The Official Black Owl review of James Cameron's “Avatar.”

Oh, where to begin? I suppose at the beginning. (Massive Spoilers!!!!!)

In the future, mankind is out and about in the stars, and have located the forest moon of Pandora. Not only is Pandora lush in flora and fauna, but a noble sentient race, the Na'vi, make the moon their home in various tribes situated in various locales. The moon Pandora is also rich in the extremely valuable mineral “unobtanium” which means the humans are willing to do what they must to, well, obtain it.

Along with the Military/Industrial mission to Pandora to mine the unobtanium, there is also a scientific team using “avatar” technology to study and communicate with the native Na'vi. This means scientists have cloned human/Na'vi hybrids capable of surviving on Pandora's atmosphere. The human half allows for a mental transference; i.e. the human DNA donor can actually project mentally into the nine foot tall blue body as if it were their own, while their own frail human shell lies in a transmitting chamber.

A member of the team dies in a freak accident, but happens to have a twin brother who is a Marine. Jake Sully takes his brother's place in the scientific mission, but for the first time is a member who straddles the line to the military. Additionally, the former Marine suffers from paralysis due to an old war wound- use of the avatar will allow him to walk again.

Though initially there only to help the Military backed Corporation exploit the Na'vi, he becomes attached, falls in love with the Chief's daughter, and proves himself to be the great warrior they need to defeat the superior human forces.


So what's good? The imagery and cinematography are without peer. Every frame and design are beautiful, from the graceful (and scientifically plausible) human starship the Venture Star, to the Scorpion helicopters, to the Battletech-like power suits. The organic design is also masterful, with the majority of Pandora's wildlife designed by the famed Wayne Barlowe, known as the author of “Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials.” (A must have for all geeks BTW.) With a single exception (to be discussed later) the fauna of Pandora follows an evolutionary chain lending a stunning realism and suspension of disbelief to the creatures.




The cast has some of my favorite performers. Sam Worthington, despite being in some awful movies, is always worth watching. Zoe Saldana, the newest Leiutenant Uhura in my favorite film of the last decade, Star Trek, delivers as Neytiri the Chieftain's daughter even through the mask of motion capture CGI imagery. Her skinny blue alien is, and maybe I'm a freak for saying it, sexy as all get out. James Cameron alumni Sigourney Weaver, no stranger to dealing with aliens herself gets to perform as both human scientist and nine foot blue hottie. So what could be wrong?

Well, everything else.

I have hugged more than a few trees in my time, and I have taken responsibility for my share of White Guilt over the abominable treatment of the Native Americans. Cameron wants to make sure we do both, and he isn't hiding this message- he's bludgeoning us with it. Where's the subtle message of cooperation so deftly delivered in “The Abyss”? How about the sidebar conversations on the inevitability, or non-inevitability, of being destroyed by our own science in “Terminator”? Where's the quiet little jabs at Corporate inhumanity as personified by Paul Reiser in “Aliens”? All of these themes which rode in on the backs of movies in the form of brilliant Science Fiction allegory are replaced by Cameron reaching out of the screen and choking you with the barest minimum of character development or plot to deliver the social message. There are no characters in this film- there are stereotypes. Giovanni Ribisi I assume was cast as Parker Selfridge, the Corporate dick, because Paul Reiser was unavailable to reprise his role from Aliens. Sigourney Weaver tapped her Dian Fossey button from her performance in “Gorillas in the Mist.” The military commander, Colonel Miles Quaritch (which I have to assume is named for H.R. Haggard's novel 'Colonel Quaritch, V.C.” about a military man forced to fit into a quiet, nature-like country environment) is nothing more than a two dimensional amalgamation of every military hard ass to grace the silver screen. From reveling in his scars to casually clutching a coffee cup while on missions of genocide, he's about as deep as my belly button. The only character who goes through any transformation or development at all is Jake Sully, who one could very well argue becomes sympathetic to the Na'vi because the avatar program lets him walk again, and no longer being paralyzed means hot jungle sex with a nine foot tall blue Zoe Saldana. Speaking of stereotypes, let's discuss the Na'vi.




After countless hours someone spent imagining the ecosystem of Pandora, the culture of the Na'vi is simply lifted from your standard “noble savage” story. The tribal rituals, the native peoples type accents- no originality WHATSOEVER in their existence. The only attempt at allegory instead of direct rip off is the Na'vi's ability to psychically link with the animals of Pandora- they are literally connected instead of symbolically. Physically, instead of giving us something truly alien, we get exaggerated versions of Western beauty images. Long legs, rounded hips, full lips; only the somewhat feline facial features and impossibly long bodies make them alien at all (Yeah, ok, and they're blue). Their expressions of emotions- exactly human. Their symmetry, idealized human. Why is it every other form of animal life we see on this planet, from the big rhino things to the black panther dogs, even the pterodactyls, have six limbs, but the Na'vi only have four? Are they a transplant? As far as their worship- of course there's a Mother Goddess, and though there is an attempt to give some scientific reasoning to her existence, we are still looking at the same old Gaia/Earth Mother/Living Planet idea used in such brilliant movies as “Ferngully: The Last Rainforest.”

The story? Equally derivative. If you caught a double feature of “Dances with Wolves” and “Pocahontas” you have seen this film. Did Neytiri really have to be the chief's daughter? Did they really have to teach Jake Sully their ways as a hunter so he could understand them? Did the Na'vi really need a white man to come in and save them from the other white men? There's no depth here either. No surprises. It's like someone took a Hollywood Mad Libs script book and followed the formula. Hell- Cameron doesn't even bother to tell us WHY unobtanium (and dear god, what a dumb name! Why not “Hardtogetium” or “Rareicity” or “MacGuffinanium”?) is so important! Is it fuel? Food? Medicine? You want depth in this story? Tell us there's a plague ravaging Earth, and the only way to save the human race is to mine unobtanium (though I guess then it would be “panaceaithium”). have some of these characters desperate to find another way, but needing to ensure the survival of their children on Earth. Nope- we just get that the Corporation wants this stuff 'cuz its 'spensive. Quite the cliché.

And speaking of clichés, here's the part that really got my goat about this film. The portrayal of the military. My own commentary on my Firm on this very Blog has shown there are plenty of people in the military willing to dehumanize the enemy and exploit poor situations. However, the military is also full of some of the finest, most honorable, most intelligent, and caring people on this planet. Many do their jobs to make Earth and America a better place, not just to get resources of value for the Corporation. Yet in this film, the only military characters who show the slightest bit of empathy for the Na'vi are the ones who have been properly deprogrammed by working with the scientists; Jake Sully and Michelle Rodriguez's Scorpion pilot Trudy Chacon. Trudy's been flying these scientists out on their missions, and loves the beauty of the world. She is the sole pilot to disregard the order to bomb the Na'vi tribe's “Hometree,” this tribes homeland for all of history, full of women and children. EVERY other pilot and Marine launches. Every other member of the military shown on screen is perfectly happy to slaughter the blue people because corporate said so (except of course for Jake Sully, who may only be resisting because of the tail... his and Neytiri's). Cameron has dealt with the military in a Science Fiction setting before. The Colonial Marines in Aliens are felled a bit by their arrogance, however most of them are sympathetic characters (CPL Hicks in particular, and even the dipshit Hudson isn't evil) on a mission to save human colonists- in the end those Marines are every bit as exploited by the Corporation Weland-Yutani as the colonist sacrificed to the Xenomorphs are. Even in The Abyss, the SEAL Team leader trying to blow up the aliens is a) trying to do what he thinks is right to save the humans from evil aliens, and b) suffering from madness due to high pressure syndrome. Not here; here in this remake of a film which showed how awful we were in the 1870s, we get Manifest Destiny Marines in the future. Now, maybe I am being over sensitive, but I have a tough time thinking Cameron is trying to remind us of what happened to the American Indian. This would seem to be a message pointed more toward modern day, and since the script and film were developed while GW Bush was still on office, I have a tough time thinking I shouldn't imagine unobtanium as oil, and RDA as Haliburton. Does this mean I should be imagining the soulless, heartless, killing machines perfectly happy to carry out genocide at the request of their corporate masters as... well, me? That seems like a pretty personal affront to me and people like me who put our lives on the line in service to our country. Our leaders goals may be skewed at times, and some of us do certainly lose our way, but to generalize so willingly and unapologetically was more than a bit troubling to me. I kept hoping the movie would surprise me with a twist to break the stereotypes in character, story, and military vilification; nope, we rode it all the way out to Jake leaving his battered, broken, inferior body behind in favor of new blue hotness after leading those noble savages to defeat the evil humans and drive them from the planet.

Again, maybe I am being too sensitive, but I remember another movie came out a few years ago, “Final Fantasy.” It was full CGI, had great production design, a sexy CGI lead, and centered around a Gaia situation being exploited by an evil military officer. “Avatar” doesn't even manage to offend me with any originality.

I am however looking forward to the sequel where the human ships return and don't even bother to land before razing the surface from orbit, magic tree and all. Perhaps by the third film in the trilogy, Jake will show the few surviving Na'vi how to build casinos...

Choose for yourself what you think of it. As a conservationist, it offended me with it's simplistic take on why we should protect our environment. As an SF fan, it offended me as being so derivative of other, better films, and for the laziness involved in developing a truly alien culture. As a member of my firm, it offended me with it's simplistically brutal portrayal of my honorable profession. As someone who wants to see us put aside our differences and reach out into the stars as one world (yeah, I said it), it offended me to say the future is more of the same.

Why can't I have a science fiction movie where human and alien come together, overcome their differences, and put aside barbaric concepts like greed and avarice, while showing a military both strong and humanitarian?





Oh yeah. Live Long and Prosper.

WTF? Are you kidding me?

This is the stupid shit that gets your guns taken away. There's a responsibility to gun ownership, and you know, we can bitch about the Government taking away our rights all we want to, 90% of the time it's in response to one (or more) of us being an idiot. Thanks for making all legitimate, responsible gun owners look like nuts. I really appreciate it.

You may not have broken the law, but you proved yourself an asshole- you are trying to make the people in charge afraid- that won't end well for any of us.

Which way do YOU sway on this?

OK- I have a few more Watchmen comments since I have seen the coverage of the movie, and talked to other people who have seen it. The overwhelming response I am seeing is, “did you see Dr. Manhattan's wanker?” Well, of course I did, as did the grown women giggling throughout the film in the theater with me (minus my beloved Jennifer, who apparently is unmoved by blue genitals...I suppose I should be relieved?) on opening night. There are even people complaining the film should have had a higher rating than R, and primarily because of the animated male nudity- and keep in mind, that's what it is: animated. This is not Billy Crudup's actual willie (unless of course someone attached the motion capture sensors, what a job that would be). This is a blue CGI model of a penis, just like how Shrek is a green CGI model of an ogre and not a real one, and Jar Jar is a pink CGI model of a... whatever the hell he's supposed to be and not a real one.

Now (minor spoilers follow) this is a movie where a pregnant woman is shot in the face with a .45 automatic; the implication is made a six year old girl is butchered on a cutting board and we see two German Shepherds playing tug with her severed leg; a man is killed with a meat clever through his skull; several gangsters are graphically reduced to the consistency of chunky salsa; a man's arms are severed with a circular saw; a man severely beats a woman, then bends her over a pool table to rape her. Though I see some references to the graphic violence in the movie, I haven't really seen complaints (except the dramatic discontinuity of Dreiberg and Laurie killing a bunch of muggers, but elsewhere in the film being indignant at Rorschach and Ozymandias' methods). The penis however, warrants complaint and outrage. And girly giggles.

A Google search for “watchmen dr. manhattan penis” returns 77,600 results. And that's with “safe search” on. (And no, I didn't click on “show image results”!)

Why are we as an audience that hung up on the well-hung Doctor? Why aren't we hung up on the violence? I am not arguing that we should be- I do expect parents to be parents and keep their kids away from this movie (I am), but I am really disturbed at what our priority of outrage or preoccupation is. If nothing else, this evens the score for years of exploited woman flesh in comics and comic movies. Admittedly, there's some revealing female outfits in this film, but they are remarked upon as being fetishistic, and you don't get the full frontal the way the good Doctor repeatedly delivers.

Perhaps both the violence and the Blue Meany are too much, but I think there's a real issue with folks who DO have a problem with a penis, and DON'T have a problem with a bloodied stump.

Oh, and the Google safe search “Watchmen Dr. Manhattan wang” got 163,000 hits- one for each girly giggle I heard Friday night.

North by Northwest

Our Moral Compass. We all have one, for better or worse. Gives us our directions of Right Action. Mine usually shows up as that little voice in the back of the head that tells you when things aren’t quite right. Is it the voice of guilt? Sometimes, but like those cliché angel and demon that pop up on your shoulders, every little good voice in the back of your head has a little bad counterpart that thinks it would be a good idea to take the last cookie, throw a party while Mom and Dad are away, or institute a plan of ethnic cleansing across southern Europe.

I will admit that I have been under a fair amount of stress lately. Though admittedly the “things that blow up really good and throw fast moving sharp pieces of metal” quotient has diminished, the inverse of that is more of the ones that would send those things our way are waiting for my inquisitional skills. They’re off the streets and I spend much of my time sitting in a small room with people who would just as soon see me bleed, asking if they can tell me where their bad guy friends are. As a result of my stress, I have found my mind wondering to places I freely admit I am not comfortable with it going. Nothing to do with torture and such, I’m just not the guy to do that, and I really don’t entertain thoughts of it. Times though, I just want to kill folks.

Easy now, I’m not sharpening my knives and making victim lists, but as abhorrent as I find killing I just sometimes run into people that in a cold dispassionate way I think would make the world a better place by leaving it. Then, the guilt sets in for thinking that way. I don’t really want to kill people says saintly figure on right shoulder, and let them taste their own blood says horned figure on left shoulder. Yes I belong to an organization that kills people and breaks things, but in my career I have yet to confront the first one of those. I’m hoping I don’t have to, I really hope I don’t have to.

So, dealing with the death dealing, I go looking for solace elsewhere. And what goes with violence? See, my life mate is well chosen. Pretty much perfect for me. And she is my solace: in heart, in soul, and certainly in body. There is nothing that cleanses my demons better than kind words, acceptance, and physical contact. It can be as simple as a hand on mine, or hours of sweat-drenched, breath-taking… well I’m sure you get the idea.

But what do I do when she’s not here? I can’t tell you how happy I am the darling of my life is not in Babylon. Yet I yearn for her touch and her love. Without her here, the yearning doesn’t stop. The need for that acceptance and touch is just as strong, perhaps stronger because there is no release. And there comes the guilt again, the warning signs that keep us all members of society or families. But as with the other issue the thought is there. The little red guy with the horns telling me what to do and how to hide it. The guy with the halo though, sets him straight. But…

What if my moral compass pointed South? What if I could slaughter my way across Babylon and fuck whoever was left? What if for a single day I cast aside every compunction, every ethic, every little shred of moral decency that keeps me on the majority of people-I-like’s good sides? If I actually held down that Babylonian and used my ballpoint pen to do major cerebral adjustment through an eye socket? If the glance young girl-soldier gave me was pursued to the creative use of an empty tank? What happens then, when I become one of the bad guys? Do you come back from that, can you?

I really need to go home. I am tired of being this way, tired of contemplating how much I would be satisfied doing the wrong thing. The Negative surrounds me, and I feel it pulling my compass needle away from north, away from the Right, away from Her. Without her, I am another one of the masses that make the world worse instead of better.

I don’t know what takes one charismatic leader and allows him to become Jesus, and makes another Adolf Hitler. What makes a brilliant leader Gandhi, or another Napoleon? The things around us? Jesus got Mary Magdelene, Adolf got mustard gas. God gave me Her. I have Her. Except right now I don’t. I have mortars and rockets. I have…

…to hold on. Just a little while longer, I hope. Before everything goes South.

Babylon

So I would like to tell you all about a magical place that doesn’t quite seem real; one that I like to call Babylon. Babylon used to be a great Empire, and spent some time as a monarchy, and a colony of those effete, tea-drinking flag planters (who in their own right, spent a good amount of time ruling the world). Then Babylon spent quite a bit of time as the mud under the boot of a vile dictator that we the North Mexicans (or Southern Canadians if you prefer) took from power when we landed our big half-assed Imperial Forces in his place as the Rightful Authority.

Babylon is full of Babylonians. The Babylonians cannot be summed up on the whole, any more than any other people can be labeled and tagged with 100% correctness or efficiency. There are of course certain social mores and customs, societal norms that are shared by the majority of the people.

In the last few months, I have had opportunity to chat with large numbers of Babylonians; some have been quite friendly, some have been quite the opposite, but all have had some certain traits that I can speak of. My job, you see, is that of Inquisitor for the Empire, and in our little fiction we are writing here, we will keep in mind that unlike some other Inquisitorial Places, my chamber is free of stacked nude Babylonians, and no chubby faced little miscreants are playing Vanna White with the genitals of bound and blindfolded men. I will not tell you that every Babylonian enjoys their little sessions with me, and sometimes there are those who go to bed with a little sneer and a wish for my discomfort or worse. However, a good Inquisitor can effectively bring out the fears or terrors necessary for certain sessions of Inquisition (and let me please add that such sessions are the vast minority) with a gentle whisper or a furious bellow, and not once do the Inquisitor’s hands and the Babylonian meet.

But it is not of Inquisition that I wish to speak today, but rather as I said of the Babylonians. I have always considered myself to be of open-mind about others. I do not like to consign people to stereotypes or groups. There are however many traits that the leaders of the North Mexican Empire have not taken into consideration in our occupation of Babylon. We, and I do certainly include myself, are generally individualists. There is a concept here normal to Babylon that we do not get, and it is so damn integral to the Babylonian psyche—tribalism. The tribes here are so important. Some tribes have as few as a couple of hundred, and some number up to seven million. They are led by the Sheikh, usually a title bestowed by birth, or sometimes they get the office simply by being the eldest. He makes decisions for the lives of his people. He arranges marriages, treaties, and declares war. Tribal war. Millions will agree to kill because someone’s tribal cousin was wronged.

Which leads us to the next Babylonian norm- Vengeance. The stuff of a thousand hackneyed television plots, the entire reason they made Klingons on Star Trek, revenge. Let’s imagine a convoy of Imperial Humvees riding down a moonlit Babylonian highway. A genuine bad guy with the bad guy weapon of choice (the Kalashnikov AK-47 and its many variants) tries to rid the world of the 19 year-old soldier of the Empire sitting in the turret of the lead truck. Lucky for the 19 year-old, he scavenged from the right trash heap, and has enough armor to stop the lead coming from the Kalashnikov at 600 rounds per minute. Also lucky for him, the South Canadian Empire has given him a .50 caliber machine gun. He returns lead, and his bullets are about three times the mass, and about ten times the destructive power. These go through our genuine bad guy, the wall behind him, the house behind that, and the young Babylonian asleep in that house. This means his brother in the bed next to him has legal and moral right to kill an Imperial soldier. That’s right, the moral right. It is expected to strike back at the tribe that did this thing, and the Forces of the Empire are currently the most powerful tribe. So, next moonlit night it all begins again, but rather than an honest Bad Guy, it is the victim’s brother or cousin with the Kalashnikov. Right now in Babylon, these people are extracting vengeance on the Imperial Forces, on their neighbors, on the members of the former dictators brutal regime, on tribal debts accrued a century ago—the entire nation is a festering pool of vengeance. No one is willing to be the one to put the gun down first. And no soldier, man or woman, is safe.

And speaking of women, don’t we North Mexicans do a great job of trying to equalize gender roles in society? In our businesses and homes, we generally accept women to be humans, probably even equals. There are officers in our Imperial Forces that are women! The Babylonians don’t understand that, and inversely we don’t understand the status of women in this culture. I have spoken to Babylonians who personally killed their daughters for engaging in pre-marital sex. Brothers who have beaten their sisters for talking to a man on the street. Husbands here who have taken two or three wives, and actively cultivated hatred between his two families that he can control. Women are stoned, women are beheaded, women are shot. Rape is a common occurrence. Indeed, I had to share oxygen with a man who had been married for about a week, and by all reports to a very attractive young woman. Then, a whole week into his marriage he and a friend went out to find a prostitute and rape her. Then, he was likely going to kill her, but he got caught and came to me.

Life in Babylon is cheap. Very cheap. Dime a freaking dozen. People are killed for money. People are killed for vengeance. People are killed for gasoline. One of the oil richest nations on Earth, and people are shooting each other for long gas lines. Our new Babylonian Guard we’ve created and some gas station security guards that we hired got in a gunfight with automatic weapons over whether or not the Babylonian Guard had to pay for the gas. And these are the people we want to set up to run this show and make it better than Ousted Brutal Dictator. The Babylonians don’t hate death. They embrace it and define themselves by it. That’s the thing isn’t it?

The right to rule is the right to bestow death. Be it by declaring war, carrying out executions, or deciding who gets the flu vaccine, the Powers That Be have to decide who lives and who dies. There is only one type of person that can be allowed to wield that power— someone who hates death. Only someone who hates death, who hates the gun can have the bullets. And we, the South Canadian Empire, have given the death-loving Babylonians the bullets, and now can’t figure out why it isn’t working. Can’t figure out why things are still blowing up, and mortars are still falling, and rockets are still flying. We expected them to be us, to love freedom and not to want to kill or die senselessly.

Oh God help us, we were wrong.