It took me two days to shake off the choking Pandoran dust from an ill-conceived journey to the movie theater this week.
Avatar, the smash hit of director/writer James Cameron, would not normally have seduced me from my quiet home, but one of my offspring, a 32-year-old person I will not name, to protect him from embarrassment, urged me to go, based on the enthusiastic endorsement of one of his friends.
These are grown men, with well-developed life skills, and I thought I could trust their judgment. But to be on the safe side, I double-checked the decision by perusing the Movie Review Query Engine website, glancing down a long list of mostly favorable critics’ ratings, with raves from viewers. And I looked over the New York Times review. It appeared that the movie was an extravagant technological feat with a philosophical heart — a spiritual message for Earthlings.
The trip to planet (or rather moon) Pandora required a trip to the mall, a less-than-heart-nourishing venue, followed by an hour wait in a line, surrounded by adolescents with cell phones. This could have been preview enough for me, if I had been alert. But I persevered.
Before the film began, a mother with two toddlers took seats behind us, and the baby — about 18 months — started to scream. This was even before the first blast from Surround Sound. My heart broke for these little ones, but then brightened when Mom gathered up the children and left. They should be in bed, not a dark, noisy movie theater. But they all soon returned, laden with popcorn, snacks and soft drinks, and the movie began.
I would grudgingly admit that the 3-D effects were amazing, but their novelty was dismantled by ear-splitting, throbbing noise and savage violence for the next two-and-a-half hours. For much of the movie, I covered my ears, sometimes also closing my eyes. I kept hoping for a more interesting plot, with a little bit of character development. Several times when the sound momentarily abated, the little three-year-old behind us piped up, “Mommy, what happened?” The tragedy of the children behind us was that, after the movie, they had to go home with a mother who was numb to their needs.
The movie glorifies a tall, blue-skinned humanoid race of Na’vi, who have a belief that all things are one and who commune with nature. But this foundation concept isn’t developed and isn’t believable: the aboriginals live crowded into an immense tree, like a gargantuan condo, while their countryside is overrun with flying, running, thundering, teeth-baring predators.
The movie’s main complication is that Earth industrialists/military/scientists are prepared to kill the Na’vi and ravage their lands in order to exploit their deposits of a mineral called Unobtainium. (I like this name!)
But the resolution is the same old formula that our terrestrial governments have favored for centuries — that violence and exploitation are to be met with ever-greater violence and exploitation.
I stumbled out of the theater feeling shell-shocked, and even my son said the film was “over the top.” My husband’s PTSD was triggered, and we both vowed to never enter a movie theater again.
What MIGHT have been entertaining, intriguing, uplifting?
Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if the Na’vi, who are so attuned to divine sources, puzzled out a peaceful, yet creative, even mind-blowing or paradigm-shifting way to dissuade the Earth colonialists? A solution that didn’t involve war?
I think THAT would make a good story.
