Avatar is a 2009 film of the epic science fiction genre, written and directed by James Cameron. It has been described as one of the greatest and most influential films of all time by many movie critics and has been awarded three Academy Awards. In the film, James Cameron conveys multiple key ideas, such as the dangers of ecological destruction and betrayal and redemption, through various stylistic features including character development, symbolism and costuming. The film was created to make the audience realise what the humans have done and will continue doing to their own planet. It also makes the audience sympathise with the Na’vi and want to be different to the humans that were shown in the film.
The dangers of ecological destruction
…show more content…
This concept is shown through many stylistic features including character development and costumes. When Jake Sully first agrees to go on the mission as a bodyguard to protect Dr Grace Augustine and Norm Spellman, he was only interested in the money to cure his paraplegia, but as Jake becomes more involved with the Na’vi he realises preserving the planet of Pandora is more important than money. He gains the trust of the Na’vi and even becomes an official member of the clan. When the “Sky People” attack for the first time, Jake admits that he knew that this was going to happen and that he was sent there to spy on them and to try to move them out of their home saying, “Yes. Look, at first, it was just orders, and then, everything changed. Okay? I fell in love. I fell in love with the - with the forest, with the Omaticaya people... with you... with you...” The clan becomes angry at Jake and stops trusting him. Jake attempts to regain their trust by flying the Toruk and becoming Toruk Makto, when he lands, he is shown through a low angle shot which depicts his new power. When the clan sees the Toruk they immediately trust Jake again and listen to his plan to fight against the “Sky People”. Costumes are another main stylistic feature used to convey the key idea of betrayal and redemption. As Jake starts to regain the Na’vi’s trust he begins to wear more cultural clothing and accessories, symbolising how he is beginning to
Just as John Smith came to the New World to better his life with the riches so follows Jake Sully in search of a way to make enough money to pay for the incredibly expensive surgery needed to allow Jake to walk again. And like John Smith, Jake follows the white-man-assimilates-into-Native-American-Indian-culture narrative. Not only is Jake and his avatar initiated into the tribe, but he quickly becomes the most capable of them. The same parallels could be made with Kevin Costner’s 1990 film Dances with Wolves. And like Costner in Dances with Wolves, Jake chooses to stand with the indigenous population against his own race. This could be described as the "white savior" theme, where a member of the dominant race, often rejected by his own kind, proves to be the best. At one point Colonel Miles Quaritch asks Jake Sully (who are both white men): "How does it feel to betray your own race?" In the end, Jake chooses to permanently change species.
This isn’t something that he would have been able to access before. It is not inherent. However, Jake’s immediate fascination and revelatory state mimics the simultaneous inaccessibility and gradual self-enlightenment that comes with diasporic peoples aiming to learn more about their
Similarly, Jake keeps looking back in his past and resents the time's people have wronged him, particularly his father. The narrator states that “He [father] had a way of making it harder for me [Jake]” and how “always when I [Jake] was around him[father] I did things to make me ashamed”(35). So instead of learning from his past and his father’s shortcomings he latches onto them and does the same with his daughter and family. This demonstrates Jake’s unforgiving nature and how he has trouble accepting his former and current life. Throughout the story Jake is shown to be irresponsible as he spends his wife’s support check getting drunk, he constantly comments on everybody’s negative nature but never seems to embrace their positive side. He is heedless of his daughter’s life and is seen when he asks her how school is and she replies by saying that “It’s holidays”. Jake is an ironic character in the way that he doesn't like to communicate with people but he works as a salesman, he wants people to remember him but he keeps doing things that would make one forget him. Jake is very morose and has suicidal thoughts, one instance is when he thinks of his beer bottle as a gun. “His hand taking the gun to his mouth because he had nothing left to say and no reason to go on living”. Jake’s telephone symbolizes a choice, he can use the phone to reach out to people or have it disconnected which would mean him giving into his solitary life and perhaps commit suicide. But things seem to change when Jake has to save his drowning daughter’s life and he himself has a near death experience while trying to save her. This causes Jake to have an epiphany and rethink his approach to life, he decides that the time has come where he has to choose between hiding behind his telephone or using it to reach
The movie Avatar is about how the human race invades a planet called Pandora to mine a certain kind of resource and fights with the Na’vi, the race of creatures that live on Pandora. The main character Jake Sulley decides to take his brothers
An important theme in this book that the character of Jake displays very well is transformation. Through out the book, you see Mr. Gerbati take Jake through a “transformation journey” from stealing to stay alive, to becoming the son figure that Mr. Gerbati once had. Jake found a much better, healthier, and more stable father figure to live by everyday after meeting Mr. Gerbati, and being
Jake is consciously aware that there is a problem, which is more than can be said about his friends. Perhaps the people that surround Jake are the issue, though. His close friends and the people whom he travels with include Lady Brett Ashley, Robert Cohn, Bill, and Mike. Brett, the target of Jake’s unrequited affections, is likely someone whom he should stop spending time with; however, it seems that he just can’t get away from her. She is a very strong and independent woman who isn’t known to behave in a traditionally feminine way. Jakes does remark that although she is very independent, “She can’t go anywhere alone.” Robert Cohn is a Jewish, wealthy expatriate; but unlike many of his friends, did not spend any time in the war. Cohn also falls head over heels in love with Brett, who soon rejects his affections as well. As a wealthy, Jewish, non war veteran Cohn stands out in the group and his fumbling attempts to court Brett are the source of much mockery and leads to many fights. Bill is also an American veteran who seems to be always drinking. He tends to use humor to try and deal with the emotional scars of war; however, is not immune to the immaturity and cruelty sometimes characterized by Jake and his friends. Finally, Mike is a very heavy drinking Scottish war veteran who is completely bankrupt. He is seen to have a terrible temper, which most often displays while he is drunk. Mike is also not comfortable with the
It shows how Jake is persistent and dedicated to his job, even if it always seems like he is in over his head. Jake, however, also departs from the film noir tradition when he lets his emotions get the best of him. The greatest example of this is seen during the exchange between him and Evelyn when he is trying to find out the truth about Katherine. Resorting for the first time to violence against a woman, the near desperation with which Jake pushes Evelyn to confess is an expression of his fears and anxieties about being completely lost amidst the lies that surround him. The result is the humanization of Jake Giddes’ character. He simply is not perfect, and ultimately fails to see the bigger picture of what he is involved with until .
The advent of functional analysis (Iwata, Dorsey, Slifer, Bauman, & Richman, 1982/1994) and functional assessments (Dunlap & Kern, 1993) have provided behavior analysists with great ability to provide effective treatment for their clients. One common topic of research is the treatment of escape-maintained behaviors.
The plot of the movie is very simple, it takes place the future, where humans are looking to other planets for resources and this is a very likely future of the current human race because Earth is limited on resources and as we run out of resources we will have to look towards other planets for resources. Jake Sully, the main protagonist of the film, is a former U.S. Marine who is paralyzed from waist down and is selected to
The 2009 film Avatar directed by James Cameron is a stunning visual masterpiece that required state of the art animation technology. Avatar was officially budgeted at $237 million and became the highest grossing film of all time bringing in more than two billion at the box office. The film used a new form of stereoscopic filmmaking that was touted as a breakthrough in cinematic technology. Avatar was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won three, for Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects. Avatar can be analyzed from various new historicist perspectives and effectively makes provocative statements about social issues such as race relations, imperialism, environmentalism, and the tactics of the military industrial complex.
Avatar required 10 years to complete and was a visually stunning. A film with visionary technology, graphics, and film techniques. Director James Cameron developed and pioneered many of these techniques while creating this film, and propelled motion capture technology and film to a new level. The characters were well written and the actors chosen fit their roles very well. One of the characters in this epic film was Mo’at the spiritual leader of the Omaticaya clan. (Khare, 2009)
She sees Jake as an unintelligent, brainless, violence obsessed marine who doesn’t deserve a place in her program. As time progresses, Grace grows fond of Jake, his helpful tendencies and selflessness.
Being a science fiction fan during his childhood, he worked his way in producing several highly acclaimed science fiction movies such as Avatar, Aliens, and the Terminator. Born on August 16, 1954, in Ontario Canada and later moved to California to finish his college at California State University. In order to pursue his dreams in cinematography, he worked as a truck driver and would work on screenplays. Then his career began from an art director in Battle beyond the Stars (1980) to directing various films. Now, he is an Oscar-winning director whose films Titanic (1997) and Avatar (2009) remains the top grossing films of all time. He has won various awards from different sides of the world, Norway, France, and the United Kingdom. Mise-en-scenes were well incorporated in each of James Cameron’s movies especially for science fiction movies that used elegantly crafted visuals.
A cultural product that inspires me is the film trilogy The Lord of the Rings, which was directed by Peter Jackson. This movie gave me inspiration because of how beautiful and well put together the film was. It made me want to be involved with the process of how great films are made. According to Wikipedia, “Jackson knew he wanted to bring the movie to the big screen, and was curious to why nobody decided to do so.” He wanted to take advantage of the new technology, and create a fantasy that was serious and felt real (Wikipedia, 2014). Peter Jackson demonstrates the art and business of the film in many ways, which is culturally inspiring.
According to Marsh in James Cameron’s Titanic from 1997, Cameron set out to write a film that would bring the event of the Titanic to life.