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Sunday, January 17, 2010

Avatar



Saw Avatar and loved it.
I practiced willing suspension of being-pissed-off at various places, and enjoyed it thoroughly.

1) I did not much care for the religious ceremonies at the Tree of Life; they reminded too much of ceremonies calling Kong in the original King Kong, and maybe something else I can't quite put my finger on.

2) I did not like the fact that there was an enveloping story with Sigourney Weaver which ended up on the editing room floor, except for a number of scenes which made me wonder what was going on.
The original story - as we may recreate it - apparently was something like exploratory spaceship comes across inhabited moon of gas giant planet ( more of that later ). Happily, they name it Pandora, which means literally "All Giving" in Greek and was a name for the Great Mother, even though they did not know too much about the web of life on this planet at the time.
They open a school for the aboriginals, teaching them English among other things, which explains why the Na'vi speak English so well. Weaver's character is banished from Na'vi society and the school is closed for reasons not clear. Mining operations commence, and Blackwater is employed to destroy the aboriginals in the way of progress.

I loved it, even though its all been done before.
There is a science fiction short story called "Call Me Joe" written in 1957 by Poul Anderson about a human-artificial life link on Jupiter. The hero of the story operates on a moon of Jupiter and is linked to a massive, squat life form which can withstand the gravity and pressure of Jupiter. I have read this story probably five times in my life.

The hero of Anderson's story is confined to a wheelchair in his human life, as is the hero in Avatar.
There is a shot in the film of Pandora against the background of its planet: the planet is bluish and not the color of Jupiter, but it is as massive as a gas giant - such as Jupiter - and it has an obvious atmospheric disturbance similar to Jupiter's Great Red Spot ( see it on the left upper of the above illustration ). I think it was at this point in the film that my mind began to create a link with "Call Me Joe". I also get the impression that the estate of Poul Anderson will be heard from shortly.

Wiki "Call Me Joe", if you want to know more.

2 comments:

Ruth said...

Ok, now I'm convinced. If Montag loved it . . .

My son Peter just chatted with me from Hawaii, and he said quote it was the most beautiful movie i've ever seen unquote.

Montag said...

Cool.
I did not mention that I thought it would appeal more to younger folks, mainly because it is so mythological...and younger people have more room to take in new myths.

I love myths. As I have said, the world is a story that we choose to tell. A good world story is cool.