Avataricke

I don’t go to see films very much, but I have been to watch the much-hyped James Cameron movie, Avatar, and I am glad I did.

I thought it was excellent and the animation and special effects were cutting edge, but what interested me most is that it basically tells the story of what has happened on Earth – albeit back to front.

The plot, which takes place in the year 2154, involves a people with blue skin and lion-type noses who are native to Pandora, ‘a moon of the gas giant, Polyphemus, which orbits Alpha Centauri A’. They live in total harmony with their environment and they know that everything is connected and part of a unified Consciousness.

The trees and plant life of Pandora have formed electrochemical connections between the roots which act as neurons to form a sentient planet-wide ‘brain’, or Consciousness. The blue people, called the ‘Na’vi’, have their own ‘root connectors’ which allow them to ‘plug in’, through plants and trees, to this network of ‘Oneness’.

But then the humans arrive with their advanced technology. They are administrators and soldiers representing the RDA corporation which wants to mine Pandora for an extremely valuable ore called ‘unobtainium’ (the dictionary definition of this word is ‘a humorous colloquialism that refers to any extremely rare, costly, or physically impossible material needed to fulfil a given design for a given application’).

The humans set up a sealed base to protect themselves from what is to them the poisonous atmosphere of Pandora. When they are not in the base or their flying craft they have to wear masks to breathe.

Some of the humans are able to mingle with the Na’vi for purposes of manipulation thanks to genetically-engineered Na’vi bodies which they technologically ‘possess’.

One human, a former Marine called Jake Sully, agrees to be part of this infiltration because he is genetically compatible with a Na’vi body that had been specially made for his late brother. These human-Na’vi DNA...