Unfortunately, I think you, we, may be but a small % of the film’s viewers who actually want to weigh its values compared to the masses who will soon be adapting Na’vi styles and fashions: look for feathered and beaded clothing and jewellery, painted and bejewelled skin effects, braids and plaits and barefoot runners coming soon to your neighbourhoood. Inevitably.

Is that beside the point in such a forum as this? Or does it in part reinforce the point that whatever its wonders and powers, Avatar is ultimately yet another commercial juggernaut…

While I agree with Keith’s take in most cases, I have trouble with the glorification of movies capable of installing righteous indignation; I don’t see it as ever being a “means for building social cohesion”, or as promoting any positive outcome. I think a subjective sense of one’s own righteousness is the source of almost all historical and contemporary conflict, implying as it does “wrongfulness”, and coming from a place of judgement. I’m sure the Christian Right, fundamentalist Muslims, fiercely Aryan Germans and Stephen Harper all felt or feel a sense of righteousness; I see indignation as the foundation of anger and, in worst case scenarios, eventual violence. It’s simply not a position from which we’re likely to progress in any manner that serves to solve problems, but one that will only exacerbate differences.

On another note entirely, I came away from the film with an awareness that seems convincing: Yahweh > YaWe > Eywa. Is Cameron messing with our minds? (Well, yeah, but specifically in this case?) Is he consciously or un promoting the Judeo-Christian structure, even among “primitives”? I have to believe he’s a man who is aware of every such nuance…

And what action does the film make me want to take? (Apart from twining my hair into that of my favourite tree and horse in order to mind-meld with them…) I’m already a Pantheist of the first order, I reuse/repurpose/recycle, I’ve been known to exercise both clairvoyance and clairaudience, I turn off the tap while I brush, I don’t use pesticides in my garden, I buy free-trade where and when I’m able, and like so many before me, “I am closest to God in my garden”. I cannot think, however, of another specific action the movie stimulates me to take on. So while it confirms what I believe to be true and valuable, apart from that it’s but a lovely story – albeit not a new one, as so many have accurately indicated, and one that references even older parables, those of the Wounded Healer, as far back as Asclepius and Chiron.

While I remain haunted by the stunning visuals and extraordinary imagination of Cameron and his gifted crew, I think the film ultimately fails to teach us anything new, and I suspect its impact on the culture at large will be insignificant. I hope I’m wrong.

* Are movies capable of motivating people to act on the insights they artfully instill – or do movies instill artificial “feelings” that substitute for the righteous indignation which is needed for prophetic or even desperate action. Judging by the notable passivity of our culture in the face of the unwarranted invasion of Iraq, the sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners, the bellicose rhetoric directed against Iran and Muslims of all stripes and turbans, and the high crimes and misdemeanors of our elected officials and financial leaders, it appears that movies instill “feelings” that lead nowhere. That appears to me to be part and parcel of their purpose.
* Again, citing McLuhan, the medium is the message; the pacified audience yields its credulity to the medium in the darkened chamber of illusions which we call the movie theater. The more lavish the illusion, the more credulous is the pacified audience. They may leave with intensified “feelings,” but do they have the moral fiber to challenge the injustices that surround them – indeed which threaten their very survival?
* Moreover, if movies have become the touchstone of reality and the first topic of most social conversation, does the drab hum-drum of daily life have any relevance at all? As long as there is another 3-D spectacle to view, what does it matter that Uncle George is out of work, Aunt Mary has cancer but no health insurance, tuition has tripled, or that drones demolish villages in Afghanistan? The drab reality of the tangible is made irrelevant by the vivid presentation of the illusory.
* Even if movies are capable of instilling righteous indignation – for which I see little evidence – is this the most reliable or effective means for building social cohesion around projects which require righteous indignation? The trouble with movies is that one has to actually see them in order to acquire the “feelings” they instill. Large segments of the population choose to see movies that reinforce their particular cultural or theological perspective. Fundamentalists flocked to see the Passion of Christ, white supremacist flocked to see Birth of a Nation, while progressives flocked to see An Inconvenient Truth. Each group has a “feeling” that they have received a transcendent revelation of The Truth, yet they are less and less able to communicate with each other. Hence the movie has isolated each group in its own illusory universe, without a common vocabulary or emotional frame of reference.

I concede that this is not the worst of situations and that previous generations had no monopoly on moral reckoning. Indeed, they made terrible mistakes both individually and collectively. Even so, I suspect that the oil well, the internal combustion engine, and the jet engine will wreak more destruction on our species than all the wars, disasters, plagues, and injustices of prior history. And while this destruction is happening, vast sums will be spent on titillating illusory spectacles of ever greater sophistication.

You seem to be criticizing the film for not offering a history lesson. That seems a bit odd to me – especially for a film that is set 150 years in the future, on a planet 6 light years away.

What if this is a film about the future? I’m not saying we don’t need history lessons as well – we do – but this might not be the right place for it. Avatar asks Americans to see indigenous/tribal/shamanic people in an integrative and positive light – as bearers of wisdom going forward – perhaps the wisdom that will help us rescue our ailing planet. The fact that America was capable of invading Iraq to begin with shows a serious lack in the culture when it comes to “seeing the other” – and “seeing the other” is what Avatar is all about. The phrase “I see you is repeated about a dozen times (half of these are in the alien language, but they’re there for people who are paying attention). This film does have a lesson – a lesson in ethics and open-mindedness. For one film, I think that’s lesson enough.

And I usually wait for everything to come out on DVD.