| RATING: | 40% |
| FORMAT: | DVD |
Hippie, rain forest tree hugging stuff that lacks conviction - as Hippies themselves lack it. The spiritual emptiness and materialism of White culture is only superficially addressed and never really challenged effectively. A culture that prizes object-based status means increasing consumption of the earth’s resources to achieve ever greater status. Thus, material cultures are automatically rapacious. the making of this movie itself consumed hundreds of millions of dollars of resources to waste two-and-a-half-hours of the audience’s time.
Similarly, the movie does not seriously examine the concept of loyalty although it raises it. Is going native treason to one’s own culture or a selfless devotion to reality and justice. The movie tries to have it both ways by suggesting that White culture is in conflict with itself over whether non-Whites should be treated as equals. Yet such a conflict never changes the status quo in the facile manner suggested here. Instead it relies on a silly Christ the Saviour analogue which inevitably favors Whites as the only culture capable of salvation.
Like District 9, the movie shies away from real genetic supremacist issues in favor of a pseudo understanding and faux empathy not backed up by actual action. This is the soul-searching and the chest-beating of the guilty and the ashamed which never serves any realistic goal.
This movie is ultimately flawed by being a product of the very culture being criticized. Biting the hand that feeds one never leads to workable solutions to what is being criticized. Using the Hindu concept of an avatar also implicitly praises the very Christianity that caused so many of these problems in the first place. This drama is as confused as the central character as to what side he is on in its criticism of the fatuous War on Terror and the Shock and Awe tactics used to execute it. The fear here is that loyalty to reality is treason to ones own kind - a political excuse for inaction in the face of life-threatening challenges. The film also criticizes hi-tech cultures while indulging a fetish for hi-tech; while also claiming an empathy for the non-man made - as if humans were somehow the artificial creation compared to nature.
The actors are trapped behind excessive makeup and effects such that their characters are submerged and the drama hard to follow emotionally. Unlike the original Planet of the Apes movie the actors here are not good enough - except Sigourney WEAVER - to be able to act beyond the masks that they wear. As the villain Stephen LANG gives the movie’s best performance as he understands his character perfectly.
Ultimately this is little more than a remake of Aliens and The Abyss loaded down with ecological pretensions. The idea that humans have Killed their Mother [Earth]
is fine, but all this film suggests is the inevitable decline of humans into self-created non existence.
Iraq occupation by us forces analogue with strong overtones of White imperialism. As on earth Whites’ colonization of the galaxy will inevitably result in the resource-based exploitation of the indigenous inhabitants of the various planets visited. Despite the title, the characters are still stereotypes - rather than archetypes - and the empathy theme and that of living in harmony with ones surroundings weakly developed and explored. An interesting mix of Last of the Mohicans and the Pocahontas story that presents Whites as insanely greedy and unable to relate to themselves, each other or the other inhabitants of the universe. But can this cultural illness be cured as easily as shown here?
As usual when Whites admit how chronically racist their culture is only a White can help the oppressed natives; thereby simultaneously saying how awful White supremacy is while claiming that non-Whites are as inferior as White supremacists claim. Trying to have it both ways is all too typical of White supremacists and we thus see how Hollywood is still mired in the narcissistic belief that White is beautiful - or should that be Blue?
The special effects lack imagination so we are constantly presented with them to take out minds off the fact we have seen it all before. The tail wags the dog as we enter a computer game space rather than a dramatic space. The lack of convincing effects proves that movies still need highly-paid actors to make them work - thank God!
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