I think he largely misses the point. Like many other sci-fi pieces, Avatar is a fantasia and not a serious look at our possible future.<p>Much of the human technology was obviously modeled after current American military tech, and that was a deliberate choice. This approach allowed Cameron to tap into current feelings and cultural currents. If things had been more 'realistic', then it would have been alien to modern audiences. Really, properly modeling the future would have made the story far more difficult to tell.<p>It's darned hard to make a story that's universally accessible. 'Avatar' is a pretty decent sci-fi movie that's understandable to people all over the world. It will also revolutionize cinematography and filmmaking from this point onward. Any proper analysis of the film should keep those points in mind.
While I agree with the thrust of Kurzweil's criticism, there are a couple of things he missed.<p>First, I too was disappointed by the simple, anti-corporate picture it painted. But it wasn't 100% black-and-white. There was a short scene in which Ribisi's character is reluctant to attack, and the army guy bullies him into it. I think the story would have benefited greatly just by expanding and amplifying that scene (although it was already a rather long movie).<p>Kurzweil criticizes that the technology a century hence ought to be more advanced. He says the only revolutionary thing shown in the movie is the avatar tech itself. First, he misses the obvious fact of star travel and the hibernation that it relied on.<p>But more significantly, I think he misses that while things advance, the form they take tends to ape what we're used to. Thus, our automobiles are very much "horseless carriages". Tablet computers are named that for their resemblance to zillion-year-old stone tablets. Since the tech in the movie was largely part of the scenery and not really highlighted, I think it's entirely to be expected that we wouldn't recognize how advanced it is.
I thought the "networked tree" thing was actually quite clever. Think of it this way: Suppose you were living in Kurzweil's post-Singularity future, where you have absolute command over biological and nanotechnological mechanics, and you wanted to set up a world-wide communications platform that will last forever. You wouldn't mine precious metals and sling fragile fibers as we have done. Instead, you'd engineer it into the fauna: self-repairing, self-sustaining, global.<p>"The spirits of your ancestors living in the trees" sounds mystical and backward, but "copying your brain to the internet to be saved forever" sounds wonderfully Kurzweillian. Cameron bridges the two, but the technology was too advanced for Kurzweil to identify it as such. :)<p>One thing I thought was neat about the original Avatar script that got left out of the movie was a closing threat from the Na'vi to the humans: Our giant biological computer has analyzed you and engineered a virus that will destroy you, should you return to Pandora.
What bunk. He tries to say that riding the backs of the birds is a rip of Harry Potter. Does the guy know nothing of Greek Mythology? Did he not see Clash of the Titans with Persius riding the back of Pegasus; which clearly predates Potter.
Is there anything in this that has not been mentioned about Avatar by a hundred other commentators? I'm seeing: derivative plot, suspiciously human aliens, big plot hole surrounding the ending. Is there anything new here? I'm genuinely asking; I may have missed it.
I liked the technology. It looked plausible, not primitive. Exoskeletons that are "beginning to be deployed" can plausibly be widespread in the future. I can believe that guns will continue to operate on the same principals as they have done for a thousand years.<p>They didn't show the same restraint with the nature, unfortunately. Why did everything need six legs and four eyes, and why didn't Na'vi hair evolve to be prehensile when they started needing to shove it down the data tubes of irate wildlife?<p>As an aside, having all those links in the text is very distracting.
What is great about this movie review, for me, isn't the exact point-by-point analysis that the author makes, but the fact that author is noted futurist Ray Kurzweil. It would be like having Colin Powell review the Hurt Locker - its just kind of cool.
I'm surprised I didn't read more commentary about the Christian symbolism in Avatar - Garden of Eden, Tree of Life, etc. Maybe people no longer look at those symbols as predominantly/exclusively Judeo-Christian?
I think Kurzweil completely missed the very important set up point that the campaign on Avavar was not being conducted by the most modern military forces of that time on Earth. It was being conducted entirely by a corporate entity and it's ex-military hirelings (think Blackwater).<p>I thought this point was particularly well though out.<p>No profit-driven model of an corporate military campaign to put down a native uprising would send state-of-the-art anything. They'd send on-hand dated military surplus weapons and equipment and troops to fire full auto machine guns, flamethrowers, napalm, white phosphorus rounds, field artillery, and lots of ammo.<p>State of the art military vs. peasant uprisings are useless. Watch the movie "Zulu Dawn" sometime.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zulu_Dawn" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zulu_Dawn</a><p>Like the gatling guns on the front of A-10s and A-10s themselves the Air Force kept pulling out of retirement. Some situations just don't require anything more sophisticated than a gatling gun and something well armored and maneuverable to hang a gatling gun on the front of.
Kurzweil probably has no room to criticize given that he has never attempted to make a film like that and probably couldn't do better himself - but I agree with his general point that the movie was anti-technology and anti-corporation. This is a disturbing and misinformed viewpoint held by many people in Hollywood for some reason.
Ray missed the forest for the trees. No movie de-others the other more than this one. More importantly, he utterly misses the tonality, as if he were watching without a heart. Ray, how is it that your analysis explains nothing of the continued appeal of this movie?
Full paged, not framed, not cluttered with hyperlinks, and non-annoying version of the article:<p><a href="http://www.kurzweilai.net/news/news_printable.html?id=11907" rel="nofollow">http://www.kurzweilai.net/news/news_printable.html?id=11907</a>