Victor Grippi – The Atomic Writer

I know you must be thinking the Atomic Writer has lost it this time, but read the entire post and I think you’ll find new insights into this great movie and agree with my comparison.

I really think the title speaks for itself. I just returned from seeing this amazing movie in the Dome in Hollywood, and can honestly say “I see you” to James Cameron. Avatar reaches out to the audience on many levels, the top most being the incredible world Cameron has created on Pandora.

I felt immersed in Pandora’s enchanted forests and fluorescent jungles and in the beauty of the indigenous people who live there. These people, called the Na’vi, are connected to all other living things in their environment and share a unity of spirit and a circle of life. They biologically connect to the trees and animals in their world through their ponytails; okay you have to see it.

Wait a minute, haven’t we seen this before? I mean not on a distant planet named Pandora, full of six legged rhino mutations, flying lizards, giant fluorescent mushrooms, and beautiful scantly clad yellow eyed females. Where you can literally say, “Yeah, I got some great tail last night,” and actually mean it. But isn’t the underlying message a familiar one. Save native cultures and their environments from the evil clutches of the big bad west. I’m 100% for saving all indigenous peoples and their environments; I haven’t had a chance to travel to most of these places on Earth, let alone Pandora, and would like to experience these “alien” worlds first hand before they are gone. With that said, The Atomic Writer knows that if we destroy these places he will never get to see them, but he also knows we cannot go back to the way it was. We cannot reverse the hands of time and take a technological step backwards to a more simpler time. Human nature and the needs to strive to be the best would quickly bring us back to the same point. We must learn to live within our means and understand all living beings are here for a reason.

Exploring space and finding new worlds to spread out into makes the most sense to me. Change is the only constant in life, and those that oppose it are destined to fail.

When I first saw Dances With Wolves, I thought man I wish we could go back and live off the land like that, to belong to a unified community where you don’t have to fight the rat race of the big stinky city in order to survive. Where everyone has a place and a purpose. But this wasn’t the real world back then, it never was, it’s only a man made afterthought created to entertain and romanticize the period. But lets get back to Avatar.

We meet Jake Sully a paraplegic ex-Marine who replaces his recently departed brother on a mission to distant Pandora. Now what better character to create than a person who cannot walk and then offer him the chance to run, jump and generally be more agile than the Chinese men’s gymnastic team. And the only thing Jake wants, at the start, is the money to have the spinal cord operation to make him walk again. Now his brother was supposed to be the Avatar driver, but since the hybrid alien/human avatars are so expensive, and are grown to work with the DNA of its host, Jake comes in as a reluctant fish out of water. Why not just have him be the Avatar driver off the bat after being a great soldier who is injured in battle? Why create this backstory of an untrained hero? Well the story and plot would fall flat if Jake already spoke the native language and already knew about the Na’vi.

We need to see the interaction between Neytiri, played by Zoe Saldana, and Jake. We connect with Jake and feel sorry or him and then see a fish out of water as he plays with his new legs. This reminds me of Dances With Wolves, where we see Kevin Costner’s character as a fish out of water in the world of the native American’s as his mentor, Mary McDonnell teaches him her culture. Now wait a minute isn’t there a similar theme threading through both movies. They are both soldiers in the military, they are both seduced into an indigenous culture that seemingly lives in harmony with the environment. And don’t both turn against their people to join in a battle against a foreign invader? Well don’t they?

Avatar also borrows from one of the most successful science fiction stories of all time, The Matrix Trilogy. Instead of jacking in and entering a virtual world made up of other jacked in humans and artificial agent programs; in Avatar you connect your mind to a genetically engineered indigenous Avatar who can breathe, run and jump and presumably get the inside scoop on the locals. When I saw the exo-skeleton battle suits, reminiscent of Matrix 3, I knew what Cameron was pitching to the studios: The story is The Matrix meets Dancing With Wolves.

Our hero enters “another world” where he comes as a savior reluctant at first, but after some Jujitsu training by a convented mentor, accepts the challenge before him and crosses the threshold into the new world. There he learns who his allies and enemies are and approaches the inner most cave. He faces a supreme ordeal and seizes the sword before his road back where in the crisis undergoes a resurrection and rebirth. If you’re wondering what the heck I’m talking about, the above is a basic outline for a mythic story. Myth stories are found in every culture and are universally understood on a subconscious level by all peoples.

The Matrix had a very distinct mythic structure, however Avatar is much more subtle in each myth plot point.

Overall, The Atomic Writer enjoyed Avatar very much, it’s my cup of tea, and would fully recommend it to movie goers. Will it win a best picture award? I doubt it. It’s not a bad movie but it falls short in structure that could have made it a much stronger story. I question the motivation of Jake Sully and what he really wants in the movie. Perhaps if we knew more about him; saw him doing things to reveal his character. A character is defined by what they do, not what they say. Oh sure his body undergoes physical change but his character only becomes rebellious against his own culture in a way we’ve seen before.

You need to see Avatar in 3D in a theater. The suspension of disbelief will not work watching it on DVD in the home.

Avatar is a technological achievement, a visually groundbreaking movie to be remembered for the ages, but it’s not a great story.

Remember, never stop looking up in the night sky and asking….what if.

Victor Grippi
The Atomic Writer