Avatar Movie Review - Democrats Gone Wild!

You've got to give James Cameron credit. Only the man who brought forth "Titanic" would have the balls to use Left Wing Demagoguery as the foundation for an action/adventure movie, much less one that cost a half billion dollars to make.

In "Avatar", Cameron flogs his audience with every liberal Hollywood cliché ever discussed over a power lunch, and the entire movie flows like a condensation of talking points memos from the Sierra Club and MoveOn.org. The Pandoran natives - known as the Navi - are one with Nature; Gaia not only lives, but rules in this far-off world. It's Bad Cowboys vs. Virtuous Indians, and all of the Bad Cowboys are White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Males. All of the Good Guys are women, or men who get in touch with their feminine side.

Cameron liberally borrows from a dozen other movies for the bulk of these themes, but he rips off one in particular, and Paul Verhoeven must be pissed, because Cameron milks his masterpiece "Total Recall" like a dairy cow:

- Earth is a hellhole, full of violence and Evil. The distant planet, whether Pandora or Mars, is peopled by Real Folks.

- The military has joined with the Evil Corporations to exploit the innocent natives of the far off world.

- The aforementioned Evil Corporation mines a mineral called - and I'm not making this up - "Unobtainium". In Total Recall it was "Turbinium".

- Gigantic Mining machines play a major role in each movie, devouring the planet, and being used in both cases to threaten the lives of the main characters. In both movies, the Bad Guys operating the machines and using them to kill the Good Guys meet their deserved doom at the hands of the resourceful and woefully underequipped Good Guys.

- Each movie has Over-The-Top performances by two Bad Guys, one the Evil Corporate Chieftain and the other the Bloodthirsty Head Of Security. Total Recall by far did a much better job in portraying these characters, with Ronnie Cox as the unforgettable Vilos Cohaagen and Michael Ironsides as the gleefully murderous security chief known simply as Richter. Giovanni Ribisi and Stephen Lang can't hold a candle playing similar roles in Avatar.

- The Protagonist in both movies starts out as a Bad Guy who uses mind-altering Technology to create an Avatar that serves the needs of the Evil Corporation. This Avatar seduces the Natives and betrays them, causing the death of their Leader and pushing the Natives to the brink of extinction. In both movies, the Avatar falls in love with a Native Girl who teaches them the true Meaning Of Things.

- The Bad Guys revel in their Badness, giving monologue after monologue in tribute to greed, and twirling their mustaches, if only metaphorically. Had the setting been appropriate for trains, Cameron would have no doubt had at least one of them tie a Damsel to the tracks.

- In both movies, the Protagonist and his native girlfriend battle the Bloodthirsty Head Of Security in the Penultimate scene. The Protagonist in both movies is exposed to the lethal atmosphere of the alien planet, and in both, he is saved by the intervention of an Extraterrestrial Benefactor, the only essential difference being that in Total Recall it was a long-departed alien super-race, and in Avatar it was the Navi Hottie that he was tapping in his Avatar persona.

Still, for all that this movie hammers you over the head with its "Republicans and Capitalism are evil" ethic, I couldn't help but enjoy myself. Cameron has created a world so profoundly realistic, diverse and beautiful, that you can't help but get caught up in it, especially in 3D. The criticism of CGI (Computer Graphic Imagery) by movie purists is that technology cannot substitute for humanity. This movie proves them wrong, particularly as Cameron has finally produced characters capable of facial expressions.

For 2 and a half hours, I was not only among the ten foot tall blue natives of Pandora, I was one of them. But that is the essential difference between movies and the Democrat Party that James Cameron so desperately wishes me to join. In both, you get to live in a fantasy world, but but unlike the Democrat Party, movies end, with the satisfied patrons leaving the theatre and rejoining the real world.

Warning to Live Actors: your days may be numbered unless you clean up your act. It's only a matter of time before Russell Crowe, Robert Downey, Jr. and Christian Bale are going to be competing with completely lifelike recreations of Steve McQueen and John Wayne. The Virtual McQueen won't require an entourage, special privileges or even a salary. There will be no scheduling conflicts that Producers need to work around; the Virtual McQueen will not hold up production because he was thrown in jail; he will not require stunt doubles, he will never be a drug addict, and he will not die in the middle of filming.

He also won't throw tantrums or beat up the crew.

Final Note: This movie would have benefitted from the inclusion of one Evil Woman character, as Total Recall did with the character played by Sharon Stone.  Because movie-goers loooove Evil Women.