A few thoughts on Avatar

I'd just like to say:

1. I really enjoyed Avatar. It's really polished and honed, and Cameron definitely knows how to tell a story. He's in full control of not just your senses, but your emotions, from start to finish. I'm not saying the film doesn't have a few flaws, but none of them were gamebreakers for me.
   
   
2. Like Beowulf, it's a relatively simple plot, with lots of action and eye-candy. It's fun. I definitely think there's room for these classic timeless archetype plots, jazzed up with modern movie-making tech. The plot is a little predictable, but that's because he's using archetypes that have been steeping in the collective consciousness for hundreds of years.
   
   
3. Reviews that focus on how the allegory or metaphor is "too simple", are missing an important point: There is no allegory or metaphor involved, and that's not a bad thing.
   
   We don't say Platoon or Band of Brothers had too obvious of a metaphor, because they're just telling it like it was. The only metaphorical element of Avatar is that it's set on another planet. It's just an extrapolation of what would happen should we voyage to a planet with resources we can exploit, and a primitive culture standing in the way. It's happened all through history, and it's still happening today in the third world. It's a historical film, but set in the future: "Telling it like it will be", but with glow-in-the-dark dinosaurs in the background. You can call that metaphor if you like, but I think you're missing the point.
   
   
4. The pro-environmental, pro-indigenous-rights, anti-colonial politics of the film are a little heavy, but they're also a large portion of what I like about the movie. Had the film somehow avoided the "tree-hugging" leftist politics, it would have been just another boring Hollywood blockbuster. Instead, it has soul and a message.
   
   (The "other side" dispenses propaganda without a conscience every day in all our media, so it's damn hypocritical that they cry foul when the Left manages to slip it into a mainstream movie. The Right knows the Left is sensitive and defensive about things like this, so they harp on it to get the progressives to give up ground. And, sadly, it almost always works.)
   
   
5. I really like how the film has two very strong female characters, and they're nothing alike. Most action films make female characters cardboard thin, as if the only character trait they need is "she's the chick". In Avatar, one's a pacifist, a rational scientist, and a control freak. The other is a huntress and a mystic, fierce yet compassionate and intuitive.
   
   (Compare this to Cameron's earlier work, Aliens, which also had two strong female characters. In that film, one's defining characteristic was "she's a mother" and the other's defining trait was "she's not a chick". That too was better than average, but he's definitely grown as a story-teller and character-writer since then.)
   
   
6. I don't think being in 3-D was the least bit helpful, just distracting and gimmicky. Plus, the glasses pinched my face. I'll happily pick up the 2-D version on DVD.
   
   
7. I don't believe in post-Avatar depression. I think it's just very clever viral marketing.