I went and saw Avatar today. It is a great deal better than the trailer made it look. Whereas the trailer appears somewhat cartoony, every moment of the actual movie is visually stunning. It is like an eye candy buffet. Add to this a decent plot, OK acting, and amazingly fast-paced action scenes, and we have a movie every male will love. I was also pleased that it bridged my two favorite genres: sci-fi and fantasy. Think Narnia meets The Matrix, and you'll have a pretty good idea the stuff this movie is made of. It was by far one of the most satisfying moviegoing experiences I've had in recent history. And there wasn't much adult content, either, except for the violence. I guess the blue aliens are half-naked most of the time, but it's not erotic or anything, and since they're aliens you don't really think about it.
My biggest objection to the film was that its plot was so obviously derivative. It was pretty clearly based on the European conquest of the Americas, except with a happy ending this time. There were enough other interesting story elements thrown in to keep the heavy Native American overtones from overwhelming the story. But they're definitely there, and they distract a bit from the experience. I kept assuming it was an allegory, and expecting an unhappy ending.
In addition to the historical references, there were also a number of obvious similarities to Timothy Zahn's sci-fi novel Manta's Gift. Zahn's book was about a paraplegic who gets his nervous system hooked into an alien body so that he can go as a spy/operative into an indigenous culture whose resources humanity hopes to exploit at the aliens' expense. At the end of the book he of course ends up fighting on the side of the aliens against the humans. Probably not enough here to get Cameron sued for plagiarism, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the concept was borrowed from Zahn.
Anyway, derivative or not, it was a really good action flick. Nerds like me will love it. Non-nerds maybe not so much... but who cares about them, anyway?
4 comments:
If you are interested in the European colonial narrative with a happy ending there is Orson Scott Card’s Pastwatch.
Yes, Pastwatch is one of my favorite Card novels. I'm a little more fond of Speaker for the Dead and Enchantment, of course, but Pastwatch is quite good. :-)
I did not like Enchantment. Maybe I am just over protective of Jewish characters and take intermarriage very personally.
Did you see the post I did on my lecture on Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead? (http://izgad.blogspot.com/2009/11/my-presentation-at-history-and-fiction_15.html)
You also did a conference presentation on Card, which I really liked.
I hadn't really thought about the intermarriage issue, but I can see how that might be disconcerting. I just read your post on the Speaker for the Dead. Very nice. I think you've captured well the ideal essence of the historian's task. (Although sometimes, in practice, it's more like gossiping about dead people.)
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