You're right, in that it was generally anti-imperialist in broad terms. However, the whole white savior trope seems to undermine that, in my opinion. I don't really hate the trope entirely-- I actually enjoyed Dances with Wolves and The Last Samurai, despite resorting to it. But at least in Samurai, for instance, they establish early on that Tom Cruise's character already possesses a lot of the virtues the film glorifies prior to going on his jolly adventure to Japan-town.dsheinem wrote: In all honesty I pretty much agree with most of your points, although the "racist" thing is a bit of a stretch as the film is clearly anti-imperialist/colonialist. That huge part of global history is common fodder for the genre, so I didn't dwell on it in my review.
Perhaps I suffered from having seen interviews with James Cameron prior to seeing the film. He seemed to make it pretty clear to me that the film was a serious one with what he perceived to be a vitally important message that he just had to get out to people.In fact, saying sci-fi or western films are generally reflective of racial conflict past and present is like saying horror films are generally sexist. It's part of what defines the genre, and I saw no particular problems with Avatar that didn't exist elsewhere in similar films. That's not to say it isn't a problem, but that it isn't enough to derail a film in which the story is clearly secondary to the action and effects. I guess I didn't think it took itself as seriously as you seem to.
I think you're right to classify it as an action/effects film. However, I didn't find the action scenes to be well-done enough to captivate me, and I was tired of the special effects after about three minutes. Heck, I just watched District B13 last week or so. That movie has almost no plot, but it still gave me reason to care about what was happening and the action scenes were well-done enough to keep me interested. That's a lot more than I can say about Avatar
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