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HappySqurriel on 24 January 2010
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tarheel91 said:
HappySqurriel said:

I saw Avatar last night and I was really unimpressed. It’s (essentially) a heavy handed and preachy retelling of the story of Pocahontas, that doesn’t bother with creating a decent motive for the antagonist’s actions, and a tacked-on Hollywood ending; with the exception of a couple of characters the acting and dialogue was only adequate, and the directing and cinematography was very beige.

I’m not trying to say that the movie was bad, it was a fairly well paced movie with good special effects and plenty of action; but I would say that outside of the effects categories any awards it wins would be more a statement of weak competition than anything else. There are movies like The Wizard of Oz which were visual spectacles when they were released that people are still interested in 100 years after they’re released; and a movie like Avatar will have a massive box-office, great DVD sales, and get decent TV play for the next handful (5 to 10) years and then be forgotten because it is so unoriginal and has been done so many times (so much better) before.

To everyone who tries to compare this to Pocahontas, I ask them this.  How does the whole becoming a Na'vi (more generally, becoming one of the native people) fit in with Pocohontas theme and message?  Oh wait, it doesn't.  A lot of people formed opinions about this movie before going in, and were thus blinded to everything that showed otherwise (confirmation bias, for anyone who's taken psychology).

Generally, yes, it's similar to Pocahontas, Dances with Wolves, Heart of Darkness (although less similar in this case), etc.  However, we all know everything can be made to look similar if you back off enough.

Let me ask you this: did any of the aforementioned titles make any connections to today (No, I'm not talking about the whole destroying the earth thing)?  Did any of the aforementioned movies look at anything beyond a single case of imperialism?  Did any of the aforementioned titles focus more on creating a living world and culture that people cared about above all else?  Did any of the aforementioned movies create a scientific, relatable explanation for the native system of beliefs?  Did any of the aforementioned movies have a white man decide to give up his whiteness, and become a native, effectively suggesting that the white man's way of life is inferior?

No, they didn't.  Once you start to consider such things, you start to understand that the ending wasn't "tacked on," the reason why the antagonists and their motives were so generic, etc.

Let me be clear, I don't think this is the best movie ever, but I think it deserves a lot more credit than a lot of people want to give it.

How did I form an opinion ahead of time by avoiding all information about the movie? I didn't watch trailers, didn't read reviews and avoided any discussions about so that I would have a clean experience.

On the note of becomming a member of the tribe:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Smith_(explorer)

Some experts have suggested that, although Smith believed he had been rescued, he had in fact been involved in a ritual intended to symbolize his death and rebirth as a member of the tribe.[11][12] However, in Love and Hate in Jamestown, David A. Price notes that this is only guesswork, since little is known of Powhatan rituals, and there is no evidence for any similar rituals among other Native American tribes in North America (p. 243-4).