When I first saw trailers for James Cameron’s Avatar, I was worried. Big blue CGI aliens? It didn’t sound promising. But then yesterday, I saw Avatar on a big screen, in 3D, and it blew me away. I loved every minute of it.

Yes, the plot’s predictable – a conflicted and otherworldly outsider joins the tribe, falls in love with the chief’s daughter, beats the tribe’s most skilled warrior, and leads the tribe to salvation – but so what? It’s an archetypal plot, one that our ancestors have probably been recycling since the dawn of campfire storytelling. It’s the hero’s journey. It’s a basic story of primate tribe dynamics, and it runs through our myths, from the Greek legend of Prometheus, through early sci-fi, to films such as Dances With Wolves, and Pocahontas. To complain about its unoriginality is to miss the point, as Cameron isn’t crafting something entirely new: instead, he’s reinterpreting the myth for our times, incorporating contemporary elements such as “shock and awe” bombing and commercial environmental exploitation.

Continue reading “Avatar: Film Review”