The exceptionality of Avatar January 13, 2010

I have to say up front that I did have expectations before going to see Avatar, just the second day after its release. I was looking forward to a wonderfully made modern sci-fi fairy-tale. I got exactly what I expected, except in a much higher intensity. Avatar struck me as an exceptional creation on many levels of perception – visual, emotional, as well as intellectual.

I don’t think Avatar is yet another Hollywood shit, I honestly think that there is something exceptional about it. The fact that it hasn’t stopped generating news of various kinds, almost a month after its realease, proves this to me.

• Cameron wrote a story that is conventional enough to resonate in most viewers but at the same time contains provoking allusions that can be picked up by individuals and organizations, bringing about their happiness or frustration: Many feel that the success of Avatar could help in the global ecological campaign. Russian Petersburg Communists claim that Cameron should be arrested because he plagiarised Russian science-fiction authors such as brothers Strugatsky. The Chinese embrace Avatar and decide to rename a mountain after it in order to attract tourists. Radical Christians feel threatened by the idea that God should be reduced to nature. Yet others campaign against Cameron telling a racist story about a white Messiah saving a non-white society. This variety of reactions and interpretations is, to me, the quality that a good socially engaged art should have.
  Ruští komunisté: Zatkněte Jamese Camerona, vykrádá sovětskou sci-fi (Novinky)
  Film Avatar je prý rasistický (Novinky)
  China renames ‘Avatar’ mountain in honour of film (BBC News)
• In connection with the conventionality of the story that Avatar offers, several strong associations have been noticed: Pocahontas (this is a funny exposition of that, thanks Marc!), Dances with the Wolves, Princess Mononoke. Any others? Please, feed me with more, I’m really interested! What to make out of this? In the first place, most stories have been told many times. This is a very basic recognition. It holds especially for the genre of fairy-tales, where stories and characters are (supposed to be) archetypal, non-original almost by definition. If you see Avatar as a fairy-tale (notice also the very blunt happy-ending, so typical of fairy-tales), the non-originality argument goes away.
• Avatar’s extremely explicit ecological and make-love-not-war message does not come out as blunt or stupid but due to Avatar’s aesthetic strengths as very emotionally powerful and moving. In many people, Avatar created effects close to those triggered by drugs: from happiness to depression. The former by the exceptionally realistic depection of a charming possible world, the latter by its comparison to our dirty real world.
  Audiences experience Avatar blues (CNN)
  Nadšení z Avataru prý přivodilo divákovi na Tchaj-wanu infarkt (Novinky)
• Avatar means a technological breakthrough in movie-making.
  Digital Planet 15/12/09 (BBC World Service)