Pocahontavatar: A Review of Two Wonderful, Identical Films

Let me first say this: I think that it is unnecessary to spend 300 million dollars on anything unless it's a cure to a fatal disease, feeding those skinny kids with big bellies or buying buckets of water to douse a litter of burning puppies. Seriously. That's the only time when people should throw that much money at one thing. That being said... Avatar was totally badass. It was also badass 15 years ago when it was Pocahontas. So, I am going to kill two birds with one stone and, because I do not know how to make a digital venn diagram, review both films at the same time.

Oh. Minor Spoiler Alert. (Though if you do not know how Avatar is going to end ten seconds after it's begun, you are probably not intelligent enough to be seeing a PG-13 movie.)

The film opens with an unrealistically handsome leading man talking about how he longs for adventure and a fresh start in The New World/Pandora, a planet in a distant universe. The dashing hero has a big handicap: he is paralyzed from the waist down/he hates Jews even though he works in the film industry (it's Mel Gibson did the voice of John Smith. IMDB it.) There is a British Governor/Scarred Southern Colonel who is in charge of the mission and wants to rape the fertile new land, kill the indigenous people and generally likes shooting shit. He is also obsessed with finding gold/unobtainium (no... that's really what it's called in Avatar. I can not make this up.) The indigenous people are Savages/Hostiles. They don't know the true value of the land they live on. OR DO THEY?!

The leading man gets lost after singing a song/after his brain is transferred into a huge, blue alien and some weird roach-jaguar makes him jump off of a waterfall. He doesn't know how to deal with his beautiful, albeit strange and dangerous, surroundings. Enter Pocahontas/Neytiri, a beautiful native who is coincidentally the Princess of her tribe. Pocahontas/Na'Vi is skeptical of this pale face/paraplegic in a blue alien's body. How ignorant he is! He does not know how to sing with all the colors of the wind/he does not know how to jump off trees and swing from branches like an orangutan. That's why Pocahontas/Neytiri must sing to him as she leads him through a gracefully animated montage/ must call him ignorant as little flying jellyfish land on his skin. It's really pretty. I bet it's even prettier stoned. (I know for a fact that one of these films IS prettier when you're stoned. Guess which one.)

Ultimately, John Smith/Jake Scully learns how paint with all the voices of the mountain/attach his hair to the tentacles of weird dragon like things and fly them with his mind. This impresses Pocahontas/Neytiri. And she realizes that she has fallen in lurve with this bangin' foreigner. So, in a gesture of trust, she takes him to the most sacred place of her people: Grandmother Willow/Telepathic-Tentacle Tree. Grandmother Willow/Telepathic-Tentacle Tree says "que, que na-to-rah, you will understand,"/"This planet is all one living thing." John Smith and Pocahontas kiss because their love transcends race./Jake Sully and Neytiri do it because their love transcends species. (At least... I think they do it. I'm not really sure. They might just touch tentacles. It fades out before anything gross really happens.)

This union pisses a lot of people off. Namely, the princess' betrothed: Kocoum/Tsu'tey. They hate this Pale Face/Avatar. How could the Princess fall in love with an outsider? What an insult to the tribe! What a personal affront! So, Kocoum gets violent and attacks John Smith, causing Thomas (the hottest cartoon ever) to shoot the enraged Native American/Tsu'tey decides that Jake Skully is not that bad. I mean, whatevskies.

So, lots of shit happens that makes us question who the savages really are. Not that we seriously questioned who the savages are. I mean, the people who can talk to animals and are all zen with the earth and are all skinny and tan/blue are obviously the good guys, right? And the Fat British Guy/Trigger Happy Muscle Man with a Southern Drawl is obviously the bad guy, right? Now there are lots of kick-ass, mind-blowing fight sequences happening/everyone starts to sing in cannon. Lots of people die, horrible, bloody deaths/everything is solved non-violently when the wind blows, because it's Disney.

There is a resolution. The Virginia Company sailors realize the error of their ways and return to England/the Big Blue People lead the Earthlings back to their ships at gunpoint, ordering them never to return, on pain of death.

And everything turns out hunky dory! Except for when the Europeans came back to the New World in droves and brutally kill the Native American people and their culture. So, when Mr. Cameron decides to make another movie in ten years, I think we can expect the twelve ft. tall, blue Na'Vai being herded onto reservations and opening casinos.

xo.