Avatar: a dash of Tarzan and a pinch of anime!

This is a review of James Cameron's 2009 science fiction film 'Avatar'.

The Tarzan theme in Avatar has not been really talked about much. Let's keep it real; the Na'vi are Africans and Jake Sully is the White savior. What got me is that he 1st learns how to ride the Banshee and in doing so becomes the best Banshee Rider. Next, he tames the 'Last Shadow,' the biggest of all winged predators and becomes Toruk Makto. That thing hadn't been ridden for thousands of years and this dude just got there and in a month goes from learning to ride a little Banshee to mastering the biggest and baddest bird of prey. Then,  he becomes a 'mated pair' with Netyri. What about Tsu Tey? He gets kicked completely to the curb! Finally, Jake 'Sooly' leads all of the clans against the White invaders and succeeds in forcing them off the planet. I'm not saying that this is the only message in this movie but it is, as they say, the proverbial 'elephant in the room.' Overall, though, Avatar is a solid piece of entertainment and for what it set out to do, did so better than any of its peers. Effects-wise, Avatar did go 'beyond the beyond' as Cameron often boasts. But this Tarzan theme in the movie somehow got lost in all of the 3D hype. 

Another thing I want to point out about Avatar are the elements it borrowed from Japanese animation. Yes, that's right, this film borrowed heavily from anime, you just have to know which ones. Back in the mid 90's, there was an anime series called 'Visions of Escaflowne' about a planet called Gaea that had the same 'floating mountains' that are in Avatar. The exo-suits in Avatar also look exactly like the 'labors' in the anime Patlabor, exactly the same! The Na'vi which are piloted by humans are the same, in theory, as the organic life-forms called Evas in 'Neon Genesis Evangelion' that are also piloted or driven by humans. In pointing out these similarities, I don't want to give the impression that Avatar is completely derivative, but I think that the animes that informed it should be recognized. 

Is Avatar Really James Cameron's Next Film?

Man, it's been a long time--13 long years, to be exact--since James Cameron announced that he was taking Yukito Kishiro's manga, Battle Angel Alita, to the big screen. Back then, he had broken a long silence after the record-breaking success of 'Titanic' and I was completely beside myself when I heard the news at 3 in the morning. For those who aren't familiar with the manga, Alita centers around a cyborg girl named Alita who has no memories and who's only clue to who she is is her incredible combat skill and martial art style called Panzer Kunst. I stumbled across the books in the mid 90's when Anime was just beginning to take off in the States.

Probably the best way to describe the story is that it is a post apocalyptic version of Mad Max, Blade Runner, and The Wizard of Oz as tiny, but deadly, Alita searches for her identity only to find love and loss along the way. The story's many overlapping themes from philosophy, Greek mythology, psychology, and just plain weirdness combined with the most inventive artwork plus a female kick-ass central character has everything except the attributions "written and drawn by James Cameron." It's like this graphic series was written for Cameron as it has all of the megalomaniacal attention to every subatomic detail you could imagine. The main thing I thought reading it at the time was that I could not think of anything that came close to being the perfect vehicle for his next film being that he is obsessed with strong female characters and Alita's emotional arc throughout the series makes her THE strongest female character he could ever conceive.

So, when the rumors came out that he had bought the rights to Alita and that he was going to perfect the technology for it by 1st doing a test movie called project 880, I was excited. But when 880, which later became Avatar, went on to be the biggest film ever made and he slated 3 sequels behind it, I was extremely disappointed because I, and those who've read Battle Angel--particularly, the Motor Ball series with Jashugan, the Motor Ball King--know that as great as Avatar is, it pales to what Battle Angel could have been (please, read it and you will see exactly what I mean).

Today, I found out on Wikipedia that not only is Battle Angel going to be released, but that it will be directed by none other than Robert Rodriguez (Cameron will produce it). I believe that it can still be a great film, even without Cameron, in the hands of Rodriguez who can direct as he's demonstrated in the past on films like Dusk Till Dawn and Sin City. He, I believe, could pull off this film with the right script which, by the way, will be penned by Laeta Kalogridis who has worked on many films that I WOULD NOT SEE but who may do well with Alita given the source material. We will never know what this project could have been under Cameron just as we could only imagine what Cameron's interpretation of Spider-Man would have been like when he was originally tasked to bring the web-slinger to the big screen. Alita is supposed to come out in 2018 so there will be plenty of time for people to speculate on Rodriguez's vision of Alita. In the meantime, my choices of who I think could pull off Alita as well--or even better--than Cameron are 1) Paul Verhoeven 2) Ridley Scott 3) Stephen Spielberg. Any one of these guys could pull off both the action and story elements in Alita. Anyway, I can't wait till 2018!