(RNS) OK, so I saw “Avatar,” the computer-generated “epic” in which the American military-industrial complex invades a planet full of tall blue pantheists.
Here’s my review: Don’t waste your money.
The predictable plot involves a former Marine who takes the place of his dead twin brother on a scientific excursion financed by a large military contractor. The company, RDA, has hired every ex-military caricature possible to help it mine “unobtainium” from beneath the blue folks’ Hometree.
The ex-Marine regularly turns blue through mind control of his cloned Avatar body. He wanders around the planet Pandora accompanied by the local chief’s daughter. The rest is boring and, frankly, predictable.
A lot of people have fallen under the “Avatar” spell, hoping to defeat the bad guys and live happily ever after, communing with nature, with the good guys.In the movie, Americans play the bad guys (except the blue ex-Marine who goes rogue) while the good guys are the Pandorans, who send the Americans packing without their coveted “unobtanium”.
The film’s Technicolor theology presents pantheism as the solution to everything. Pantheism (nature is god) is not the same as panentheism (God encompasses nature). Christian understanding is that God encompasses the entire universe, but God is not limited or bound by the universe or by anything in it.
As most everyone knows by now, “Avatar” is the highest-grossing movie ever. Earth-bound fans have fallen in love with Pandoran pantheism. It does sound plausible: all creation dies, and its energy must go someplace. On Pandora, that energy goes to the Tree of Souls, and a little occasional bonding lets ancestral blue folks help the living.
But why the name Pandora? The goddess Pandora of mythology had a large storage jar (remember “Pandora’s Box?”) from which flew all the world’s evils. In that story, the most powerful virtue of life — hope — remained inside. Is there hope on Pandora? I am not sure.
With nine Oscar nominations (including for Best Picture) and a boatload of other accolades, “Avatar” is technically and artistically interesting for its cutting-edge computerized graphics, but that’s about as far as it goes.
Here’s the world as “Avatar” understands it: It’s August, 2154 (precisely when creator-director James Cameron will turn 200). Americans haven’t progressed much. Scientists are geeks, corporate contractors are greedy, mercenary soldiers are idiots, and the U.S. stomps out helpless alien cultures. That’s the Avatar message.
With a marketing budget of some $150 million, promoters are selling that message through books, video games, and interactive 3-D cans of Coca-Cola. With no irony, McDonald’s includes “Avatar” “action figures” in Happy Meals in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Columbia, the U.S. and Venezuela. The global village has gone blue.
The Vatican’s official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, called the film “sappy.” For its part, Vatican Radio called it harmless and disconnected to sci-fi masterpieces of the past.
But “Avatar” is much more than hyperkinetic bad scripting. It is a growing global phenomenon riding the coat tails of the ecology movement, powered by some serious anti-American (some might say anti-Christian) sentiment.
The irony is that in criticizing the spread of American junk culture, “Avatar” is doing precisely what it complains about.
(Phyllis Zagano is visiting professor of theology and religion at St. Leo University in Florida and author of several books in Catholic Studies. She also holds a research appointment at Hofstra University, N.Y.)