The Sun-Herald

The Tribal Mind: Can you give Avatar a deeper story?

To nominate the buzz words of 2010 -- cortado, for example -- go to Who We Are.

by David Dale
IT HAS become trendy among conservative commentators to condemn Avatar as a piece of hippy commie propaganda that will turn our children into suicide bombers. Or do I exaggerate? The test of this theory will come at the next federal election, when there will be a swing of 68 per cent to the Greens if Avatar's 4 million ticket buyers have really been brainwashed in the way the commentators suggest.

Their fear of James Cameron's powers as a propagandist no doubt arose from the long-term influence of his last MEMEM (Most Expensive Movie Ever Made). Back in 1997, Titanic was seen by 6 million Australians. A Nielsen survey published recently in The Sydney Morning Herald revealed that 56 per cent of adults -- 9 million of us -- believe in heaven (while only 38 per cent believe in hell).

Instead of taking John Lennon's advice -- "Imagine there's no heaven" -- most Australians apparently prefer Cameron's theory, as expressed in the final moments of the film, that when they die, good people go to a place that looks like the first class lounge of Titanic (pre-iceberg -- presumably evil people go to a place that looks like the same lounge, post-iceberg).

Which brings us to the issue of the day: how would you make Avatar a more interesting story? My problem with the film is not its politics but its predictability. Within the first 15 minutes you can see exactly where it's going. It's beautiful but shallow -- especially on second viewing.

As a writer-director, Cameron wasn't always so superficial. Terminator and Terminator 2 are full of suspenseful twists and intriguing ideas about time travel, destiny and free will. And while Titanic had to follow the broad facts of history (the boat sinks), Cameron managed a surprise ending. We learn that Rose changed her name to escape her nasty mother and boyfriend, built a new life in America and travelled to the exploration vessel with the aim of returning something to the ocean.

She dies in her sleep and arrives in Cameron's afterlife - a scene which raises many fascinating questions. Is every person's heaven individual, so that when we die, each of us returns to the moment in our life when we were at our happiest? This scenario implies that Rose is not meeting the actual souls of the former passengers, but instead a bunch of entertaining clones created as a reward for her goodness.

Or is heaven a shared experience, which means Jack and the other drowned travellers have been waiting around in the first class lounge for 85 years until Rose can join them. And now that she's there, will Titanic miss the iceberg and land in a heavenly version of Manhattan, so the lovers can enjoy the life they would have experienced if there had been enough lifeboats? And then, if they grow old together, do they die again and go to yet another heaven?

Avatar offers no such provocations. It's little more than a spectacular visualisation of the early songs of Midnight Oil (and we hope Cameron is paying Peter Garrett an appropriate commission). So how might we make its storyline match its presentation?

In America, where they obsess over everything, there are now websites devoted to improving the plotline of Avatar (go here for an example). They suggest that Cameron should have made the characters more complex and the issues more difficult.

How about turning the spivvy company rep and the hardbitten colonel into idealists who need the unobtanium to save the earth from devastating drought? So Jake must choose between the survival of the human race and the religious sensibilities of a bunch of blue giants, rather than just between brutal capitalism and benign socialism.

Or how about making the planet's inhabitants less endearing -- perhaps committed to human sacrifice or cannibalism or hallucinogenic drugs or really ugly body piercings? Jake's choice would become much more debatable.

The possibilities are endless, and you can offer your suggestions by going to Comments. To learn what Avatar has in common with the oldest story ever published , go to Gilgamesh.

David Dale is the author of The Little Book of Australia -- A snapshot of who we are (Allen and Unwin). For daily updates on Australian attitudes, bookmark blogs.sunherald.com.au/whoweare.