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Every so often a movie is released that has such a force behind it that it is readily apparent that the entire Western culture will be significantly impacted as a result. Avatar is one such movie. I witnessed the digitally projected 3D version and can honestly say it was the most visually stunning film I have ever seen. Avatar will, of course, set the new standard for the 3D experience and for computer generated image filmmaking. It was impossible to separate the computer generated image from the traditionally filmed image. During scenes generated completely from a desk in a studio, my mind still had difficulty discerning experienced landscapes from imagined ones. It was like travelling to another planet.

Avatar was also one of the most offensive movies I have seen in a while. I have long been a fan and consumer of science fiction and understand the genre well enough. Social commentary from science fiction writers is not only to be expected, but perhaps it should even be encouraged. A science fiction writer has unique freedoms to express a viewpoint or an agenda by placing current or historical social problems or situations in an imaginary culture or in an imaginary galaxy or in an imaginary time. That freedom is utilized in nearly all science fiction. James Cameron seems to have combined his quarter billion dollar (+) budget to a hyperactive desire to have his say about what is going on in the world. Much of what was proclaimed from his cinematic soapbox I found disturbing or (in the end) mundane even in the cases where I agreed or could concede his point.

The procurement and use of natural resources, justification for terrorism, the use of the military and military mercenaries, the status of the health care system, the use of cloning technology, the treatment of indigenous peoples, the arrogance of the “culture conquerors,” the spiritual value of nature, the efficacy of prayer, life after death, the limitations of scientific knowledge versus the experience of faith, the interests of the corporate giant profit hungry shareholders, Vietnam, ancestor worship, ecstatic-communal worship, goddess worship, and marriage plus whatever I couldn’t catch because I was on “agenda overload” were all addressed in Avatar in a little under three hours.

With so much social commentary flying by so quickly, I really expected to see some sort of novel conclusion to the storyline, but it was the same old end: violence. The hero of the story with the help of Pandora’s nature goddess (who finally steps in to protect the “balance of life”) is able to exert more violent force than the blue-eyed fair-skinned aggressor.

Bummer.

Since the hero is presented as a messianic type, I half-hoped that he would complete his quest by sacrificing himself for the salvation of those he learned to love and respect. It didn’t happen, but “hero” did experience resurrection (by transference) and he did get the girl in the end which is much more emotionally satisfying than what happened in the last Cameron epic.

People will be talking about this movie for years to come. I just pray that the conversation will be substantive because the issues Cameron tackles in the movie are issues deserving of careful consideration and wise action and definitely not the musings of a much too easily entertained populace.