I saw Avatar.
Yes, I saw Avatar with my Mom last weekend. I won't attempt to rehash any kind of thorough review, which has been done well elsewhere.
http://www.pluggedin.com/movies/intheaters/avatar.aspx
I will just register some brief comments from my own unique perspective:
1. I've been reading about "Story" by Robert McKee, the Hollywood screenplay guru. One point he makes is that no one ever writes any kind of story without trying to convince you of something important. You may think Dickens was just telling cute, little stories with quirky characters. Actually he had a passion for exposing the miserable living and working conditions of the urban poor--especially children.
What is James Cameron's passion? To oppose and demonize U.S. foreign policy and to promote environmentalism.
2. In doing the above, Cameron succeeds in making the plea a religious one, going beyond a "Dances With Wolves" diatribe against removing indigenous peoples by ugly, impossibly evil white men (see point three)to drawing on worship of the Earth goddess and ancestor worship--in short, a revival of paganism. So Cameron not only undermines the goals of Western Civilization, he also provides the alternative, in effect a return to earth and ancestor worship that Christianity replaced. I think it's ironic that Cameron thinks this is some kind of solution. As you may remember, both the Romans and the Greeks were imperialistic marauders, much more brutal than the "Christian" conquerors who followed. Not to mention the Indians (Oops, I did, and not politically correctly), whose brutal, tribalistic, territorial wars constantly displaced each other. Their scalping, torture and barbarism are not taught to our children in school any longer.
3. To pull this off, to make a band of scientists who betray their government and the human race and have sex and mate with aliens look like the good guys, Cameron must make the villains look cartoonishly greedy, vicious and evil. Such characters are impossible to believe and are the content of today's graphic novels marketed to children. Immorality, a Benedict Arnold like traitorism, and neglect of authority are glorified to a holy aura as behavior to be imitated.
4. In a word, "Propaganda." Your children are seeing it and buying into it. Be very afraid. Unless you believe and follow Jesus Christ, then, proceed from fear to courage and faith and counter with the gospel, the greatest story ever told or ever to be told
