The last person on Earth to see Avatar

That would be me. And I somehow rounded up three other people who also had not seen the Movie Everybody Else in the World Had Already Seen to watch it with me. (The same group, incidentally, that gathered to watch "The Hurt Locker" earlier in the spring, a film which beat "Avatar" for Best Picture at the Oscars.)

I did not want to like Avatar. I'm not a contrarian by nature, it's just that the movies getting all the hype are generally disappointing to me for predictable reasons: behind all the style, there's no substance. Nothing to sink your teeth into besides popcorn, nothing to leave you thinking. And besides predictable reasons, these movies are predictable in and unto themselves. Man fights great battle, enemy vanquished. Blahdy blahdy blah.

But I DID like Avatar. Kind of a lot. For one, the style was innovative and cool enough that the lapses in substance were forgivable, though still worth noting. Mr. James Cameron beats the viewer about the head and chest with his anti-war message: Humans who've ruined their planet head to the lush and magical Pandora, light years away, and are miffed when the blue-but-sexy natives reject their advances. Turns out there's a load of highly-prized "unobtanium" under their sacred tree that the Americans - I mean, humans - want to swipe. Yes. UNOBTANIUM. And the humans go so far as to create avatars that look just like the blue n' sexy folk, complete with a sick hip-to-waist ratio, so that they may infiltrate and propagate. Until, of course, somebody gets a conscience. "This reminds me of 'Dances with Wolves'," said one of my astute movie companions. Or '"Last of the Mohicans." Or fill-in-the-blank. We all agreed, my movie-watching companions and I, that while the "The Hurt Locker" wasn't perfect, it portrayed war as complex, not good/bad or black/white.

And still, the movie unexpectedly made me think. Among the native Na'vi people, they respectfully address someone before speaking by saying, "I see you." Such a simple and beautiful gesture, to acknowledge that one has been seen, made visible, that a person is worth noting and recognizing. I see you. You exist. Your matter matters. This was a small part of the movie, but perhaps my favorite part, aside from being on another freaking planet for nearly three hours (what is watching a movie but being an avatar, getting to walk around in another life, another place?) and the floating jellyfish-thingies and flowers-but-not-flower thingies and the flying quasi-pterodactyls. And the humans who'd seal themselves in a pod at their space station and mind-meld into their avatars, being able to see through new eyes and run on new legs.

Perhaps it'll look dated in a year, but all things do. And maybe should.

It turns out I'm not the Last Person in the World to see this movie. When I mentioned my theory recently, none of the five people I was hanging out with had seen it, either.



And because I would now like to beat you about the head and chest with this word, let's say it one more time: Unobtanium.