yay! I’m so glad I’m not the only person who wasn’t convinced of this story! I found it so silly and contrived…the big evil capitalist white men come along and don’t understand this sacred, balanced and spiritual culture. Instead of respecting the culture and it’s inhabitants their selfish and greedy desire for money and profits pushed them to attack and destroy their homeland.
The film was loaded with unwarranted connections between free markets and war, modernity and intolerance, ignorance and enlightenment etc..
The script unwittingly concedes to the truthfulness and consistency of the very ideology they begin to attack; private property and free markets. The natives end up essentially defending their private property (the tree village) and the freedom to hunt and trade and live how they see fit (free markets). They reject the notion of living under the rules and provisions of the military contractors (government) who would force them to give up a portion of their way of life (taxation) in exchange for a better life with schools and medicine and technology (government services).
Am I surprised that a big time Hollywood director was impressed by a script that was so poorly thought out and ideologically confused? Not at all. I am shocked that the people of this country are so gullible and so willing to secede their critical faculties for flashing jungle lights and tall skinny blue people.
Don’t even get me started on the reinforcement of contemporary standards of unattainable beauty; with 12 foot tall, perfect, skinny people with 10 inch waists and perfect muscle tone. Really? The entire tribe of blue people do crunches and drink protein shakes all day?
This movie was a visually stunning masterwork of ocular bedazzlement with a convoluted and childish view of the world. I know, I know…it’s the “noble savage” concept. This story isn’t new. It’s a part of the occidental world’s anxious self awareness. It’s born of the embarrassment we have of our own dark past and the fact that we have so much while so many people have so little.
But is this what passes for deeply insightful storytelling? I won’t lie, I was very entertained, until I gave it a second thought.
7/10
