Avatar

As a kid, I loved getting up every Saturday morning to watch cartoons.  There was Batman, the Ninja Turtles, Scooby Doo, Darkwing Duck, Looney Tunes, Animaniacs, Tailspin.  Then there were the renowned Disney movies of old – Aladdin, The Lion King, and Toy Story probably being my early favorites (later to be followed by the best of them all – The Emperor’s New Groove).  These were all created to appeal to someone like me – your average kid.  But many of them, especially the classic movies, still appeal to me today.  This is partly due to nostalgia, but it is also due to the fact that they all present the same basic story, the heroic ideal that has been with us since the dawn of legendary human exploits, which is to say, since the dawn of humanity.

That being said, Sunday I finally saw Avatar.  First of all let me expound upon its greatness.  It was absolutely dazzling.  It is perhaps the only movie I have ever seen that I am considering seeing again in theaters. Vivid and creative, it certainly deserves the hype it has received.  I had been told a variety of things about it beforehand.  But the most frequently heard comments were that the visual effects were amazing, the plot was terrible, and the religion was weird.  The last of these I will address in my next post.  As for the others, I agree completely with the first point, and disagree with the second in spirit.

Maybe the plot was terrible to the detached viewer, but I simply was not detached.  From the moment I acclimated to the stunning picture before me and saw the gorgeous landscape that Cameron had created, I let down my guard and immersed myself as I did in those Saturday morning cartoons.  It was the sort of movie that, in my opinion, easily sucks you in.  It was so familiar: boy begins a task with wrong motives, boy gets girl, things start getting complicated, boy loses girl, boy fully repents of his former ways and commits to doing what’s right, boy proves himself and gets girl again, boy helps save the “world” from evil, they all live happily ever after.  Some may call it overused.  And indeed, this could just as easily have been a summary of The Lion King.

But this is the classic hero story, and we have a passion for them.  Hero stories of old tugged at the hearts of Greeks, Romans, and Elizabethans, and they continue to intrigue us today. Recasting the model in new ways is one of the great traditions of art.  Avatar succeeded at this task by introducing enough visual novelty to make the willing viewer trade his critical mindset for the perspective of an eager child who glories in the story for its own sake. I knew what was coming by instinct, but like the child who has heard his favorite story over and over and still fears it might turn out differently this time, so I was caught up in the excitement, allowing myself to wonder if it would actually work out in the end or if everything would fall apart. 

I’m glad it worked out.  But as confirmation that the movie had really succeeded, I was sad too.  I left the movie theater faintly wishing that there was such a story, that Pandora was real, that I had won my own girl through courage and danger, that I was a part of that story.  When you approach a story just as it is, a story, with a hero and a villain, with love and hate, war and peace, it is easy to project yourself into it.  But you never think of those fallen warriors or unrequited lovers; you view yourself as the hero who gets the girl and saves the world from destruction.  For a few hours, the screen is your portal into heroism.  You become the hero, experiencing all his ups and downs, and in this case his ultimate triumph and joy.

Then you leave.  And it’s over.  You feel the joy being stolen away as you acquiesce to the fact that you do not live on Pandora, you have not just protected a species from their doom.  You exit the building into the vast asphalt parking lot, squinting in the glare of a thousand windshields.  You see no pristine jungle landscapes.  Even if you have the girl, you remember that relationships are more than just perfect romance.  That world in which goodness and love have so thoroughly triumphed has vanished, and this world where death and decay loom large returns. 

The melancholia sticks around for awhile, perhaps until dinner time, and then life gets back to normal.  The perfunctory essentials return.  You realize the kitchen still has to be cleaned; you must still go to work; your bathroom scale still shows a number too high for a hero.  But we fight our own heroic struggles.  Some decide to fight for their marriage that has been falling apart around them, a decision sometimes more heroic than going to war.  Others decide to continue helping that seemingly hopeless child at school, though all others have abandoned him.  Many decide to face the next day, though there is no hope for a better life anywhere in sight.

I did not learn anything new about human nature when I saw Avatar, nor did I leave with any surprising or revelatory new ideas about truth, beauty, love, or joy.  But I was reminded that justice is worth fighting for.  I was reminded of how similar have been man’s faults all through the ages, and how similar they will likely be into the future.  Once my movie melancholia had faded, I also remembered, trite though it sounds, that I could be a hero too.

And it was just awesome.