(Read my Avatar Movie Review.)
Some of the comments I’ve seen on Twitter about Avatar say that the movie has a weak storyline and that you should just watch it for the special effects. It’s true that some plot elements of Avatar can be found in other movies, but I think people are being over critical. Think about it. Movies have been in production for about a hundred years now. Some plot elements are bound to be reused. You can see the same thing happening in books. So, instead of watching the movie with the intent to tear apart the plot, you should appreciate the movie for what it is, and for how artfully the story is told. Besides, it’s really not that weak. The movie itself is symbolic of a problem that we’re all facing now, in the world around us.
The humans in Avatar have traveled across a vast distance to Pandora in search of raw materials. They’re there to mine for an ore that’s very valuable on Earth. I got the impression it was a fuel source of some kind. In their pursuit of this raw material, they ruthlessly destroy the environment around them without regard for the impact it has on the native population. The same could be said of what we’re doing to our own planet. In the pursuit of industrialization we’re polluting our planet at an ever increasing pace. We’re destroying the habitats of animals. We’re causing the extinction of whole species. In some places, like parts of China, we’ve caused the environment to be so toxic that the people living there are seeing massive increases in birth defects and cancer related deaths.
I think that Avatar is trying to teach us that we should be more aware of what we’re doing to our world. We should take the time to find ways to reduce our impact and to learn to coexist with nature, rather than destroy it for our own ends. For all our technology, if we continue to pollute our world we’ll one day find ourselves without clean sources of food and water. The Earth has limited resources after all. I’m not saying we should all become vegetarian ‘tree-huggers’ but if we can start making a conscious effort on an individual level to reduce our impact, it can add up to a huge difference. Think about how much better the world would be if everyone recycled, if no one littered, if firm controls were put on industries everywhere as to how their toxic waste was disposed of. We have the tools available to us already. We just need to use them.
Avatar is a great movie with a great message that we can all enjoy and learn from.
Bradley Farless 