Emily and I watched Avatar last night. We both enjoyed it. This morning, however, my dissection of the movie began and my disappointment is increasing. Most—at least if I take into account ticket receipts—have already seen it, so I will not worry about ruining the plot. The story takes us to Pandora which is a planet almost exactly like a pristine forest in our world—only cooler. The trees light up when you step on them, seed display spiritual understanding, and you can “mind-meld” with animals. The computer graphics are astounding (more on this later). There are two groups of rational beings on Pandora: the Natives (who are pantheistic, highly athletic, very moral, eco-friendly, sexually liberated, exceptionally egalitarian, recapitulations American Indians—before Europeans wrecked North America) and the Invaders (mostly white, intensely oppressive, deceitful, crassly unfeeling capitalists polluters). Quickly, we see that there is a third group forming—a middle group—made up of mediators. These humans take on the form of the Natives and infiltrate their society. They are scientists which in this case means that they are almost exact approximations of left-leaning modern, eco-friendly, political liberals—all except one. Our hero is a marine who through no fault of his own is thrust into the body of an Avatar and eventually finds that he likes the Natives instead of the invaders. He falls in love with the Princess, learns to ride cool animals, and eventually leads the Natives in their intifada against the Invaders. He ultimately “goes native.” It is a good story, but the political philosophy was dumped onto the story ham-handedly. (It made me remember why I wanted the Titanic to sink quickly during his last blockbuster.) Here are some areas that need to be considered:

1. Does it strike you as odd that our unbelieving culture is increasingly longing for the spiritual. Cameron seems to recognize that for anything to make sense we have to have some connection to the divine. This is all fine and well, but the constant attempts to remake the divine into some vague pantheist force that somehow recapitulates the ethics and philosophy of the modern political soft left is sort of sickening. Can’t they come up with a better more believable story? We are going to have to go all the way to outer space to recognize that we should live in harmony with nature and be sexually liberated and egalitarian (for no reason). Why not just give a lecture?
2. This sort of movie does ask good questions for believers about environmental issues. Christianity liberates us from the worship of nature. It does not make the world “unsacred”—i.e., a place that we can ruin. We were put here to tend a garden and to manifest God’s glory in that garden. We are not here to worship the garden, but we are here to care for it. Christianity liberated us from the need to worship nature, but it did not—and it cannot—give unbelievers any reason not to ruin the garden. Modern men have been too ready to plunder and run and American Christians have too often marched in lock step with this sort of crass thinking. It, however, is obviously not Christian. It is not covenantal. We must pass on to our children and children’s children a garden that is bettered and beautified by our work—not a garden that is ruined and polluted for our comforts. At the beginning of the heroes interaction with the princess she calls him a “baby.” Yes, we are.
3. Some of fairly deep and ironic ill-logic and hilarious clichés are built into the movie. Here are a few things that just sort of knocked me over this morning:
   1. Cameron keeps on showing the machines and Invaders as bad, but it took giant, intense machines to make the movie.
   2. Cameron is not liberated from the machine as a metaphor—in fact he is addicted to it. The reductionist tendencies of the modern world echoed through these metaphors. Sadly, he tries to make this garden of Pandora more spiritual by making it mechanical. The animals and Natives work together by basically plugging into each others’ USB ports. The trees and ecosystem is called incredible by the scientists because it is communicating with electrical impulses. It has become a giant computer network (i.e., the tree based Internet—we can only imagine that they are digital rather than analog). This was so visionless! The real world is much more wonderful than this! Animals and humans can work together amazingly, but this takes discipline, love, and patience—not plugging in. Giants trees are glorious but not because they are the Internet.
   3. The sexual ethics of the movie again demonstrated deep levels of infantile imagination. Nowhere in tribal societies are sexual matters in the royal family taken lightly. There are rules of succession. Imagining sex as no big deal sort of make me ill. The Natives obviously got around this by…well…being modern political liberals.
   4. The invaders are basically orcs. It would have been really nice to have a few of them have something more than 1 dimension—but alas.
   5. The Natives are charismatic and they only have women priests—big surprise! (What is the opposite of imagination?)
   6. The Natives (with the help of the Avatars) win—again, big surprise! (Although we could see the beginning of their undoing as they used guns in the final scenes of the movie.)

In summary, we need God to make stories make sense. We now feel our desperate need of Him. Instead, of turning to Him, we are trying to imagine a way around Him. (We don’t even have the courage of Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus who at least tired to face up to the horror of life without Him.) Our imaginations are crumpling without Him and our stories without Him are weak and lame…but we have cool (way cool) graphics.