Avatar

+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
10 Jan 2010

It was a considerable anti-climax. I was looking forward to enjoying Avatar, which is allegedly the most expensive film in history costing US$300 million. It wasn't terrible, but it was boring; preachy but probably harmless.

The film presses all the politically correct buttons, ideologically and on the pseudo religious front. But the scenery is spectacular as are the technology and weapons of war.

One or two of the children in the theatre did seem to be frightened here and there and I didn't mind using the 3D glasses, which added a powerful third dimension. I ducked instinctively at one stage although I cannot remember whether it was an arrow, spear or rocket coming in my direction.

The hero of the film, well played by the Australian actor Sam Worthington, is a paraplegic ex-marine, employed by ruthless mining contractors. His soul or personality is sent intermittently to inhabit the body, constructed in a human laboratory of one of the humanoids on the planet Pandora.

The miners cum soldiers are hired hands, all US ex-servicemen, employed to mine an expensive mineral while displacing or destroying the local hybrids, who fight with arrows and spears.

The hero originally sent as a spy, some of the scientists and one of the ex-soldiers, a woman pilot, eventually see the light, and fight against the human invaders.

The two human leaders, soldier and miner, are crude caricatures, the worst examples of capitalism and the military. Similar types do exist and are still busy mining today e.g. in the Congo in Africa. But these characters are an intentional slur on the Allied forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Canadian-born director wants to open American eyes because he said; "we know what it feels like to launch missiles" and "we don't know what it feels like for them to land on our home soil".

The humans are depicted as being without religion, although they use Christian expletives effectively, but the Pandorans are in harmony with the cosmic forces which course through the giant trees of their forests. They worship the mother goddess, benign and non-interfering, although someone provokes the animals to charge to the Pandorans defence!

Worship of the powerful forces of nature is half right, an early and primitive stage in the movement towards acknowledging the one; the single Transcendent God, above and beyond nature.

It is a symptom of our age that Hollywood is pumping out this old fashioned pagan propaganda.