As promised, there will be the occasional movie review. i took in Jame's Cameron's Avatar last night. Before going to see it, i had not read a single review or even seen a full preview. This is rare for me, as i don't typically like to risk wasting a movie ticket price these days on a movie i'm not fairly certain i will enjoy. i had merely heard that it was visually stunning, probably more so than any movie ever before. In two words - it was. i can recommend the movie most highly to any science fiction fan, historian, ethicist or special effects/visual graphics fan. If you don't fall into any of those categories, you can still enjoy the movie, but it's fairly odd and the sci-fi bend may be too much for you.
While i thought the movie more closely paralleled Dances with Wolves, there's a humorous essay on its similarities to Disney's version of the Pocahontas tale...
While i thought the movie more closely paralleled Dances with Wolves, there's a humorous essay on its similarities to Disney's version of the Pocahontas tale...
3 comments:
Check out this review from a black person's perspective. He was not too enamored of the "white savior" theme... http://tinyurl.com/ycrx5ve
It's sad to me that the author of that article was so blinded by a personal bias and such obivous personal struggle and pain that they missed such hopeful themes. In a movie that parallels Dances with Wolves and Disney's Pocahontas, it clearly deaprts when the indigenous people win at the end. They also make a real effort to legitimatize the indigenous religion and deity, rather than mark it as superstition. And in most stories, when the bad guys are all one race (in this case, species AND race), it means something. The white guys get villified in this movie. Even the hero is shady. The only military defector in the movie is Latino, interestingly. The hero is also first and formost handicapped, rather than white. It's also not at all sexist. Among other reasons, the heroine rescues and saves the life of the main hero three separate times and he never saves her. i'm unconvinced by most of this author's arguments, though it's a very interesting cultural analysis.
I'd say Pocahontas meets Fern Gulley. Think about it.
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