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Critical Analysis Of James Cameron's 'Avatar'

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This paper is a brief critical analysis of James Cameron’s Avatar, a very successful 2009 science fiction film. The film Avatar takes place in the virtual world or moon of Pandora, created by James Cameron with digital technology and colonized with fantastic creatures and an indigenous race of 10 feet tall, yellow eyed, blue striped aliens called the “Na’vi”. With Avatar, Cameron has delivered a fast paced fantasy adventure that weaves together streams of powerful themes that are very important to our modern world that they even extend far beyond the world of fictional film. The film itself, can be seen as a variety of things such as, a political film about war, the effects of violence, a social commentary about environmentalism, even speciesism. This could also be seen as simply a film about what it truly means to be human, which should be …show more content…

The humans have abandoned a dying Earth and invaded this planet of the Na’vi. Pandora has Unobtanium that humans want for profit. Scientist develop these "Avatars" which look like the "Na 'vi" and have drivers, whose consciousness is projected into them. The plot mainly follows Jake sully, a former marine who is in a wheelchair. Avatar opens with Jake’s lucid dream of flying so synonymous with freedom, then the metaphorical belly of the whale, sees the start of the hero’s journey. We also see scenes of loss as Jake hears the poignant news of his brother’s death, another blow to Jake’s already depleted sense of self with the loss of his legs. Because of this, Jake is a very disillusioned and bitter person, but still a warrior at heart. In the movie he states, “All I ever wanted was a single thing worth fighting for”. Even though he finds it in the most unexpected place, the heart of Neytiri, it was so ironic that at some point he would have to choose sides and literally fight in a battle between the human and the Na’vi that decided the fate for the entire

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