James Cameron’s first Avatar movie transported me to a place and time I will never see in my lifetime. Like many, I was swept away by its surreal beauty, although the story itself was as predictable as movie popcorn. Not without its share of violence, it nonetheless ended with a hopeful future for the peaceful, indiginous Na’vi of Pandora. When the highly publicized sequel was distributed a month ago, I decided to see it on the big screen. I wanted to fully immerse myself in the magic of CGI.
Settling into a comfortable theater recliners, I watched the movie open with a tranquil aerial view of Pandora, with its lush green forests, mountains, and oceans. I thought, this is going to be fun, a pleasant three-hour journey into a fantastic world filled with delightful alien creatures who live in a harmonious, peaceful world we can barely imagine.
That thought was rudely interrupted by the first of continuously escalating violent and shocking scenes, apparently designed to set the audience up for what turned out to be three long hours of anxious dread, fear, and torture. The first scene left me with the feeling of horror and a sick stomach as I watched the tranquil planet subjected to the intense firebombing of a pristine forest and its innocent wildlife, as power-hungry, greedy humans from Earth arrived to pillage and plunder the riches of Pandora.
The Avatar 2 story has already been criticized for its predictability. Anyone can read the plot and details about the Avatar 2 story online, and it’s nothing new at all: bad characters try to kill/maim/destroy the innocent/good guys, who fight back and take heavy losses before fending off the attacks, only to realize that the wars have only just begun.
During the three hours, we witnessed graphic torture of children, who were kidnapped and imprisoned; intelligent whale-like creatures hunted and brutally killed so money-hungry humans could cut the creatures’ brains out to harvest valuable fluid; innocent Pandorans being beaten and tasered, while their villages were firebombed because they were unaware of the whereabouts of one of their leaders; terrifying war machines unleashed on defenseless villages. I could go on. But I won’t relive the Avatar 2 nightmare by describing each excruciatingly violent scene. There were too many of them, in fact so many I felt like I was a tired gazelle in Africa, being chased by a pack of wild, hungry hyenas.
What bothers me most about the abundance and frequency of Avatar 2’s violence is it is seemingly designed for pure entertainment, reminiscent of those ancient Roman arenas that subjected humans and animals to unspeakable brutality and bloodshed just for sport.
Given my hopeful expectation for something new, something “out of this world,” something that could transcend the “bad guys vs. good guys” trope, Avatar 2 fell terribly short. Storytelling is as old as language, but can hold immense possibility. Storytelling can be a way to preserve and pass on cultural values, connect with each other in ways that go beyond the spoken word, and increase understanding, tolerance and peace among disparate groups. Avatar 2 had the opportunity to show us a hopeful future, to tell a story of positive change. Instead, it simply and stupidly repeated the living nightmares of our own war-torn, sick and dying world.
