Avatar: The Power of Legs

It's been a while, but now seems as good a time as any to get this bad boy underway.  So, without further ado...

"Avatar." By now, the only way you haven't heard about James Cameron's GDP-of-the-Ivory-Coast budgeted sci-fi mega epic is if you're either A) lucky, B) dead, or C) Woody Harrelson in "2012."  A juggernaut of marketing, achievement and ego, "Avatar" has likely been lingering on the edges of your pop-culture radar, popping in occasionally when someone ballparked an estimated cost ($400 to $500 million, depending on who you talk to) or Cameron himself has stepped onto the scene to detail how exactly his new film will rape your ocular cavities. Well, it's here, and the latest numbers are showing that, astoundingly, it might not only recoup the studio's insane investment (it pulled in $232 million over the weekend, worldwide), but could even turn a profit.

But its insane cost, admittedly impressive effects, and merciless ad campaign aside, there is a disturbing message at the core of "Avatar" that no-one, thus far, seems to be picking up on.

This motherfucker's all about legs.

(Before I continue, I suppose I should toss out a SPOILER ALERT, but, frankly, if you've seen any Western ever made, you know damn well where "Avatar" is going wellllllll before it gets there.)

First, a little backstory: Jake Sully (evidently in the future the Irish have evolved beyond "Sullivan"), played by the blandly handsome Sam Worthington, is a grunt in 2154 headed for the distant moon of Pandora where humanity has discovered a mineral called "Unobtainium." (Despite its ridiculously inane name, unobtainium is some manner of hyper-material that a strip mined Earth is desperate to get its hands on.) In between Earth and unobtainium stands the Na'vi, a 9-foot-tall breed of cat people who live in a giant tree (it gets worse) and bear a striking resemblance to a handful of reductive Native American stereotypes. Their Hometree (I told you) is plopped smack dab on top of an unobtainium supply, and Earth, as represented by the monolithic (is there any other kind in sci-fi?) corporation RDA, wants the cat people to get out, or get killed. In the name of diplomacy, humans have elected to create Avatars; giant, blue abominations unto God that are made Na'vi and human genes slammed together. These clone-slugs are then piloted by humans in giant tanning beds, and can walk along the dangerous surface of Pandora, breathing that sweet, sweet poison humans just can't handle.

Into this situation rolls Sully, a paraplegic war vet who's twin brother, an Avatar pilot, was shot to death in a bar. The Army offers him fresh legs in exchange for six years as the pilot of his dead brother's Mutant RC Cat that, now, only Jake can control due to their similar genetics. Jake happily accepts...yadda yadda yadda. You see where this is going: He sucks at controlling his RC Cat, he becomes inexplicably good at controlling his RC Cat,  he gets lost, meets a foxy native girl who happens to be a princess, she thinks he's retarded, they fall in love. Your stock "Pocahontas" fare. But here's where the fun bit comes in.

Sully's paraplegia is front and center from the opening of the film. He's burnt out and resentful because of his condition, and he resents being helped or treated differently. He accepts his Avatar gig because he's got nothing else to live for...but also because it offers him use of legs, even if they aren't his. After his initial stumblings as an Avatar, Col. Quaritch, a scarred, hilarious caricature of badass toughness that might as well be named Sgt. Beef Hardkill, makes a pact with Sully: Forget this peace nonsense, he says, just tell me how to kill the cat people and I'll give you your legs back. Jake, feeling no affinity for the Na'vi (as he has not yet gotten down the princess) happily accepts. And so, for a long period of time, he joyfully relates what he sees and learns to Beef Hardkill, caring not a whit for the natives and what his betrayal could mean for them.  No, he's just looking forward to sweet, sweet legs. But then, something happens. Suddenly, he feels for the cat people. By god, he must stand up and FIGHT!

Well, that's what we're supposed to understand he feels. Ignoring for a moment that this film suffers from the same problem Tom Cruise's equally insulting "The Last Samurai" had (Backwards culture, honorable in its naive simplicity, must fight back against oppressors...But only a wiser and more capable White Westerner can help these noble savages win the day!)  I have a different theory about Jake's sudden burst of altruism:

Legs.

The man got hisself some legs. And he's good to go.

Jake Sully, from the word 'go' in this film, has been painted as an emotionless cipher (or...avatar? Symbolism!); a hollow, battle-scarred grunt with little use for the world around him. Then, like some kind of organ-bank mercenary, he's swayed into action by the promise of legs. However, once he gets rolling in his be-legged, nimble Avatar body, his allegiances begin to shift. Now, with legs, he begins the love the Na'vi. It's got nothing to do with Neitryi, the princess, nor does it have anything to do with their culture (see, for instance, his refusal to speak Na'vi for 90% of the movie), it only has to do with one thing and one thing alone: Legs. To paraphrase ZZ Top, he's got 'em.

Once he begins to really dig his big blue legs, and the bonus royal tail he's getting on the side (that, it's worth noting, he stole away from a righteous warrior due to his irresistible...well, Western-ness, really) he begins to systematically betray and destroy the people who brought him there in the first place. During the movie's rousing climax, audiences are meant to delight in the slaughter of of Jake's former companions as him nimbly jaunts around, blowing up ships, killing crew members, and stabbing soldiers in the chest with meter-long spears. Hooray! Take that, faceless people operating under orders! Yeah! Jake's big thanks for a new lease on life, apparently, is a spear to the chest and a the tattered fragments of families torn apart.

And here's the problem: Sully's been so poorly characterized, his sudden love for Neytiri, and her's for him, comes off as insincere. We haven't seen that Sully feels for anyone, or cares about anything. The only time we see him express joy is when he's up and on the move.  When he becomes disenfranchised with the "real" world, it doesn't seem like it's because he's found a deeper truth with the Na'vi, it seems like he just really enjoys walking. He joneses visibly to get back into his Avatar, even refusing food. This isn't because he cares so very much for the Na'vi or their tragic plight; it's because he likes to run. He likes legs. Sure, Beef Hardkill has promised him legs, but those will likely be atrophied little stalks he'll need to build up through years of painful physical therapy. With his Avatar, he's got legs right now! And they're huge! And they're agile! Even graceful! He makes it plain that after his brother's murder, he's got nothing left back on Earth, so why go back to a coal-grey, desolate wasteland with a new pair of withered-ass legs? Why not hang around on a lush, psychedelic forest moon where a hot, powerful member of the royal family wants your Dr. Manhattan-like blue neon dong?

While the film may posit the Na'vi as being more spiritually in touch with life and the ways of their world than the dark, slovenly humans that come along knocking shit over like so-much Baby Huey in a Power Loader, there's no evidence to support the idea that Sully feels that way. Man just likes legs, and he's willing to side with whomever can offer him bipedal motion the fastest. And that's the Na'vi.

It's no coincidence that through an act of "Ferngully"-like magic, Jake is bio-downloaded into his Avatar body. Don't think for a second Jake wasn't aware of this possibility. He was with the Na'vi for months, and from what we see, they reveal all their secrets to him very quickly. So it's safe to assume that he knew what was going to happen, and that permanently inhabiting his mutant ava-slug was his endgame from the jump. Sadly, the human's couldn't deliver on the promise of legs for ol' Sully, and for that error, hundreds paid with their lives. The people who gave him the ability to run, even by proxy, were murdered. All so that Jake Sully, sociopath extraordinaire, could walk.

Legs: The only reason "Avatar" happened at all.

Grab a spoon, a lighter, and your DVDs...

Behold, y'all, the very bleeding edge of movie blogging: Freebasing Film, a blog that understands your addiciton to movies. In addition to regular postings about film news and regular ruminations on various aspects of films, it will also present you with a weekly feature called Mainline; supplying you with a steady flow of films designed to keep you up on the finest celluloid Hollywood has to offer. Just in case that's not enough to stop your cinematic jones, I'll also be digging through film history's trash and exposing forgotten gems in a feature I call Dumpster Diving, featuring the good, the bad, and the bizzare that you can't miss. So make sure you keep coming back, and remember: the first taste is always free.