The Biodiversity of Other Worlds

Warning: This post contains mild Avatar spoilers.

I want to show you something. Pull the slider bar across to 1:37 in this clip of the Jim Henson masterpiece and my favorite childhood film, “The Dark Crystal,” and watch until about 2:33.

Amazing, huh? It’s made even more amazing by the fact that all these creatures were real tangible things dreamed up and manufactured by the Jim Henson studio. In the making-of documentary, you can see them assembling them by hand like traditional European craftsmen (many of whose skills they used). This was a movie I watched over and over whenever I could on the gigantic early VCR owned by our neighbors down the road in rural Tennessee when I was 5 or 6. I absolutely loved it, even though the first 5 minutes of the were missing because my neighbors were slow on hitting “record”.  Even little Jen(me) was fascinated by the diversity of life – even imagined life.

Last night I saw Avatar on opening night in 3D on an IMAX screen in Denver, and I got to live this experience all over again.

Avatar is not a movie that is long on brains or wit, even by the standards of other James Cameron films. I wish they’d spent half the time on the script they spent on the visuals. You could also compile a list 20 or 25 items long of elements this movie shares with other Cameron films, from big things like a strong female lead (all films), to a soulless corporation driving evil in the name of profits (Aliens, The Abyss, Titanic; which, by the way, is a major reason yours truly has all her money in “socially responsible” investments) down to really subtle details like a supporting female character who’s really good at operating an unusual vehicle (One Night in the Abyss) or a bad guy fighting the good guy toward the end of the movie in an unbreathable environment in a machine that gets its front window cracked, thus admitting some of the deadly medium (Michael Biehn’s character in the Abyss).

But James Cameron films have their virtues, and they are a passionate attention to detail, a high sense of adventure, protagonists you want to love, and really deadly/exotic/fantastically beautiful aliens. In this film, he’s taken this latter theme, one he started with the fantastic ctenophore-inspired aliens from “The Abyss” (still my favorite Cameron film) and used it to imagine the biodiversity of another world. For those of us fascinated by life, there is a lot to see and wonder at in this film. It provides, as Manohla Dargis of the New York Times says in her review, the big WOW.

Because it’s such a magical experience, I’m not going to give much of it away, except to say it’s obvious these creatures were inspired at least in part by computer geeks, given that they all have USB ports. But Cameron takes the modus operandi of people trying to re-imagine life on other worlds – putting sea creatures on land or making plants animals, ones which Henson and legendary conceptual artist Brian Froud drew on heavily to imagine the world of the Dark Crystal – and takes it up a notch. In one of my first posts I told you the parasite Giardia resembles the love child of a squid and a kernel of corn. In Avatar, you get to find out what happens when a jellyfish and a dandelion make sweet, sweet love.

As has been pointed out by many reviewers, Cameron’s narrative breaks no new ground and simply retells some of America’s classic, and not always proud stories (Pocahontas, Dances With Wolves) with lesser dialogue and characters. Even the facial structure and ears of the blue alien Na’vi strongly recall those of gelflings, above. But oh, what a world in which to retell our stories. For people who are not biodiversity-philes, this movie takes a bit of the wonder that I easily feel crawling around the Colorado forest floor after a good rain or watching D.A. ramble on in his adorable, thick British accent about marine worms and dumps it right in their laps. Cameron was so attentive to detail there are things in “Avatar” for even lichenologists and bryophiles to love. I won’t give it away, but when you first see the rainforest of the forest moon Pandora (wait a minute . . . Endor? Pandora? ) through the avatars’ eyes there is a tiny 3D detail that will take your breath away. Though sadly, this biodiversity afficianado has never been to a real rainforest (it’s up there on my list of dreams along with traveling to the deep sea in a submersible), Avatar puts me as close as I’m likely to get for a while, and it does so in glorious 3D. I’ve never heard so many audible “wows” from an audience, myself included. Thank you, Mr. Cameron.

Tagged as: Avatar, biodiversity, James Cameron, The Dark Crystal