ABCNews writes it up: conservatives hate Avatar.
In that article they cite Ross Douthat of the NYT, Jonah Goldberg of NRO, John Podhoretz of the Weekly Standard, and a few others as conservatives who detest James Cameron’s epic diatribe against future-colonialism. To that list they could have added the Spectator‘s William Tucker and Peter Ferrara.
The aspects of the movie that those critics dislike are lame. But they’re so cartoonish and ham-fisted that I didn’t find them problematic. Hating Avatar for its anti-Americanism is like hating Aladdin for its negative portrayal of grand viziers — the soldiers in Avatar compare to US soldiers about the same way that Jafar would to a good and decent vizier.
There is a sequence in Avatar, probably 30 of the film’s 160 minutes, where it portrays the main character spending half his time in the human base camp and half his time as an avatar in the Na’vi village. As he goes along he finds himself happier with the Na’vi and longing to spend more and more time with them. You, the viewer, are forced to join him in this character development, because Cameron’s Pandora is so visually appealling compared to anything else that you want the main character to stay there and never go back to the humans. It’s a masterstroke. You’re depriving yourself if you don’t see it in 3D.
UPDATE: Wow, I’m getting killed in the comments…
