"Dances with Aliens"

Hoping my precious few readers had a joyous Christmas and welcomed in the New Year safely and sanely, I am happy to say that The Possum is in the house! My holiday hiatus was somewhat unintended; I just got burned out on the never-ending flood of manure flowing out of De Cesspool—a.k.a. DC—and wanted to preserve what little Christmas spirit was infusing the Possum Den over the holidays.

Well, that was last week and the week before. We have many things to discuss; too many, perhaps, for one outing. We’ll start with the mundane, and work our way into an object lesson that’s had me climbing the walls since Sunday.

It’s not often that I get to review a movie that’s still playing in a theatre near you. I prefer my newer movies on DVD, so I can smoke, drink adult beverages, eat reasonably healthy snacks, and pause the action if I need to go to the bathroom. Constant Readers are well aware that I am a bigger fan of old movies, spanning the forty years from 1960 to 2000. Some of the past decade’s films have been outstanding, but there seems to be some element of—soul, shall we say—that is lacking in most new movies. Whatever this intangible element is, it often isn’t there in even the biggest, best-made “gee whiz” movies today.

On Christmas Day, Miz Possum and I trekked up to Hiawassee, where the local Cinema 6 was presenting “Avatar.” This is apparently the must-see movie of the season. I admit I was blown away by it. We didn’t get the 3-D version, but the flat print was so sharp it was like watching high-definition TV. “Avatar” is beautifully realized in every aspect. I am especially impressed with James Cameron’s skill and vision in giving us a movie starring blue people with tails, and not making us laugh in the process. The last thing I saw with blue people in it was a Smurf cartoon twenty-odd years ago.

There were three flaws that stood out in “Avatar.” I would question the physiology of some of the creatures inhabiting Pandora. Did they really need all those extra legs and eyes? I’ll grant the artistic license we’re dealing with alien species, so I guess they can look as fantastical as the storyteller wants them to be.

A couple of days before we went to the movie, I received an e-mail denouncing it as an unpatriotic, anti-military, anti-American screed. I took this with a grain of salt, but kept it in the back of my mind when the house lights went down and the screen lit up.

I’ll combine my take on the anti-military assertion with what I perceived as the third flaw in the film: the paucity of plot. Driving back from the theatre, I asked Miz Possum if she’d ever seen “Dances With Wolves.” She said she had never managed to catch that one, whereupon I had a really good laugh. “Well, babe,” I told her, “You just saw it.” I added that I’ll be mildly surprised if Kevin Costner or author Michael Blake doesn’t sue James Cameron for poaching their screenplay’s basic premises. We have in “Avatar” Marine Jake Sully, torn between his duty to his orders and protecting a people he has come to accept as his own. This is the same conflict that Costner’s Army Lt. John Dunbar had to deal with in “Dances with Wolves.” Instead of the red-skinned Lakota of the American West, we have the blue-skinned Na’vi of the moon Pandora. In both cases, the native people and the soldiers have to overcome their cultural disparities and learn to trust and accept each other. Forging this bond of trust, Dunbar and the Lakota and Sully and the Na’vi have to face down the encroachment of expanding empires spearheaded by brutal military forces. This brings us back to the dire warning I received that “Avatar” is somehow anti-American and anti-military. I have to dismiss this assessment of the movie. The quasi-mercenary military in “Avatar” is no more rapacious than the regular Union army of “Dances with Wolves.” I didn’t get a sense in either movie that there was some subtle unpatriotic message about America in the 1860s or the planet we ostensibly represent in the future-world of “Avatar.” I got no end of amusement out of Sigourney Weaver bucking an evil, greedy corporation in “Avatar.” Didn’t she make a career of doing that in all four “Alien” movies? Cameron, of course, directed the second of that quartet—“Aliens”—and aside from the Marines in that movie being in over their heads with H.R. Giger’s hungry critters, I saw nothing anti-military or unpatriotic in that one, either. Evil, greedy corporations are almost too easy as a plot device, and their overuse as convenient villains verges on becoming hackneyed.

Those points having been made, I have to give “Avatar” a rave review. Go see it! Those familiar with “Dances with Wolves” will recognize what I’ve said here, but it doesn’t detract from “Avatar” being a knock-your-socks-off movie. Like “Wolves”, it’s a trifle long, but for those nearly three hours you’ll live in a universe that is well-crafted, with engaging characters and scenes of breathtaking beauty, action, and spectacle. I regret that our local movie palace didn’t support the 3-D version, but I didn’t feel cheated at all with the content and impact of “Avatar.” It’s a must-see film, even if you’re not a huge fan of science-fiction. I was reminded of seeing the first “Star Wars” and the first “Alien” back in the late ‘70s. Leaving the theatre both times back then, I somehow knew that movies had changed fundamentally. I felt the same way on Christmas night when “Avatar” was over.

I don’t want to dilute this review with political meanderings, so we’ll leave them alone for now. Coming up in the next day or so—COMING SOON TO A BLOG NEAR YOU!—we’ll have the cautionary object lesson I promised. It involves telemarketers, the uselessness of the federal government, and how terrorists can force you to change your life—thereby winning, at least psychologically—without setting their underwear on fire or killing people and breaking things.

Please stay tuned.