Fridae

In his day, no one thought much of JS Bach. His tunes were all right, but was regarded as somewhat boring because as a composer, he ignored new trends and fashions, sticking to working and improving on increasingly outdated musical forms. That’s not to say he wasn’t an innovative musician – Bach experimented with various temperaments and wrote for new instruments like the fortepiano. It’s just that the music he wrote was so old school.

Now, James Cameron’s Avatar brings to mind this vision of Bach. Watching Cameron’s first movie in 12 years, two things will make an immediate impression on you. First, the CGI is very impressive, and the alien world is an immersive, almost total experience if you watch it in 3D. The 3D is not a gimmick at all, but a prerequisite to experience Cameron’s alien world, with its flora, fauna, and wildlife. 12 years is a long time to make a movie, but it’s just about the right time to invent and develop several new film technologies from scratch – which is precisely what Cameron has done, with the equivalent of a GDP of a mid-sized country.

Second, the story basically boils down to a single idea: blue-skinned Native Americans in space. It’s a very familiar tale that you’ve seen before several times in the past 12 years or so: The Last of the Mohicans, Dances with Wolves, The Mission, The New World, Pocahontas. Aside from the science fiction setting, almost everything happens just as you’d expect: young soldier from a colonial power stumbles upon savage tribe, finds out they’re very noble and peaceful people, falls in love with their loveliest maiden, and fights for them against the colonials. Judging by how all these films came out since Cameron’s first conceptualisation of Avatar, 12 years may have been a little too long – we all know how most of the story is going to play out, really. Perhaps the point is that now we get to watch it all in 3D, on an alien world...

This is not to say that Avatar isn’t one of the best science fiction movies of the year. Despite the datedness of his story, Cameron has not lost his sense of drama, timing, or storytelling. Not telling a story for 12 years does have an interesting effect, though: Cameron is at his most activist stage of his film oevre here, making far more blatant criticisms on colonialism, war, and the military-industrial complex than say in Aliens. He’s also at his most liberal and idealistic as well, turning Avatar into a wish fulfilment fantasy on the history of colonialism and environmentalism, fashioning outcomes far more likely than actual history.

Most certainly, there should be a sequel to Avatar. When that happens, I hope that Cameron gives us something completely new on the story front, now that he’s proven to us that he can tell an old story with his technologies.