Avatar

But first the guiltiest of pleasures-Laurell K Hamilton's books about Merry Gentry, Faerie princess. Not badly written (but not well-written either), endlessly inventive and full of erotica, these books are great fun to read. Yes, they are mindless but if you want something that doesn't tax your mind these fit the bill. Yes, a beach read in January.

Avatar has its own mindless thrills. It looks amazing. Really amazing. And the performances are good-both as real (human) characters and as the alien Na'vi and the avatars controlled by the humans. The story is this-humans have come to Pandora to get the huge supply of Unobtainium (loved that name). Humans can't survive in Pandora's atmosphere-they either use air masks or they control Na'vi avatars, that allow them to communicate with the aliens. Into this mix comes Jake Sully, paraplegic and substitute for his dead scientist brother. He loves having an avatar that is nine feet tall, strong and agile. His mission to cut a deal with the Na'vi, so they will move from their most sacred place, so the company can get the precious metal buried beneath it. The problem with this is two-fold. Jake falls in love with a Na'vi woman and then also realizes that there is no way in hell these tough warrior people who live a jungle (that can kill you a million different ways) are ever going to move. His story and what happens to him, the army he reports to and the scientists studying the Na'vi are the basis for Avatar. And don't get me wrong, it's a great story. Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang and Zoe Saldana all give strong performances, especially considering the limitations of motion capture technology. And I'll say this too-it didn't look like motion-capture. It really is revolutionary but it wouldn't matter if the story were lacking.

Here's my problem with Avatar-it's a twisted version of Aliens. In 1986 when Aliens was released, America was a different place. Ronald Reagan was in his second term. The USA was still fighting the Cold War and Nationalism was very popular. Into this world came a movie where the aliens were truly evil (although not trying to screw each other over for a share of the profit-as Ripley notes), the company trying to screw each other over for a share of the profits and also trying to get them to Earth for use as a weapon was evil as well. The Marines were the good guys (and All-American), although naive. But Aliens has nuance. The Aliens may be bad, but they know what they want (humans as incubators for their young, mostly) and they go after it. Ripley may hate and fear them, but she has regret before she unleashes napalm all over the Alien Queen and her eggs. She hates the cyborg, Bishop-but she changes and comes to respect him. And here's some the two movies share-those who do not change and adapt are usually doomed, in one way or another. But Avatar doesn't have nuance. The good guys are good (and you know who they are). The bad guys are really bad-and they show their colors pretty early. No one really changes their mind-except for Sully and the Na'vi. Everyone else doesn't really have a happy ending, although for some it could have worse. It's lucky for Giovanni Ribisi that the Na'vi have more compassion than their counterparts in Aliens, or he could have come to a very bad end-Rbibisi's counterpart in Aliens (played by a weaselly Paul Reiser) came to a very bad end. And as for the Na'vi, my emotions are a bit mixed. A mixture of African and Native American culture, it was a bit too "happy natives commune with nature all get massacred by evil Americans" and it's not a particularly new story but it is well told-although anyone who doesn't know how it ends has not been paying attention. I will say that I find it very funny that so many right-wingers are upset with this movie-saying it's a criticism of the war (take your pick, Iraq or Afghanistan) and is Un-American. I'm sure they much prefer Aliens.