The Lovely Bones

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A murder thriller about the search for a killer in the 1970s, as told through the perspective of his 14 year old murder victim. After Susie Salmon is killed, and time fades with the killer uncaught, Susie’s sister and father hang on to their hope and eventually discover the killer was right on their block. But by the time they realize who he is, the killer escapes and finds a new place to live. The film seeks to bring some kind of justice by having the killer, though uncaught, become the victim of an accident that finds him falling from a great height and being smashed by rocks on the way down – the standard satisfaction for killing villains in movies. Ultimate justice in an impersonal universe.

The story wrestles with the devastating effect on a family that such unresolved pain can create. Marriages often break up over these kind of things, and Susie’s parents almost do. The obsession for justice and solution causes the dad to go somewhat crazy in his search for the killer.

Through much of the movie, Susie is portrayed as being in “the in-between” a world of changing dream-like environments of nature, from flowing wheat fields to mountains and lakes. This is a classic ghost story in that Susie cannot go to “her peace” until her murder is solved or until she and her family “let her go.” It faces the reality that “everybody dies,” but posits a universe without personal deity that seems to operate like an impersonal fate, making the best out of bad experiences. Another moment of impersonal fate bringing some justice is when Susie, who was killed before she could ever fulfill her desire to be kissed a first time by true love, finally gets her chance to do so. She finds a “psychically sensitive” girl who is dating the boy that had a crush on Susie and Susie enters that girl’s body. The boy then sees Susie’s face in the inhabited girl and kisses her with a deep love and tenderness. Susie finds that moment of grace that was stolen from her before she could ever do so. But again, this is the wish fulfillment thinking of a godless universe of impersonal fate that somehow operates in a personal way.

Not once in the entire story about death and the afterlife is a personal God even brought up as a question, let alone an answer. He is completely ignored as if no one even believes in Him, even in the 70s. Because of this, I think this movie will not connect with most people.

All the other victims of the killer, (about 7 other women and girls) meet in the in-between and laugh and dance in their unity of victimhood. And ultimately they all go to some kind of “heaven” of bliss at the end. So according to this film, we live in a godless universe where all people go to an eternal “heaven” (not sure about serial killers though), but there is no apparent hell or eternal punishment for the evil.

Legion

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A supernatural thriller about a renegade angel and a handful of patrons at a rural diner who battle a legion of angels to protect the birth of a new messiah. Or at least I think that’s what it kind of was. This movie has a confusing worldview that I am not sure the filmmakers even understand. It utilizes traditional Judeo-Christian concepts of angels, God’s judgment and spiritual warfare and weds it to a capricious God more like fickle pagan Mesopotamian deities than like Yahweh of the Bible.

Michael, evidently “falls” from heaven and cuts off his own wings because he is rebelling against God. Why? Because God is sending his legions of angels to judge mankind just like he did with the Great Flood, but Michael is portrayed as having more love for mankind and faith in their goodness than God himself. As Michael says, “God lost faith in man. I didn’t.” In fact this phrase or something like it is spoken multiple times throughout the film. The word faith becomes a key phrase used over and over. Someone says, “I lost faith in God,” and Michael responds, “And God’s lost faith in you.” “The last time God lost faith in man, he sent a flood.” It’s as if God is on the level of humans having faith in something beyond himself.

So, Somehow a new messiah is going to be born to a little waitress in a podunk town (just like Jesus), but God has changed his mind and wants to kill the human race instead of saving them, and start over. And he has to start with killing the new messiah, so he sends his angels to kill the Anointed One to be born (like Herod slaughtering the innocents to kill Jesus). This confusing contradictory mess of a worldview is compounded by the expressly stated theme that bookends the beginning and end of the movie: “Why is God so mad at his children? I don’t know I think he just got tired of all the bullshit.” In this story, God appears to be a tiresome, angry, vengeful bully as opposed to a righteous judge and king.

When Michael fights the angel Gabriel (who has remained faithful to God’s commands) Michael is killed, but then somehow is resurrected with his wings (what the…?) to fight Gabriel again, and decides to let Gabriel live, something Gabriel admits he would not have done (being a vengeful unforgiving angel that he is). Then Michael tells Gabriel that Gabriel was wrong to obey God: “You gave him what he asked for. I gave him what he needed” [in protecting the new messiah and forgiving wicked humanity]. So again, Michael is more “compassionate” more “wise” than God or Gabriel, his faithful angel — as if there is some higher goodness than God.

So, a mere angel, Michael, loves mankind more than God does; God is impetuous, impatient and impertinent; the good angels act like demons (they possess people and turn them into demonic killers with black eyes and fangs). Legion is a story that subverts the Judeo-Christian narrative and makes God and his angels the villains, and the rebel angel the hero (remember the other rebel angel, Lucifer?). The worldview of Legion is essentially Humanism that believes mankind is good and God is a violent destructive concept to society.

The Book of Eli

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A post apocalyptic tale about a man on a mission from God. A nuclear war has occurred in the past, believed to be because of religion, and most people were killed when a hole was burned in the sky and the sun burned everything. Most books have been burned, and many are now cannibals and lawlessness reigns. However, God spoke to Eli and guided him to where the last Bible was and told him to carry it out West, where the book will be safe and a help for others. So Eli travels across country, killing marauders who try to rob him and kill him. He’s a crack shot and an expert swordsman, so this is an action movie with a spiritual theme.

When Eli arrives at the town owned by bad guy Carnegie, who is one of the few people who reads and is therefore the kingly ruler of the city. Knowledge is power. But so is religion. Carnegie has his minions of evil biker dudes drive all around trying to find a Bible because he believes “it is a weapon, aimed at the hearts and minds of the weak and desperate. They’ll do exactly what I tell them if I tell them the words are from the book.” And we see Carnegie reading through a book on Mussolini, which indicates Carnegie as the fascist mentality that believes religion is a force to use to control people. But Eli and the people to whom he seeks believe it is a book of freedom that brings civilized meaning to existence. So two different views of the sacred text illustrate how people can use it for good or evil depending on their religious beliefs.

Solara, the love interest, is sent in to Eli by Carnegie in order to persuade Eli to join his gang and give him the Bible. Eli refuses to fornicate with her and even teaches her how to pray – something that is alien to her because the knowledge of God has been lost in this depraved uncivilized post-apocalyptic world. When Carnegie seeks to take the book from Eli, Eli is miraculously unharmed as the minions shoot at him walking away. Eli then turns and takes them all out with his pistol. You see, the voice had told him he would be protected and would accomplish this mission from God, and Eli has faith, because as he explains to chick sidekick, Solara, “I walk by faith, not by sight.” If Eli has the time before killing some bad guys, he’ll quote the Bible like, “Cursed is the ground for our sake, both thorns and thistles it shall yield. For from the dust we were taken and to the dust we shall return.” He also quotes Psalm 23, the Lord is My Shepherd to Solara when she asks him to read some to her. She says, “that’s beautiful, did you write it?” illustrating how illiterate the culture has become.

So this movie is unusually Christian in its theme. That is, it tells a story of God keeping the Bible as his word alive by miraculously protecting one man to bring it to the hands of those who will print it and distribute it to mankind — along with other classics of civilization.

But when the Bible gets captured by the bad guy and all seems lost with Eli sure to die from a bullet wound, God still manages to keep Eli alive to finish his journey to the community that happens to be holed up on Alcatraz. At this point Eli acknowledges to Solara that “I was so caught up with keeping the book safe that I forgot to live my life according to it. To do more for others than I do for myself.” Though this is an inaccurate quote of the golden rule, it still points up the fact that this is an analogy for the claim that faithful Christians too often spend their energy and passion in defending or fighting for “the book” instead of focusing on living out the love of others that Jesus has told them to engage in.

In the end, Eli gets the Bible to the small community anyway and they end up getting the King James version of the Bible to print and publish for the world. This is essentially the Christian doctrine of Inspiration, that God used human beings to communicate his message and bring it to the human race despite the evil in the world and the frailty of human beings. This belief is not one of divine dictation, but of human incarnation.

BUT…, and that’s a big BUT… a couple shots at the end seemed to be an intentional multicultural nod to Islam that seemed to work against the Christian exclusivism of the Bible: When Eli is transferring the text of the Bible to the good guys, he shaves all his hair off and dresses in what appears to be a Muslim garb. And then, the Bible that is printed is placed on a bookshelf right between a Tanakh and a Quran with other religious books, as if to say the Bible is one among other religious documents needed for civilization, including the Quran. A journalist in Slate online notes, “Al-Bukhari, a ninth-century Muslim scholar who spent years collecting hadith, quotes the prophet as saying “May Allah bless those who shaved” during the Hajj (pilgrimage); and the Quran states that “ye shall enter the Sacred Mosque, if Allah wills, with minds secure, heads shaved, hair cut short, and without fear.” This is why Islamic suicide terrorists shave their body hair before engaging in their terrorism because they believe they are doing a holy deed and will end up in Paradise. So as Eli lay dying, he has shaved Islam-style in holy preparation for death as well as holy presentation of God’s Word. Of course, this is all an ironic contradiction since Muslims do not believe the Bible is the Word of God, they believe it is the corrupted word of men.

Up in the Air

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A tale of cynicism and love in conflict, of reality and escape, isolation and human connection, techonology and humanity. Ryan Bingham works for a company that fires people. He spends 270 days a year on the road, or rather, in the air, flying around to companies firing them. And he is a pro. He’s got his life in a backpack, light and without messy human encumbrances. But when a young new girl at the company, Natalie, inspires a new idea of using computer terminals to fire people remotely, and thereby save hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel expenses and time, Ryan reacts with hostility. Not just because his job is in jeopardy of becoming obsolete, but because, ironically, Ryan still cares about the humans to whom he is bringing bad news. He believes that they need the personal connection to help them “down from the ledge” of depression or despair. So he fights to protect that humanity, while simultaneously remaining a remote person to love, an island of self protection from the dangers of self-disclosure and vulnerability. In short, he is an unbeliever in love – he is a rock, he is an island. Sounds of Simon and Garfunkle ringing in my ears.

As Ryan also speaks at conventions about how to live life in a backpack, we hear his philosophy of life of shedding the weight of traditional life. We can see that it is a rationalization of his own solitude, which he revels in. But herein lies the key to his sympathetic stature with the viewer. Ryan is honest, he doesn’t lie or play games, he keeps it all up front that he doesn’t want marriage, doesn’t want kids, doesn’t want a house to tie him down, doesn’t want the “cultural baggage” of what most people consider “normal life” of “settling down.” In short, he is truthful and honest man, a kind of integrity of openness without secrets or a closet where he hides a dark side. So when he meets Alex, a beautiful woman who has the same traveling lifestyle and same “no commitments” approach, he has an on the road “romance” with her of traveling fornication.

And then Ryan has to bring Natalie along with him to teach her the ropes of personal care in firing people that he is so good at. Young Natalie is a 23 year old who wants to have a career, get married, get a house, yada yada. But when her boyfriend breaks up with her, her world is crushed because she is an incurable romantic who even moved to nowheresville Oklahoma to be near her boyfriend. In other words, she made choices of a traditional belief in love and was betrayed.

The struggle here is between traditional love, which requires vulnerability in order to attain the intimacy of human connection or the modern atomistic alienation of individuals as monads of self interest. The former means you can be betrayed and you will most likely suffer in life but can of course experience that human intimacy which brings shalom (shades of Tennyson, “better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all), and the latter means you will never be burdened with the “baggage” of others, you will never be betrayed and saddled with unfair expectations and demands, that you will be “free” to control your own life – and of course live and die alone in this life. Natalie makes the argument that what about the base notion of just having companionship, children there when you die. To which Ryan responds, that is a delusion. Most people put their parents in nursing homes at the end anyway, just as he did and his parents did before him. Everyone dies alone. More shades of Ecclesiastes.

But the problem is that we see Ryan falling in love with Alex.

A particularly poignant moment is when Ryan’s sister’s fiancé is getting cold feet on his wedding day, and Ryan is asked to go in and talk to him. Well, not only does Ryan not have a relationship with his sister (no attachments), here he is supposed to convince someone of something he doesn’t believe in. But he does it. And he does it by admitting all the crap and responsibility that the kid is afraid of, but he ends by getting the kid to realize that all his best memories of life are with somebody, not alone, and that the lonely sad times are when he is alone, so “life’s better with company. Everyone needs a co-pilot.” And it is at this moment that Ryan has shared out of his own lonliness and finally realizes he doesn’t believe in his lie of self-protection and solitude, that he too needs to be known and loved. He walks out of the middle of his next seminar on backpacking life, and runs to the airport (the formula “running to the airport” scene) and flies to Alex’s home, presumably to tell her he wants to spend the rest of his life with her, for her to be his co-pilot. So when he discovers she is married with children and considers their tryst only as a sexual escape from her boring “real life” he is devastated.

But her betrayal is not just of his romantic innocence, because even though she never told him about the family, she also was up front that a sexual tryst was all she wanted. She lured him into love and then cut his heart out with her own heartlessness. The monster has met his match with someone more monstrous than him, and he lost. What’s worse, Natalie, after hearing that someone committed suicide after she fired her, gives up her job and applies for a job that she really prefers. In her interview we discover that as the interviewer says regarding her decision to choose love over her career (in moving to Omaha to “follow a boy”) “I guess everyone does that at one point or another.” And we see her now prioritizing her career over love.

At the end, we are shown “live interviews” of people who found their significance and overcame their job firings by clinging to family over career and money. YET, Ryan ends up back in the air, perpetually alone, without a co-pilot, flying in the clouds above the unaware normal happy families. So, as a story, this hero’s journey seems to contradict the more sentimental notions of family and significance of love in its periphery, which I think creates confusing double talk. The hero’s journey is the one we sympathetically go on and are cheering for, yet just when he is changed in his character arc to accept love, he is burned by it and ends up alone rather than realizing he chose the wrong one. By returning to his old ways, it seems to suggest that he cannot achieve love even if he changes to be a lover. Meanwhile, his sympathetic side kick, Natalie, seems to lose her romantic notions of family and significance and ends up prioritizing career, which is what brought Ryan to the very troubles he suffered. She appears to be turning into him, and losing her hope of love. So, to me this story is ultimately cynical about love, because it shows “extras” pining on about love and significance in family, but the two main characters lose all hope for love and embrace career instead. Perhaps you could call this an “anti-romance” because it takes the typical love story of someone learning that love is more important than career and turns it on its head in the Hero’s own journey, as well as his sidekick’s. It makes the argument in the dialogue for the necessity of human connection and need, but then denies it to the hero and his reflection, Natalie. (A reflection is a character in the story who reflects the same pursuit as the hero but with different choices in order to illustrate antithesis that supports the main thesis or theme of the story).

Perhaps the theme of the movie is best encapsulate in Alex’s words when speaking to Natalie’s betrayal by her boyfriend, a “prick.” Alex says, “We all fall for pricks. Pricks are spontaneous, unpredictable and fun. And we’re all surprised when they turn out to be pricks.” This is reminiscent of C.S. Lewis’s remark:

“And all the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our [educational] situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that our civilization needs more ‘drive’, or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or ‘creativity’. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests [hearts] and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
— C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

Crazy Heart

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Tender Mercies on steroids. A personal redemption story about a country western singer, Bad Blake, whose seminal influence on country music is all but forgotten, as he struggles to overcome his drunkenness and loser mentality and status. Bad plays in pathetic bars around the southwest, while his good friend, Tommy Sweet, who was mentored and influenced by Bad, is a screaming mainstream success. Tommy wants to help Bad out, by letting him write for him, and even perform a bit, but Bad has that self destructive and prima donna purist attitude about the music that keeps him from being able to do much of anything with Tommy.

When Bad meets the young and beautiful Jean, he falls in love like never before, and seeks to redeem himself through her. The only trouble is, his bad ways return because he is still who he is, a drunken selfish slob. At first, Jean ignores it, but when Bad’s alcoholic addiction endangers her son at a mall, she finally cuts him off.

Bad, then faces his addiction and goes to rehab and considers himself changed. But when he returns to Jean to beg her forgiveness and proclaim he is a new man, she refuses to allow him back in because she knows the reality of this kind of false conversion: Redemption cannot be accomplished through or for another human person, it must be sought for it’s own sake.

And self-redemption is what Bad decides to go after. He accepts the final loss of his one hope at a new life with Jean, and ends up sticking with his new life without her. It’s the opposite of most love stories where the hero or heroine finds redemption in the love of another human being. In standard love stories, the hero or heroine must give up their selfishness and have all hopes lost before they become worthy of the lover, but in this case, that final prize never happens, which makes it a sad melancholic, but more realistic love story of redemption.

The Young Victoria

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A period bio of the early reign of England’s Queen Victoria, played by Emily Blunt. It depicts her attempt to find true love and trust in the midst of an aristocratic world of political intrigue, where everyone has an agenda, and everyone seeks personal and political gain. Victoria discovers Prince Albert from Germany, who over time proves to be the only one who really cares for her well being, which starts with mistrust and testing and ends in an enduring love so often missing in such a world.

Sherlock Holmes

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An action detective story reimagining of the famous British sleuth and his companion Watson as they battle the dark forces of Lord Blackwood who seeks to use black magic to take over the British government – or something like that, oh I don’t know, it hardly made sense.

The worldview of this story is naturalism, the belief that there is no supernatural and all effects have a natural cause. It’s thematic warfare is between the powers of reason and science (as embodied in Holmes’ acute power of observation) and the occult/mysticism/religion (as embodied in Blackwood’s occultic powers). Of course, all the black magic used by Blackwood is ultimately figured as sleight of hand tricks by Holmes, thus discrediting the supernatural as mere trickery. Blackwood is hung by the law at the beginning, but raises from the dead (an obvious reference to religion, um, let’s see, which religion has a man raising from the dead again?). He also engages in an occultic Rosicrucian like order that calls upon occultic powers, all of which have perfectly natural scientific explanations. In this story, the supernatural is an illusion, and we live in a closed universe of natural causes. It might have been a bit more interesting and indeed scientific, had there been something that remained beyond Holmes’ “amazing powers of observation” and acuity in describing the universe. I am thinking here of the movie Contact, where the scientist Ellie realizes a little about the limits of science and that love is real yet beyond her empirical measurements, and where the scientist ends up expressing a very real kind of religious faith and experience with science.

One way in which the movie shows the power of the mind is in its depiction of visualization technique. Every time Holmes is about to physically overcome an enemy, we see in his mind’s eye a slow motion version of what he is going to do, much like an athlete will visualize his action beforehand. And then we see the actual action in real speed, which gives a sort of double version of each fight scene, and affirms the power of the mind to actualize reality.

It’s Complicated

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A romantic comedy about a divorced woman who finds herself in an affair with a married man – her ex-husband! Meryl Streep is Jane, the divorced woman, and Alec Baldwin, Jake, the womanizing ex who’s married to a new younger woman. Alec plays the part of many men’s fantasy of being able to start over again with a younger woman, but as only Nancy Meyers can do, this story shows that typical fantasy as a fraud. As Alec’s beautiful young wife is actually high maintenance and a be-yatch, not at all the romantic fantasy of the unhappy middle aged married man.

So he starts an affair with Jane, who for once, actually experiences the passion that was so lacking in their marriage. Is this how it is? Passion can only come through “naughtiness?” And it is a sweet revenge against the woman who stole her man, by stealing him back. But is it justice? Well, Jane also meets a good man, an architect, Adam played by Steve Martin, who gives her respect and becomes her triangle of choice. Should she continue the passionate affair or should she go for the good man who isn’t so “exciting” but is mature and responsible?

Well, eventually Jake becomes obsessed with Jane and even leaves his new wife with hopes of remarrying Jane. So Jane considers, is this the opportunity to rekindle with the man with whom she has such a long history? Can we finally have what we lacked before? She ultimately realizes that the temptation of naughtiness and excitement and passion of Jake, is part of his recklessness, which of course will remain with him because his selfish immaturity means he is never satisfied with what he has and always wants what he doesn’t have. If he reconnects with her, he will eventually do again what he did before, and to his other wife as well, because men like this don’t change. You get what you ask for. The irony is that the “bad boy” that draws women is the bad boy that betrays them. So according to this film, you should really choose the mature man who is the adult and is respectful, not the man child who is passionate and exciting. Of course, Jane realizes this just in time to finally cut it off with Jake and give Adam the chance of building a trusting relationship, which is in this movie, far more wise and deeply fulfilling than the fantasy of passionate romance, which remains shallow, and always carries with it, betrayal.

At the end, the filmmaker draws attention to the fact that Jane does not regret having the affair, as if to indicate a “non-judgmental” attitude toward the morality of adultery, as if it is not a moral issue so much as a wisdom issue.

17 Again

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A romantic family comedy about a 37-year old guy who gets another chance at his unachieved goals in life when he is magically transformed into a 17 year old again. Mike O’Donnel was a 17 year old in 1989 when he had a promising basketball scholarship riding on a game at his high school. The only problem is that he discovers his girlfriend is pregnant, and he decides to walk away from it all and marry her to do the responsible thing. But now in 2009, he has two kids and has never been happy because he’s blamed his wife for 20 years for his inability to accomplish his dreams. So she is divorcing him, and he is staying with his juvenile man-child friend and dork turned software millionaire Ned.

Mike has his magical brush with a “threshold guardian” who turns him into a 17-year old – again — and he considers this his opportunity to relive his dream. Until he goes to school and sees his own son and daughter as he’s never seen them before. He realizes he has been so out of touch with who they are and concludes that he is supposed to save them. He embarks on his salvific journey to build his son’s lost confidence, and to rescue his daughter from a jerk boyfriend who only wants to use her for his sexual gratification.

This movie makes a number of thematic points for the viewer. First, it addresses the universal regrets of unachieved dreams and displeased middle age lives. It shows the journey of a man who has to learn that he should not regret the choice he made for love over personal dreams. This is very unusual for Hollywood movies that tend to prioritize personal dream fulfillment over duty. When Mike gets to the end of his story as a 17 year old again, and he again has the opportunity to get noticed by talent scouts at a game, he is presented with the same exact opportunity. But when he sees his wife, who is at the game, is about to leave, just as she was about to back in 1989, he leaves the game again, this time, not for duty to responsibility, but for love. And it is in his choice that he finally realizes he did not make a mistake when he gave it all up for her.

This was a clever twist on the genre formula, that usually sets up an opportunity in the beginning for the hero, who makes a wrong choice, but at the end, he is usually set up with a very similar opportunity that, because of his journey, he will now make the right choice to find redemption. But in this film, the twist is that the choice he has to make is that he made the right choice to begin with! It is a film that questions his values, but reaffirms them at the end.

Second, it is a pro-life film in that it depicts in positive terms a teenage couple (Mike and Scarlett) choosing to marry over a pregnancy instead of having an abortion, which is the standard advice to pregnant teens. A major argument by pro-choice advocates is that marrying to take care of a child instead of aborting it results in wasted lives and potential for both men and women. But this movie makes the argument that it is not only the right thing to do to accept the responsibility and marry for the sake of the child, but can easily produce the happiness in intimacy that we are all looking for. When Mike chooses to give it all up a second time, he is saying it is the right choice to do so, it is the right choice to place duty over personal dreams.

Thirdly, it is a film that is pro-abstinence. Mike, as a 17 year old again, follows his daughter around to protect her. In a sex ed class, he makes the argument that kids should not have sex before they are adults and in love, and preferably when they are married. As he describes the beauty and responsibility of an infant daughter and how that baby should be protected by a father, he looks right as his daughter, who doesn’t realize who he really is. After his mini-lecture, all the girls are moved and give back their condoms handed out by the teacher, because they obviously want that kind of true love. When Mike is accosted by three girls at a party who literally offer their bodies to him, he holds them at arm’s length and tells them that they won’t get respect if they don’t respect themselves by such offerings. But they don’t listen, and they say, “You don’t have to respect me,” which illustrates modern teen girl’s complete lack of self-respect.

And also, the film addresses the generation gap. But not merely in the sense of Mike learning about his own selfishness through the eyes of being a teen again. But it also shows that the generation gap is also the fault of teens. When Mike gives all his advice to the other students, he is of course, a 37 year old in a 17 year old body. His is the wisdom of age from the mouth of a youth. Of course, kids don’t listen to these arguments from adults, because they just think adults don’t want them to have fun. But through the mouth of a 17-year old, they listen. Which only goes to show that teens are missing out on wisdom because of their own prejudices and ignorance against their parents.

Mike’s journey is to learn how to be a better husband and father by giving up his selfish dreams for the love of his family.

Avatar

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A crippled Marine joins a team of other humans from earth to displace a native people of another planet in order to exploit the natural resources over which they reside. The term “avatar” is a reference to the virtual world of “living vicariously” through a surrogate in another “world.” Thus, when you play World of Warcraft, the character which you play is your “avatar.” In this movie, however, they have managed to genetically create the body of an alien person, and the protagonist, through technology, is able to operate the body as an avatar. His mission is to learn the culture of the people so they can persuade them to move away. It’s a very simplistic moralistic tale with Manichean morality and stereotypical characters who obviously represent different “industrial complexes” of power to the filmmaker. There is the “corporate industrial complex,” represented by a greedy heartless fat cat corporation head who only cares about exploiting the natural resources and damn the inhabitants as savages (the resource material is called “unobtainium” an obvious reference to “unobtainable”). There is the “military industrial complex” symbolized in the mercenary who provides security, and only cares about killing people as his job, and then the “scientific industrial complex” represented in the compassionate scientist who wants to understand the culture and represents the Victorian “naturalist philosopher” notion of discovering the beauties of the natural world.

The story is a multicultural parable about the need to recognize our own prejudices by seeing through the eyes of the other. The Marine begins his mission by being a tool of the military and the corporation, but by the end he sees the world through the eyes of this primitive people (called the Na’vi) and ends up fighting against the humans and becoming one of the natives.

This story is also a pagan myth of Gaia goddess worship. Gaia is the pagan religious belief that the earth is a living organism and all living things are interconnected as “one”, and that “one” is god, a form of pantheism/panentheism. Gaia philosophy is what drives the extreme wings of environmentalism and it carries with it a corresponding hatred of technology as evil, because it depersonalizes life into mechanical functions, thus devaluing life, which justifies destructive selfish exploitation of nature. Technology is the enemy. This view posits human beings (or other sentient life forms) as mere servants of nature, which is worshipped as a goddess. It also believes in the “noble savage” myth of Rousseau, that primitive or indigenious native peoples who worship the earth are peace loving and harmonious with nature, while westernized civilization is what corrupts through science, technology and the destruction of nature in the name of “dominion.” Thus terms like “mother earth” versus “the sky god,” which is what Christianity is referred to as. The movie is an obvious parallel with American Manifest Destiny against the Indians as well as claims of “colonialism” against the West. When the Marine who has become a Na’vi avatar sides with the Na’vi, he says, “There is no green” where he comes from. “They killed their mother.” And in a critical political allusion to American foreign policy, the military leader says they are going to start killing the Na’vi in a “pre-emptive attack. We will fight their terror with our terror.”

In the movie we hear of “Ewa the goddess” of the natives, who makes up all living things,” “A network of energy that flows through all living things,” (standard New Age and Gaia doctrine). “Our energy is borrowed and someday we will have to give it back.” Like Native American religion, these natives kill an animal for food and then talk to their prey as a “brother, whose spirit goes to Ewa, and the body to the earth.” They claim that there is “electrical communication between the trees” that cover the planet such that it is all one big living organism that fights back against the bulldozers and military men. All the animals join in to fight against the exploiters, even the animals who were earlier seeking the Na’vi as prey. So, as in Gaia theory, the earth fights back against the evil human forces of exploitation (A theme also in The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Happening and others). And the image is one of “clearcutting” the rainforests as big bulldozers of the corporation begin plowing down the jungle.

Usually in movies, Christianity is linked up with the Enlightenment scientific industrial complex, as being the source of the problem through it’s theology of man’s dominion over nature. But in this movie, the only reference at all to this residue is the naming of the humans as the Sky People, a derivative of the Sky God of Christianity. But other than that, there is no explicit reference, thus making this more a movie about modern Enlightenment materialistic exploitation of nature versus the pagan mother earth religion.

The community of Na’vi also represents the oneness of existence. When the Marine avatar becomes accepted into the community, he is told he is “born twice. The second time earning a place among the people.” And the ritual is that they gather in a circle and all place their hands on one another, all the way to the accepted one, creating a huge circle of interconnectedness, embodying this theory of oneness, but also of the value of the community for individual identity.

One cannot help but notice the irony of a movie about the evils of corporate greed, and scientific technology in depersonalizing nature — a 3D movie made possible through the advanced scientific technology and greediest capitalist corporate environment that makes the biggest carbon footprint on the planet: Hollywood. In the movie, the “sky people” are criticized as “thinking they can take whatever they want.” But then the Na’vi leader yells his war cry, “This is OUR land. They cannot take whatever they want!” Kinda hard to take seriously a claim to private property, when the entire Gaia philosophy in the film is predicated on the negation of private property.