Avatar:3D! (and a devolution into politics)

First and foremost, regardless of what I gripe about with the movie, it's a spectacle. I didn't mind wearing the glasses and even though most everything is CGI, I didn't feel like I was watching a video game, which is good considering the movie is about 2 and 1/2 hours long. The Avatars/Na'vi worked. If you like to be wowed, it's definitely worth the price of admission.

If you're a hoity-toity who watches mostly European films only seen by a handful of pretentious snobs, and despise anything that is just good, old-fashioned mass entertainment (which I argue is much rarer and more difficult to pull off than being boring and depressed in another language), you're going to hate it no matter what. I'll spare you the time you'd take condescending to watch the movie and say, yes, it's basically a $300 million "Dances With Wolves."'

However, there's more to it, really. Even though you've seen the plot before, I guarantee you haven't seen it this way. The 3D works. It's not a gimmick used to jolt you. It's fluid and seems reasonable, even vital to the presentation. Just from the previews you know what's going to happen, but, as the old saying goes, it's the journey, not the destination. Other than one glitch (the Na'vi sex scene), I could remain within the movie and buy the goings on.

Don't read further til you've watched the movie, or go ahead if you don't plan to.
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1. Yes, I liked the movie, but, Jesus, I get it already with the whole "we have to love the Earth" thing. "They've destroyed their mother!" I get it. Everything's connected! I get it. I kept waiting for a scene where they beat one of the dead eight-legged horses. One thing though, while the movie tries very hard to get the message across that the world and its inhabitants are all interrelated, the script sure tries to de-ball the notion of mysticism it presents by trying to science it up with some gobledygook about electro-chemical bonding that takes away the spirituality it's trying to foster. I mean, as it stood, without that, it made a lot more sense and was much deeper for, on the Na'vi world of Pandora, it to have its own goddess, but instead of sticking with that, the script debunks that by having the planet be a super-organism. A decent idea, but makes the Na'vi a lot less wise and a lot more foolishly superstitious.

2. The Na'vi love and respect all life. Boy, do we get told that a lot. They live in harmony with nature. Boy, do we get that a lot. Um, if they love life, why are they carnivores? I mean, other than having incisors, if they've understood and have proof that all life is woven together, wouldn't it make sense for them to rely less on hunting and gathering and more on agriculture? I know it's nit-picky, but that's why civilization evolved, when we we stopped chasing our food around the continents. Prey steer clear of predators, particularly 12-foot-tall ones with bows and arrows so that's why the earliest peoples were nomadic, they had to go where the food went. Yes, the Na'vi fly and ride long distances to hunt, but they're basically wiping out their own areas of the creatures they claim to love and respect so much. Surely, since they see the "seeds" of the Great Tree everywhere, they understand that plants can be grown from seeds and that they could produce far more food, and cause far less harm, by planting. The inspiration for the Na'vi, American Natives (though some Aboriginal influence along with shades of others) sure figured out planting. Hell, if not for them, no Thanksgiving. Maybe since the trees and plants are all woven into the goddess network, that means harvesting plants is worse than killing sentient creatures. Hmm...

3. The sex scene. Um. Awkward. I am able to buy sentient creatures. I'm able to understand a bond or attraction, but it still seemed like creepy bestiality when Jake and Neytiri get frisky. I mean, yes, I'm titillated by attractive people being romantic, but I don't feel that way when I watch two lions go at it, nor would I be if it were a good-looking person with an animal. Perhaps I'm specieist, but it was enough to pull me out of the movie and make me giggle awkwardly. Maybe I'm troglyditic and not enlightened, but it was unnecessary.

4. No fire. That means they ate all the animals raw. Um. Yikes. Jesus. According to Avatar: Mankind=bad. But at least we cook our food.

5. Couldn't the goddess have sent out the hammerhead creatures and flying creatures BEFORE the Na'vi got slaughtered. Thanks for the help, bitch.

6. Is the sequel going to be obvious? The company comes back with biochem weapons or nukes. Good luck going against that. I was in the Army. I can tell you that when it comes to weapons, yes, every once in a while, if greatly outnumbered, the superiorly equipped can be overrun (Zulu, Little Big Horn), but ordinarily, it's a slaughterhouse for the less advanced. Direct frontal assault of machine guns is impossible if all you have is guns (see War, World I) and incomprehensible with bows and arrows.

7. "Shock and Awe!" "Preemptive attack!" Um, this is where I get hoity-toity myself and say, "stick with entertainment, not 'MESSAGE!!!!' This is a 3D blockbuster movie, not a social commentary." War is bad. Got it. Move on. It was sorta jarring and a bit ridiculous. The company is Halliburton. Got it. Does that make the Na'vi the Iraqis or Afghanis? Um...No. They're not noble people who we're callously exploiting for their natural resources (the oil rights in Iraq got auctioned to European and Asian nations). Has James Cameron been to Afghanistan or Iraq? I somehow doubt it. I didn't see the mirrors of the Na'vi, noble, spiritual people in tune with nature and living in harmony. I won't say what I did see, but it sure as hell wasn't THAT. Was it a commentary on our exploitation of the New World? Um, who knows? There was a jumble of sympathies that the movie tried to cater to, all mostly "liberal." I don't say that as a slur or condescension, but unless you want to be argumentative, it's fairly understandable why I say that. "We love the trees and animals! Exploiting natural resources is bad!" We know who those people are, just as much as we know who the "It's my damn right to drive my Tractor Trailer SUV and I'll shoot you with my gun if you try and stop me" people are. What I've never really understood is why, if the "liberals" are city folk (who use up tons of resources) and the "conservatives" are rural (not nearly as much, but too much anyway), why their roles aren't reversed? I would think the hunters (typically "conservative" would want the woods as clean and uncorrupted as possible, would want the quotas enforced so that the animals aren't killed to unsustainable levels) would want to save the environment. I was told (so it must be true) that an analysis of the famous smog of Los Angeles, so thick that it obscured a MOUNTAIN a half mile away the last time I was there, is primarily particles of hamburger from all the fast food places. G.R.O.S.S.

8. The humans were the bad guys, right? That's a flawed perspective. The helicopter pilot and the scientists (and the main character, of course) are the only ones portrayed as being humane. Everyone else are thoughtless murderers. Right, sure you can say that about the main baddies, the corporate goon, played by Giovanni Ribisi, and the Colonel, but how much can you? What did unobtanium do? They never say. Is it like gold? Is it used for energy? Who knows. What if mining it was absolutely necessary for the salvation of humanity? The movie doesn't say, but I'm just asking. Should humanity die out because 200 blue aliens won't move? I know that's not what's necessarily presented, again, I'm just asking. What if it wasn't necessary for the salvation of humanity, but it made things a hell of a lot easier. Imagine you and every other American can't have electricity in your home or fuel for your car because 300 people won't bargain with you for the oil that they have under their land, which they don't use or need. What do you honestly expect we'd do? What do you honestly expect people would clamor for the US government to do? Get that damn oil, that's what. "All cultures are equal! Exploitation is bad!" works fine in theory, but I bet a damn lot of people who feel that way would find it's not so easy to keep that mindset when you don't have the Nikes made for pennies on the dollar in foreign countries so that the costs can stay down, when a gallon of gasoline costs $25. We currently are living in an exploitative society. That's one thing I loved, was when, in school, people got on their morale high horse about Slavery and the Confederacy. Everyone who lived in the South wasn't an evil bastard. Not everyone who owned slaves was. Was it a reprehensible system? Yes. Obviously. All I mean to say is that we live in one now. No one likes to think of that about themselves. We basically hold much of the rest of the world in economic slavery so we can have what we want, but Susie Soccermom doesn't feel that way when she drives the wildly unnecessary Suburban to ferry the kids around. Donnie Dummie doesn't feel that way when he drives his $30k pick up truck that's never touched its tires to mud. You want to understand the people of the Antebellum South or the Southerners during the war, even those who weren't slave owners? Imagine if the UN said, "USA, you have to cut your energy consumption by 3/4ths. We voted on it." We'd tell them, "Hell no! We want out of the UN!" "You can't leave the UN! It's a binding union!" "Hell no! You'll ruin our entire system!" "We don't care; you're hurting the rest of us! It's morally reprehensible!" What do you think we'd do? Think an ultimatum like that wouldn't rip this country apart? Just food for thought.

9. Even if the Humans are the bad guys, are all of them? Yes, they're mercenaries, but does that make them bad? The normal grunts don't know the first thing about the Na'vi. They're on an alien planet where everything, Navi and animals, are trying to kill them. They're not thinking about geopolitics. They're thinking "survive." They don't know anything about "negotiations" with the Na'vi or probably even that they're not animals. If American soldiers in the congo shot monkeys who were throwing rocks at them, would they be evil? Not if the Americans only thought the monkeys were animals attacking them. I guess you could fault them for putting themselves in that position in the first place, but that's a trifle glib. Seeing as how I'm trying to become a contractor in Afghanistan myself, I can tell you that yes, I'm mainly trying to do it because of the money, but, last time I checked, when you're massively in debt, you need money to pay off your debt. Heaven forbid I get a job over there and get attacked, but I sure won't feel like I'm a bad guy if I defend myself. Anyway, just thoughts of Vietnam popped in my head at the idea that the common soldiery of the movie were all bad guys. We've gotten much better about that as a nation. I was treated warmly and appreciatively during my time in service. Blame the head honchos is all I'm saying.

An Ode to Micturition

(I posted this in the stalls at my office in the army because my soldiers' aim was pretty bad. I was "unique" as an Army officer)

An Ode To Micturition


While standing there, the task in hand,
Consider, please, this meager plan:
If you should hap to err or stray,
From the throne, wipe off your spray,
For think of those who may sit down
And slide, bare-assed, onto the ground.

by (then) 1LT Ajax Carpenter (2003)