Avatar: Screening Report
Summary:
The story of James Cameron's Avatar has been seen time and time again in films like The Last Samurai or Dances With Wolves. A soldier is ordered to infiltrate and spy on a group of indigenous people, in this case the group are aliens of a different planet. The soldier soon finds he likes the aliens and decides to abandon his former role and fully join them. He soon rises up to leadership and helps them defeat the other humans, all while finding a love interest in the form of the group's Princess. They succeed but at the cost of losing the tribes home.
What Genre is Avatar?
Avatar's genre is firmly placed in Sci-fi/Fantasy. It takes place on an alien planet very different from Earth in both the creatures found there and the geography of the planet. It doesn't truly do anything plot wise to stand apart from any other run of the mill Sci-fi flick, although it does also dip into tropes and ideas shown in Eco-friendly focused films such as FernGully.
Colonialism and Avatar:
While watching this film and others that fit into the White Guilt category like The Last Samurai or Dances With Wolves, I can't help but feel like films like this portray something very close to what is seen in the poem The White Man's Burden by Rudyard Kipling. The poem basically described that all other people in the world are the burden of the White Man, that they are privileged to be lifted up from the savage lives they live by the white man. We see this in Avatar in the way that the na'vi would of most likely perished at the hands of the military without the help of Jake Sully.
Avatar: An exceptional film?
Avatar is widely acclaimed for being the current highest grossing film of all time, having beaten James Cameron's previous best Titanic in the box office. It's also touted as being visibly stunning with amazing use of CG to create a vast and impressive world while also immersing people in it with what many see as some of the best uses of 3D seen in cinema.
