Warning: Spoilers ahead. If you have not seen Avatar yet, go see it now. Twice. Or, if all this nonsense I noticed isn't coincidence, maybe don't see it at all, but it has to be a coincidence.
A lot of people have compared Avatar to Dances With Wolves and FernGully, due to the superficial resemblance of the plots of those movies. However, neither of those movies quite matches the plot of Avatar. Costner's character wasn't sent out to infiltrate the Native Americans; he was basically abandoned at an outpost and met the Native Americans out of boredom. And I never saw it (note to people my age and older who keep bringing this up: why did you see a cheesy not-even-Disney cartoon that came out in 1992??), but I don't think the logger guy in FernGully was sent to infiltrate the fairies, since IMDB says they live in a secret world (thus, presumably, nobody knows they're there). There is a much closer real-life analog to Jake Sully (the hero of Avatar): Hitler. Bear with me.
In Avatar, Jake Sully, a war vet who was wounded in combat, was sent by the RDA Corporation to infiltrate the Na'vi. In 1919, Hitler, a war vet who was wounded in combat, was sent by the Reichswehr to infiltrate the German Workers' Party. The Na'vi are an indigenous population that doesn't let anyone near them who doesn't look like them (thus the avatars). The German Workers' Party was later renamed the National Socialist (German: Nationalsozialismus, abbreviated Na'zi or Nazi) Party. We all know what the Nazis thought about people who didn't look like them.
It doesn't stop there, though. Despite not quite fitting the Na'vi ideal (he has too many fingers, he wasn't born there, his face is shaped wrong, and, of course, he's part human), Sully rises through the ranks of the Na'vi to lead them. Likewise, despite not fitting the Nazi ideal (born in Austria, not tall enough, black hair, rumors that he may have been part Jewish), Hitler rose through the ranks of the Nazis to become their leader.
Jake has a mentor, Dr. Grace Augustine. She runs the avatar program, and teaches Jake how to act and how to speak. SPOILER NOT IN THE COMMERCIALS: She is imprisoned with Sully, but dies shortly after that imprisonment (during an escape). Hitler also had a mentor, Dietrich Eckart. Eckart was one of the early founders of the German Workers' Party, and, according to Wikipedia, "Eckart became Hitler's mentor ... teaching him how to dress and speak, and introducing him to a wide range of people." Eckart participated in the Beer Hall Putsch with Hitler, and was arrested and jailed with him. Eckart was released due to illness, and died shortly thereafter. OK THE SPOILING IS OVER.
The code name for Avatar while filming was Project 880. Among Neo-Nazis, 88 is used as a code to identify one another (H is the 8th letter of the alphabet, so 88 means "Heil Hitler").
I have to be wrong about this, right? James Cameron didn't just make a 230-million-dollar Neo-Nazi movie, did he?
6 comments:
Oh my god. Please let that be a coincidence. And never make me think about it again.
OK so maybe I'm NOT voting for Cameron in 2012 after all
I like the way you think Jon. Still, I think its is a case of taking several things in common putting them together to construct a scary scenario.(insert Twilight Zone theme here)With that said, lets keep an watchful eye on Herr Cameron. - riley
I think I'm going to have a hot fudge sundae and think about this one!
I haven't seen 'Dances With Smurfs' but I have read several deconstructions. This was the most interesting.
I had read (might be true) that the artists originally created the Na'vi to be quite alien but then modified the body form until the female Na'vi were suitably sexually attractive to human males (not that that takes a whole lot of effort).
I still might go see it. I hear that the special effects in 3D are pretty good.
Not just that. The Na'vis act like the Nazis. Except for in the movie, they are smarter and less crazy than Hitler.
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