Avatar: New Technology, Old Message
Dr. Pat Zukeran —The film Avatar is visually riveting. With new levels of animation anchoring a film reportedly costing more than a quarter of a billion dollars, global crowds are clamoring and critics are gushing. "I have seen the future of movies, and it is Avatar," declares the Detroit News. Indeed, especially the 3-D version was unlike anything I, the Probe-Alert editor, have experienced. "Avatar is...as close to a full-body experience as we’ll get until they invent the holo-suits. [Director James] Cameron aims for sheer wonderment, and he delivers," fawns The Boston Globe.
Despite its many messages that could keep a worldview observer busy for a while—oppression of "primitives" by technological "superiors," radical environmentalism, some even say racism—the sheer beauty of special effects may be the strongest pull of the film. "James Cameron's Avatar is the most beautiful film I’ve seen in years," writes The New Yorker.
For all of Avatar's superlatives regarding the visual and visceral, Pat Zukeran sees through to an old storyline: pantheism, it seems, is the hope of mankind and our (or anyone's) planet.
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Avatar: "...dizzying, enveloping, vertiginous...I ran out of adjectives...," gawks New York Magazine. But what is the message behind the brotherhood of all creatures and worship of Eywa, "the One"?
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Capitalism and Socialism
