The year is 2009. It’s probably right after Christmas. My seven-year-old self is sitting on the couch eating Kraft Mac and Cheese and enjoying myself in the way that only someone who doesn’t yet have to worry about existential anxiety or trying to be an adult can. It was an iconic period for kids entertainment, with premieres of movies like Up, Hannah Montana the Movie, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, and Coraline (if you were into that kind of traumatic experience). But I wasn’t watching kids’ entertainment. Instead, I had my child-sized eyes glued to the television watching none other than Avatar (2009).
In case you were living under a rock in 2009, Avatar is a science-fiction film almost entirely created, produced, and directed by James Cameron. He actually began working on the film in the mid-1990’s, but didn’t begin production until almost a decade later because he didn’t think cinema technology was advanced enough to convey his vision. In the meantime, he directed films like Titanic (if you’re surprised that both of these films came out of the same brain, so was I). The wait ultimately paid off, because Avatar became the record-breaking, highest grossing film of all time up until the 2019 release of Avengers: Endgame.
I like to refer to the short, few day long period in late 2009 as my Avatar phase, during which I watched the film at least twice a day. We hadn’t yet hit that period where everyone on the planet had a Netflix subscription, so the movie was rented from Xfinity On Demand. After the two day rental was up, I managed to convince my dad to rent it a second time so I could watch it yet again (I too would probably cough up the $4.99 if it kept my child from running around like a tiny gremlin on a rampage). After I came to my senses and returned to watching actual kids content (or, more realistically, when my dad turned down my request to rent the movie a third time), I didn’t watch Avatar again until just this week. And honestly, it’s still a good film.
Avatar is one of those movies that I hear a lot of people jokingly reference but rarely say they genuinely like. Don’t get me wrong, it’s definitely still a movie about big blue alien people with freaky neurocognitive tails. And it certainly hasn’t built up a fanbase like other science fiction films, but the effort put into the creation of this movie clearly paid off here.
I’m shamelessly guilty of buying certain things just because they’re aesthetically pleasing, which explains a lot about why Avatar appealed to me so much. The movie is visually beautiful—2 hours and 42 minutes of floating mountains, bioluminescent forests, and intricate sci-fi landscapes. I had the same reaction to these scenes in my rewatch as I did when I was a kid: mainly ‘that’s so epic!’. The appearance of the characters themselves did fall a bit short (although I did notice for the first time that the na’vi have glowing freckles. How cool is that?) For a movie that’s mostly CGI, the technology held up surprisingly well. However, there were a few scenes where the Avatars looked a little too video game character-esque. I found myself able to look past this pretty easily. All in all there were very few things about the cinematography that screamed ‘this movie is over a decade old’.
Unlike when I was a kid, I found myself paying a lot more attention to the plot and core themes. I wouldn’t say that everything about the film’s portrayal of intergalactic colonization is appropriate for today’s society. The plot does make an unfortunate use of the white savior complex. Despite this, it was at least satisfying to see the white savior in question be repeatedly physically and verbally chastised for his own ignorance and stupidity. Beyond some of the outdated portrayals, the movie still hits hard against corporate greed and big production’s disrespect of not only the environment but also the native communities that work hard to protect it. I can appreciate this a lot more now that I’m older considering the current state of things environmentally. Seeing the lengths to which the movie’s villain goes for a bit of cash makes me angry, which I think was the intent. So I guess James Cameron must have done something right.
I’m not sure I would have been so pleasantly surprised watching some of my other childhood favorites (I’m looking at you, Sharkboy and Lavagirl), but it was cool to re-experience Avatar from a different perspective and still be dazzled by it. In the event that you never got a chance to watch it in 2009—or any of the thirteen years since then—I highly recommend giving it a watch.
