1) Full disclosure: I have not seen this movie. (If I do, at some point, it'll be because it literally looks good.) Despite this, I don't feel particularly bad about critiquing it. Given the number of reviews, the Wikipedia summaries, etc. that are available to me, I don't know that it's necessary to actually see the thing.
2) There's a pretty decent article here by Annalee Newitz that confirms up my concerns about the movie. In brief, it laments the sub-genre of films wherein a white guy - the Guy That (white, male) Viewers Can Relate To - is tasked with assimilation/eliminating an alien other, only to reverse course and join them. The link mentions Dances With Wolves, though Pocahontas and The Last Samurai also came to my mind immediately. Newitz also characterizes it as an expression of white guilt, about colonialism but also, I would imagine, about environmental damage. And in being an expression of guilt it's also, indirectly, an expression of an incredibly over-sized sense of self-worth and importance. (I'm thinking particularly, here, of Tom Cruise's character in The Last Samurai, who literally becomes the titular character and offers to teach the Japanese Emperor about samurai culture, as well as the guilt that the filmmakers are expressing for the industrialization and modernization of Japan, which serves to more subtly take credit for Japan's subsequent rise to international military and economic power.)
3) I find it impossible to remember what Sam Worthington looks like. To my mind, he has the most bland and unexceptional face I've ever seen on a celebrity, and he looks somehow like a different person every time I see him. (This, as opposed to my problem with Ed Burns, whose face I can remember but whose name I can never remember - and which I spent hours trying to recall when it first occurred to me that the problem I have with him is not unlike the one I have with Worthington. Also, I really can't stand Ed Burns.)
2 comments:
Do you care about spoilers? (I'm guessing not, but thought I'd check because there is SO MUCH I want to complain about).
A bunch of family members went to go see it, so I joined in. And it's like they took the most problematic elements of both Pocahontas and the Last Samurai and combined them in this film. Not only does Tom Cruise become one of the greatest samurai ever and lead them into battle against the emperor, but the body-transfer-magic-thing also allows John Smith to become an aboriginal so that he doesn't have to leave.
Ain't that sweet? Not only does it does it alleviate white guilt, but it allows white people to literally become the Other.
The only thing I find interesting about this film (I mean, aside for the computer graphic, which were so phenomenal that at one point I found myself thinking about how good the make-up was) is that it illustrates Richard Dyer's white=death argument even better than the precursors from which it draws. 'Humanity' in this film seems totally stagnant - we're told that Earth is dying and they seem to have no culture or religion to speak of. But that's a much longer post or discussion...
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