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Avatar – Individual Acting Performances -Col Guarlich

Avatar – Individual Acting Performances -Col Guarlich

The most impressive performance of Avatar is the Colonel, played by Stephen Lang. He’s a one-man recruiting performance for the Marines. He reminded me more of a no-nonsense Chief Master Sergeant, but the rank of Colonel works fine for the movie. From his first in-brief for the newbies on Pandora to the moment he’s shot with arrows “dipped in a neurotoxin that can stop your heart in one minute,” he is the most committed, forceful personality in the movie. He is mission-focused, forceful, tough, and clearly earth-o-centric, until the moment he tells Grace, “I can do that,” in response to her question, “Ranger Rick, what are you going to do? Shoot me?” At that point, glib becomes lack of care, which we do not expect from a committed Marine. He also takes over from the corporate CEO, but the original movie does not show that. You learn that from a deleted scene where the CEO is trying to stop the use of daisy-cutters on the Pandorans’ religious site. After that, the Colonel is ruthless, cavalier, and cruel. Continue reading “Avatar – Individual Acting Performances -Col Guarlich”

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Avatar – Individual Acting Performance – Jake Sully

Aatar – Individual Acting Performance – Jake Sully

Sam Worthington, who has come to be typecast as half human/half whatever, plays Jake. In the latest Terminator, he’s half robot, half human. In Clash of the Titans, he’s half human, half god. And in Avatar, he’s half human, half Pandoran, or at least half the time.

Worthington plays the regular guy, but not just any regular guy, the regular guy with the desire for more. In the Collector’s edition of the movie, not the original theatrical release, he is shown on earth, living the wheel-chair life. He says he can’t stand being told what he cannot do. In a bar scene, after seeing a guy slap his own girlfriend, Jake wheels up to him, pulls one of his bar stools sending the guy to the floor, and he jumps out of his wheelchair and begins pummeling the guy. He says he guesses he never found anything worth fighting for. As he’s about to beat up this guy, he says, “The strong prey on the weak, nobody does a d___ thing about it.” Obviously, this desire to protect the weak comes out later when dealing with the humans and their attitude toward the “blue monkeys” on Pandora.

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Avatar – Individual Acting Performances – Tsu Tey

Avatar – Individual Acting Performances – Tsu Tey

Tsu-Tey, played by Laz Alonzo, is the quintessential macho, native, destined to be chief of the tribe. His attitude makes you believe he’s a native Pandoran, alternately jealous, contemptuous, distrustful, respectful depending upon how Jake impresses or does not impress him. It’s hard to like the man, but you respect him. His most impressive scenes involve one battle scene and two endearing scenes near the end.

The battle scene shows Tsu-Tey leaping off his dino-bird in slow motion into the rear of a shuttle with several soldiers with machine guns. As he leaps, he fires his arrow, then beats soldiers with his bow and throwing them off the shuttle. One soldier finally has the clearance to fire his machine gun, and Tsu-Tey falls into the forest, fatally wounded.

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Avatar – post 8 – Individual Acting Performance – Neytiri

Avatar – Individual Acting Performance – Neytiri

One of the best performances in this movie is that of Natyri, who is excellently portrayed by Zoe Saldana. She truly comes off as a native woman. She is believable as a native female who knows her forest; she may not know about much else in the universe, but she knows the forest well. And, her teaching to Jake is alternately frustrating and patient. She does a great job at the initial meeting with Jake when divine intervention not only prevents her from killing Jake but causes her to bring him before the tribe. Their initial meeting is believable in the sense of her portrayal of a woman fighter, who has lost her sister to the humans, is stopped from killing Jake by “divine” intervention, and must somehow explain to Jake, without getting too close, that his blundering in the forest is ignorant and shows he doesn’t belong there. Of course, a 2nd “divine” intervention by Eywa causes her to bring Jake to the tribe.

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Avatar – post 7 – Attempting to Replace the Bible?

Avatar – Attempting to Replace the Bible?

I’ve already mentioned how Cameron uses the born-again concept in the religious culture of Pandora. He almost directly quotes the Old Testament when Jake says the Pandorans say that “Eywa will provide.” Even the name Eywa is close to Yahweh. Then, there’s the Pandoran worship services that are performed around the Tree of Souls; they look like a Charismatic/voodoo service. The process, passing through the eye of Eywa, attempted upon the Dr. (Grace) – unsuccessfully, but successful upon Jake, is basically the death – resurrection process of the bible. To give the benefit of the doubt to Cameron, he perhaps used symbols and principles to which we can relate in order to draw us into the story and relate sympathetically to the Pandorans. However, a not-so-subtle attempt to suck the viewer into a sympathetic view of environmentalist, anti-capitalist, nature worship cannot be ruled out either.

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Avatar – post 6 – Is Idolatry Possible on Pandora?

Is Idolatry Possible on Pandora?

The corporate CEO in charge of the process of mining Pandora makes the most biblical statement about Pandoran religion when the Dr. is trying to tell him about the scientific and sacred nature of the tree system on Pandora. “You throw a stick in the air around here, and it’s gonna land on some sacred fern, for Christ’s sake.” Interesting combination of words in that sentence. And to make sure the modern, 21st century American, who worships science is brought in intellectually (the viewer is already emotionally on the side of the “real” people of Pandora and not the capitalist pigs the humans are shown as) to side with the Pandorans, the Dr. says, “I’m not talking about some kind of pagan voodoo here, I’m talking about something real, something measurable in the biology of the forest. . . . What we think we know is there is some electro-chemical communication between the roots of the trees, like the synapses between neurons. Each tree has 10 to the 4th connections to the trees around it, and there are 10 to the 12th trees on Pandora. . . . It’s more connections than the human brain. Get it? It’s a network, it’s a global network, and the Navi [Pandorans] can access it. They can upload and download data, memories at sites like the one you just destroyed.” The CEO’s response, while laughing: “What the hell have you people been smoking out there? They’re just g__ d____ trees.”

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Avatar – post 5

Avatar & Deuteronomy 7

Avatar is an interesting combination of The Matrix, Dances with Wolves, and Shrek. The Matrix because it involves a human electronically entering another world to live on a different plane; Dances with Wolves because it involves the conversion from Christianity (or some form of agnosticism) to a native religion of animism; and because it involves morphing into another being entirely and remaining that way. I’d like to focus on the Dances with Wolves aspect in this post.

In Dances with Wolves, the American soldier eats a form of communion with the natives by eating raw blood of a buffalo, he marries into the tribe, and he adopts their religion by learning about their view of the deity and adopting that view of life. The process in Avatar is even more explicit, for Jake begins the Continue reading “Avatar – post 5”

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Avatar – post 4

Avatar – Even the Title

The scientific world of the West looks upon the word avatar as meaning “a visible manifestation or embodiment of an abstract concept; archetype.” The entertainment game world of the West views the term as meaning “a user in a multi-user virtual reality (or VR-like).” But the word “avatar” in Hindu mythology means “the descent of a deity to the earth in an incarnate form or some manifest shape; the incarnation of a god.” Dictionary.com. Thus, even the title shows the theme of the man from heaven coming down to people, taking on their form, and giving his life to save and rule them.

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Avatar – post 3

More on Jake & His Calling

When Jake gets left because he was chased by some huge Pandora black panther-type beast, a fantastic scene by the way, he has to find his way in the dark. The female Avatarian, Natiri, saves him and tells him it’s his fault the animals that attacked him had to be killed. His existence in the forest, his ability to make fire (none of which would have saved him in the movie – symbolic of technology not saving man; then how did you make your movie without technology – one of many self-contradictions in the movie), are an affront to Pandora. He’s supposed to mingle with the wildlife, with nature, not take dominion over it. Yet, even the Pandorans take dominion over the creatures, like the horse-like creatures and the flying dragons. More contradictions.

In the Director’s Edition on the DVD there are 16 extra minutes, which has some key events narrated. Natiri’s sister was killed by the humans, shot in the Continue reading “Avatar – post 3”

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Avatar – post 2 – Jake Sully

Avatar’s Jake Sully

Jake Sully, the main character, is something of a lost person when he arrives at Pandora. He had lost his twin brother, and he talks like he’s open to anything new that might give his life meaning. Of course, the prospect of having a new body, even if only virtual, is attractive to a marine who has lost the use of his legs. Jake doesn’t know his purpose, so at the same time he’s helping the anthropologist understand and befriend the Pandorans, he’s also giving intel to the colonel for him to know when and how to strike the enemy. Jake is the ultimate double agent, although there is no attempt to fool the Pandorans who call Jake and the other virtual Pandorans “sleep-walkers.” Often our lives take odd, unnerving and faith-challenging turns, and we wonder what purpose we were intended for. In that sense, we’re like Jake who had to wait to see the purpose for the crippling he’d experienced. He had to go low before he could go high. Obviously, the “divine” dandelions that light upon Jake while he’s following the Pandoran woman through the jungle are the sign of some sort of calling upon Jake; the Pandoran woman recognizes that.

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