After watching RRR, I wanted to find something similar to watch during the pre-final week, and I ended up finding Avatar 1, which is similar to the RRR’s theme of revolution and resistance, but in someways different.
So it is set in 2154 on the moon Pandora, Avatar follows Jake Sully, a former Marine soldier set by the corporation (RDA) to help secure a rare mineral called unbotaium. Jake used a artifically designed Avatar body, infiltrates the Navi tribe, but eventually fall in love with Neytiri and the culture, and he had choose between the human corporation he serve or the world he loved. A very typical mode of the good beats the bad, but its political story behind is much more considerable.
(Like most Sci-Fi, high-tech enemy stuff always get beated)
THe director Cameron has admitted that the film is openly about imperialism, where technologically superior humans are tyring to uproot a native population for their precious resources and not care at all about the survival of the tribe. This echoed the European colonialism in the Americas and all the other empires. The RDA’s machines and ships are of the same role as the British cannons and rifles in RRR, a symbol of a system that only see the land, the people, the environment as accessible resources able to be turned into profit.
Stylistically, Avatar and RRR shared the use of large amounts of props. RRR has tigers, motorcycles, dance battles, guns, and large fights. Avatar has neon forests, floating mountains, air and ground combat, and all those high-tech machines and magical creatures. Both film use spectacle as it is realistic, and the CGI technology only make the battles look cooler. The final battle, where Pandora’s wildlife joins Navi against the human army, mirror the RRR’s final battle of Ram and Bheem (fire and water) against the British army. They both represent nature and people rising together against the empire and power.
Thematically, these two movies also rhyme. In RRR, Ram and Bheem are basically superman, the two basically killed a battalion of English soldiers with only arrows and spear. In Avatar, Jake’s body is also some kind of superman figure, where it allows him to connect with a new world that his human body cannot survive. Both film use physically strong heros as fantasy answers to a real historical question: what if the people are strong enough to fight back?
RRR is rooted on the Indian rebellion against the British in history, while Avatar abstractly framed the same event into a sci-fi story. The actual history and name are gone, but the main idea still exists, and the power difference still remains. This makes Avatar, the blue skinned epic story that turns anti imperial anger and grief into one gigantic battle, less specific but more universally applicable.
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