I see you - Tree of Souls

jujubees · #1 03-01-2012, 09:15 PM

Well, I was kinda late to the Avatar party, being very busy with work, kids, life, etc. But a few weeks ago, HBO had a free preview and Avatar was on, so I DVR'd it. Since then, I've watched it about a dozen times, and I have to say it is one of the most compelling stories ever told. The shear beauty of Pandora, the Na'vi, and especially Neyteri have really captured me.
As many of you have said on this forum, while there are several parts of the plot that are very close to other stories (Pocahontas and Dune in particular), the Avatar story is unique; with a few possible exceptions.
One thing I noticed right away is that Avatar is almost the inverse plot of Battlefield Earth (the book, which is great, not the movie, which sucks). In that story, it is the 10 foot tall blue aliens who invade Earth, exterminate most of the population, and proceed to set up a mining and refining operation (for tungsten). Johnnie Goodboy Tyler, the human protagonist, rallies the few remaining humans to oust the aliens (the Psychlos) from Earth, and destroys their home planet as well. Some similarities include the fact that the Psychlos can't breathe our atmosphere, so they use breathing masks similar to the exopacks on Pandora, and the constant tension between the remote operation and the corporate office back home.
I also see some similarites with parts of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. There, Captain Sisko pleads with the Prophets (non-corporeal beings who live in a wormhole) to stop an invading Dominion fleet from traversing said wormhole, which would spell the end for the Federation. The Prophets are unwilling to take sides ("Eywa protects only the balance of nature"), but come around to his side after realizing that Sisko's cause is just. This is not too different from Jake's prayer that Eywa assist with the battle against the RDA.
Speaking of Trek, the process of transferring someone's Katra from one mind to another (as depicted in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and in the Star Trek: Enterprise Vulcan Trilogy) is very similar to what the Ometicaya attempt with Grace and succeed at with Jake.
But what really grabbed me was the similarity to a computer game, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. In the game, humans travel there and colonize the planet Chiron, which orbits Alpha Centauri A (unlike Pandora, which is a moon). On Chiron, the predominant flora is nasty pink tubes called Xenofungus, which cover most of the planet's surface. The fungus forms a nueral network, like Pandora, and even achieves sentience (the "Planetmind" talks to the player). The planet reacts to excessive human terraforming operations by sending the local fauna (mind worms, which use psionic combat) to attack the humans. Eventually, the humans "transcend" by uploading their conciousnesses into the Planetmind- not too different from where Grace ends up with Eywa.
It also looks like Nintendo did a lot of Avatar-cribbing when they designed the latest Zelda game, Skyward Sword. In this game, there are massive islands floating in the sky (the largest, where you live in the game, is called "Skyloft".) A rite of passage on Skyloft is to bond with a large bird creature (called a Loftwing) and ride on it's back. The bond is for life, just like with the Ikrans on Pandora.

None of this can take away from the fact that Avatar is absolutely stunning in almost every way. It is obvious that Cameron & friends did a whole lot of work on this puppy, making sure that they got the details right. It's no wonder that so many people walked out of the movie theater a changed person; the film makes you question the very foundations of the modern Western world. This story could be reworked to take place in the old American west, Colonial Spain, British India... the list goes on. This level of introspection sets the film apart from other high-budget, high-CGI blockbusters that are "all hat and no cattle".

And one final note on Neyteri...she definitely is "devastatingly beautiful", as one of you posted, and has replaced Mirror-T'Pol as my definition of "Sexiest Alien Chick Ever".