James Cameron’s film, Avatar, is a very moving story about freedom and choices. Jake Sully, an ex-marine, travels to Pandora to fulfil his brother’s dream of being in an avatar body and researching the environment on Pandora. Jake goes through a lot of hard times and ends up having to choose between being human and destroying Pandora, or being one of the Na’vi and saving the girl he loves and her people. James Cameron has highlighted choices that we have to make in our world by presenting them in a different context.
Watching the film makes a person really think about discrimination, humanity and the choices we make in our world because of how the humans have made the wrong choices in Avatar. James Cameron’s filming techniques were outstanding by the way he made the main themes stand out so much. Two scenes that can be compared and contrasted to show the main themes, hope and not giving up, are the destruction of the Tree of Souls and The Great Battle. In destroying of the tree of souls Neytiri and Jake are helpless and cannot go up against the big machines that are tearing the place down.
The camera is angled down to show how small Jake and Neytiri are compared to the bulldozer. Even though Jake had finished the final stages of becoming a man with the Na’vi, he was still shifting back and forth between worlds, which made him even more useless in this situation. We know this because Jake says, “Everything is backward now, like out there is the real world and in here is the dream” This proves that Jake feels he is becoming one of the Na’vi but yet is still a human and cannot just leave that life yet. He is probably confused and cannot believe that the humans could be so selfish.
The destruction of The Tree of Souls also shows viewers that the humans are really strong as they have the advantage of gun power and huge war machines. It looks like the Na’vi could easily lose the battle since they are only fighting with arrows. In this scene, James Cameron has successfully captured the weakness of the Na’vi and the heartlessness of the sky people. He has made the bulldozers look large, scary and intimidating, and when the tree is knocked over, the natural light makes the place look quite ugly. Since a long shot was used when filming this scene, viewers can see the size of the bulldozer.
In contrast, the Great Battle is a scene where Jake and Neytiri see that Eywa has heard Jakes call and has sent animals to help with the battle. These scenes are connected and can be compared because when Jake and Neytiri see that the Tree of Souls has been destroyed they start losing the battle and losing hope, but when the animals come charging to the Great Battle, hope rises back up inside of them and is seen on their faces as their eyes light up and glisten again. This is a main theme because it proves that you should never give up hope and that everything is possible.
Jake had hope in Eywa when he said “If Grace is there with you- Look into her memories- She can show you the world we come from. There’s no green there. They killed their mother, and they’re gonna do the same here. More sky people are gonna come. They’re gonna come like a rain that never ends, unless we stop them. They chose me for something. I will stand and fight, you know I will. But I need a little help. ” Before the animals came, Neytiri was going to try one last ditch effort at saving her people and the look on her face showed that her hope was almost gone.
Instead of hope on her face there was fear and terror. Eywa hears Jake and sends the animals to help. When Neytiri sees this, she is delighted and excited. A close up on her face is used to show this excitement. “Eywa has heard you Jake! Eywa has heard you! ” This is a big change from when the Tree of Souls was destroyed and she was losing hope. Like Neytiri, Jake was saddened and lost hope when the Tree of Souls was destroyed, but when he hears that Eywa hearing his call, he is delighted and full of hope.
There is another main theme within these two scenes and that is to respect other people the way you would like to be respected. The horrible things that the humans had done came back to haunt them. The humans ended up getting what they deserved and “Went back to their dying home. Only a few were chosen to stay” In all things, it is better to hope than to despair especially in this case. Without hope and Jake’s help, the Na’vi would have lost their battle and lost their world. Again James Cameron has made a wonderful film and the main themes shine through like the sun. Hope should never be lost.
