Avatar: How to Hate Humanity (in 160 Minutes or Less)

Normally, when discussing a movie, a spoiler alert should be given. It warns that further reading may divulge knowledge of hidden plots or surprise endings, which would otherwise ruin a well produced picture. Alas, Avatar has no such problems. After watching for five minutes, any reasonably intelligent person can deduce the all too typical and tripe message and its totally stale finale.

Avatar takes place on Pandora, a moon that’s as close to a pro-regressive paradise as any place could get. By day, it’s a lush, but oppressive jungle. At night it glows with bio luminescence. An incredible sight especially in 3-D, yet, it’s as inhospitable to humans as any place could get.

First, humans must wear masks because of its toxic atmosphere. The Na’vi (awfully similar to Navaho) are the indigenous ten foot tall humanoids, i.e. big, blue smurfs who have no problem with Pandora’s poisonous air.

In 2154, with technology to create human/Na’vi hybrids, surely humans could have found a way to breathe without a stupid mask. Unless, Avatar’s producers just wanted to demean humanity who could never live harmoniously in such a bio-diverse place.

So, humans must were “exopacks” that filter toxic gases like hydrogen cyanide, which when inhaled causes metabolic asphyxiation. Depending on concentration, humans can become unconscious and die in less than a minute, but the gas can also be absorbed through the skin.

Interestingly, marines on Pandora aren’t given any skin protection unless in 2154 it’s acceptable to let them be slowly poisoned. Like Jake Scully, who while fighting an unspecified war in Venezuela, was paralyzed. Finally, marines were allowed to oust that two bit troublemaking dictator, Hugo Chavez, or at least some descendant of his.

Even though Scully journeyed almost six years in cryo state to Pandora, nobody offers to restore his legs until Colonel Quaritch, who will grant healthcare only as a reward for accomplishing an unsavory task. Apparently, in the future ObamaCare is still denying care even to war veterans as it will do here when it’s implemented.

Yet, even in the bad old days of Bush, soldiers, who lost limbs in his illegal wars, got prosthetic devices. Some after therapy even went back to war. But to future humanity, care comes at a cost, and all Scully has to do is sell out the Na’vi.

Except for scientists, humans on Pandora are only interested in mining for “unobtanium.” Of course, this mineral doesn’t exist. Instead it’s a nonsensical term created from “unobtainable” + “ium” and used for extremely rare or nonexistent material.

Still, the greedy corporation, Resources Development Administration, will do anything to obtain as much unobtanium as it can. Whether the pro-regressives behind (pun unintended) Avatar just couldn’t find a better name, or just wanted to say that humans could never conquer Pandora is anyone’s guess.

Humanity’s one spaceport, affectionately referred to as Hell’s Gate (and anything human here has “hell” attached), is heavily guarded because all of Pandora’s creatures attack humans fiercely whenever possible. Coincidently, the Na’vi have no interest in helping humanity exploit, and ultimately destroy, their world.

Unfortunately for them, their community lives over the biggest unobtanium deposit of them all. Interestingly, they live in one big tree, the biggest of them all, affectionately called “Hometree.” Humans have so little respect for Pandora’s environment that in one scene a huge bulldozer uproots indiscriminately everything in its path destroying the “Tree of Voices,” one of the Na’vi’s most sacred places.

Eventually, humans destroy Hometree because in 2154, they’ll lack the technology to mine underneath ecologically. Apparently, extracting minerals must be done with strip-mining, with land afterwards left permanently scarred because profits rule uber-alles unlike today where mining companies routinely clean up after themselves.

Scully asks Eywa, the Na’vi’s planet god, to help defeat humanity, but Eywa responds that she only works for harmony. But eventually, she joins the fight when humans attempt to destroy the “Tree of Souls,” (another sacred tree place) where she then directs all the animals to fight with the Na’vi.

What’s the message here? That it’s possible to remain primitive, live in trees, and if a technologically superior race exploits your environment, you and your planet god can kick their royal derrieres. And maybe, primitive people living in harmony with nature would never do anything environmentally destructive.

One of the great pro-regressive myths is that American Indians were so ecological that they would never extinct a species like, for example, the buffalo. In fact, Indians killed 500000 buffalo each year believing that the “Great Spirit” made them inexhaustible. While some white men killed many a buffalo themselves, it was ultimately white farmers who saved the buffalo from extinction.

Still, after viewing Avatar, one moviegoer responded how he hated humanity. From a pro-regressive perspective, it was “Mission accomplished.”