Avatar Doesn't Escape Hollywood.

I saw Avatar in 3D and was very impressed but not satisfied. It is a gorgeous and splendid Hollywood roller coaster of a film, but in the end, it is just Hollywood. It is a combination of "Dancing With Wolves" meets "Shaka Zulu" meets "Star Wars."

Under the necessity of finding a resolution of the conflict, James Cameron totally fails to rise to the occasion of the story's own premise of the interconnectedness of life, and falls back on the tried and trite Hollywood cliche of a bloody and violent climax of "good" triumphing over "evil", thereby completely missing the point that interconnectedness means a different way of looking at life than just as good and evil.

Unless he comes up with a sequel to deal with the problem that will happen when the Marines and the Mining Corporation return to the planet with nuclear weapons and demand that everyone relocate or be vaporized by attack from orbital platforms where the planet's biosphere can't reach, Cameron has lost all the real potential of the story.

I was talking about this with a woman behind the counter at the video store, and she said maybe Cameron's failure to find the ending that doesn't rely on violence to resolve the conflict is just a reflection of our society's failure to do so. I agree. Cameron couldn't dream beyond our social inadequacy. Cameron is not a leading visionary, and appears to be merely a follower who has got a little bit of interesting ideas without any real vision of his own.