprio) falls in love with the upper class Rose (Kate Winslet).

In Avatar, a young crippled veteran marine, Joe Scully (Sam Worthington), is flown to Pandora to partake in an experiment. Scientists have genetically engineered a way to use DNA from the Na’vi and the Earthlings to create avatars, beings that look like Na’vi and can breathe the air of Pandora, but are, in fact, projections of the Earthlings when they are in deep sleep. In his avatar body Scully, experiences freedom of movement for the first time since his tragic accident. Exhilarated, he takes off at a run, paying no heed whatsoever to the scientists in charge.

The chain-smoking chief scientist Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), brassy and snide on the outside, has a more humane side; she wants to learn about the indigenous people, their ways, their language. She respects them. But Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi), representative for the Resources Development Administration, is interested in only one thing: to gather as much of the mineral unobtanium as possible. Unobtanium is much sought after and highly valued as it is seen as the only mineral that can save Earth from its present energy crisis…and the only place to get it is on Pandora. With that objective in mind, he has hired Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) and his army to keep the Na’vi in their place while they strip mine the land. The theme of corporate-military complex versus the individual is strongly woven throughout this tale.

Hired as a spy under the command of Quaritch, Scully is ordered to infiltrate the Na’vi clan and find out how Resources Development can get at the rich unobtanium mine beneath Hometree, the center where the Na’vi dwell. Quaritch promises Scully if he is successful in this venture, he will see to it that Scully will get his legs back (bionic legs, of course) when he returns to Earth.

Initially, the Na’vi are distrustful of Scully, particularly Tsu’tey (Laz Alonso), heir to the leadership of the clan and betrothed to Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), daughter of the tribe’s king (Wes Studi) and queen (CCH Pounder). But as the months pass, the Na’vi accept Scully. Neytiri has been chosen to teach him their ways. Despite himself, Scully eventually comes to respect the ways of the Na’vi and falls in love with Neytiri.

Selfridge orders Quaritch to destroy Hometree, the dwelling place of the clan. A battle of technical wizardry takes place as the Na’vi fight airships by flying on the backs of dragons, and on the ground, using archaic methods but with telepathic teamwork, battle robots. Hometree is bombed and burned; few viewers escape the chilling similarity its destruction has to the destruction of the World Towers on 9/11.

The clash of wills and cultures that ensues in this visually breathtaking adventure explores the major themes of ecology – nature versus the human appetite for energy consumption – and identity in a science fiction setting that is at once traditional and outré.

Throughout the film the use of full live-action shot in combination with computer-generated characters and live environments is seamlessly interwoven. Avatar was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won three, for Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, and Best Art Direction.