Audiences don’t seem to be able to wrap their minds around the real story depicted on the screen, and they are prone to cramming the facts into some sort of pattern already present in their minds, hence the regrettable tendency to see comparisons to similar stories, or allegories about current events.

Sci-fi is about creating a setting which then dictates the story and the actions of the characters. If that were not so, all you end up with is an exotic setting which distracts from a story which could have been better told in a less alien environment. The key fact in Avatar’s setting is that the Pandora ecosystem is synaptically connected planet-wide in a way that has produced an enormously powerful sentient being. This being is worshiped by the Na’vi, but it would not be proper to characterize their ceremonial awe as “spiritual” or as some sort of “religion”, since no belief in the unseen is required. It is more a recognition of a scientific fact.

The Na’vi in truth are the chattels of Eywa, and the Na’vi accept their status willingly, since Eywa has provided for them very, very well.

Like anybody who has never had to really fend for themselves, the Na’vi are really quite child-like, which is part of their great charm.

I don’t know how most moviegoers have managed to overlook the fact that it was Eywa, and not the Na’vi, who defeated the corporation’s security forces. Or how you must also draw the conclusion that the Na’vi were summoned by Eywa to fight the humans just like all of the other animals on Pandora. Being considerably more intelligent than the other animals on the planet, the manipulation had to be more subtle. Most of the early movie shows how Eywa performed this manipulation which ended up in a lot of Na’vi dying.

Would you want to live on Pandora as a Na’vi if you lacked free will and could be summoned to man the front lines of a hopeless charge into battle? Hhhmmm…there must have been a few too many Na’vi on Pandora at that moment. Ewya multi-tasked a little…drove the humans out and thinned out the Na’vi a little at the same time.

Yes, there is an extreme underdog in this movie you could cheer for. It was the humans.

These are all cerebral themes that would be unlikely to appeal to a mass movie audience, so Cameron, somewhere along the way, dumbed down the story and added a romance to draw the young ladies into the movie theatre. Also, it would have been a real risk to assume you could get an audience to emotionally invest themselves on the side of Eywa, a character which you never really see onscreen (you can’t see the forest for the trees!) So the focus of the film becomes the Na’vi.

Avatar has multiple levels to be appreciated, and those who dismiss the storyline as tried and trite have let the movie completely slide over their heads. On the other hand, Avatar could justifiably be criticized for trying to be all things for all people. Perhaps spending $500 million on movie-making and promotion will tend by financial necessity to produce such a product in the end.

Go see Avatar. Grace gives the best advice to Jake Scully. Clear your mind of preconceptions before entering the world of Pandora. But listen carefully to the actual story being depicted on the screen.

Leave complicated racial/socio-political issues to the academics please. That is what they do for a living after all.

Apart from that, yes, it was an extremely predictable film. But that’s not to say we didn’t enjoy seeing it anyway! It was visually stunning, to borrow the phrase form somewhere. Good character integration too.

Overall, a cliched story wonderfully executed.

You people talking about race. Stop it. They were living off the land. All persons who live off the land would have similar needs, or even dress similarly. Their clothes would be main from plants or animal skin. Their speech would be their own. Their hair would be long and uncut.

Should the Polish potato farmer feel guilt about what the Spanish conquistadores did — because both are white? Should the mongolians feel mongolian guilt because of Genghis Khan? Should blacks feel black guilt because of Idi Amin? Should native Hawaiians feel Hawaiian guilt because King Kamehameha brutalized other islanders?

It’s not white guilt; it’s not a race thing. Cameron and those like him, hopefully, are sending a message about the immorality of exploitation — not a race thing. The race aspect is a fallacy (be it white or non-white, or human or non-human); it’s not Cameron feeling guilty for his white ancestors but feeling guilty about a culture (not race) that at times did bad things.

Hmmm, did that same culture ever do anything good? Where’s that movie?

If we think of Avatar and its ilk as white fantasies about race, what kinds of patterns do we see emerging in these fantasies?

A white man who was one of the oppressors switches sides at the last minute, assimilating into the alien culture and becoming its savior.
These are movies about white guilt. Our main white characters realize that they are complicit in a system which is destroying aliens, AKA people of color - their cultures, their habitats, and their populations.

The whites realize this when they begin to assimilate into the “alien” cultures and see things from a new perspective. To purge their overwhelming sense of guilt, they switch sides, become “race traitors,” and fight against their old comrades. But then they go beyond assimilation and become leaders of the people they once oppressed.

This is the essence of the white guilt fantasy, laid bare. It’s not just a wish to be absolved of the crimes whites have committed against people of color; it’s not just a wish to join the side of moral justice in battle. It’s a wish to lead people of color from the inside rather than from the (oppressive, white) outside.

Also, much of it also relates to the current Iraq war.

It was not racist, rather condemning racism. How is it racist if it is anti-western, kinda confused me with that statement.