Avatar

Juan Arreola
Mrs. Godbey
Eng 101
March 31 2013
Avatar
I want to describe the scenes in Avatar to show my readers that Avatar shows greed through the use of technology. James Cameron created this movie to provoke the society and show them many aspects that we ignore. James Cameron also created Avatar to also raise awareness and to criticize the U.S desire to expand by the use of greed.
The film Avatar is a movie with vivid colors and images. The director and writer of Avatar is James Cameron won Best director and movie of the year and best picture. In 2009 it was one of the highest grossing films that came out. It was budgeted at over 237 million dollars. The movie Avatar starts off with a young handicapped marine named Sully takes the place of his twin dead brother in an experiment that his brother was training for on the world of Pandora. He finds out that the owner of a greedy corporation is trying to run off the natives from their land to get the precious mineral that is scattered all over their land. Sully is asked to go into the natives land to gain their trust and in return the military will pay to get his legs fixed. Once he goes into the native’s world as an Avatar he begins to gain the natives trust and quickly falls in love with one of the natives named Neytiri. Sully then doesn’t want any harm to be brought to the natives but the General does not care and decides to move in and exterminate the natives. Instead of Sully fighting with his military he makes a stand against them with the natives in an epic battle for Pandora. The natives and the military go to war and eventually the natives overcome the military. Sully decides to stay in the Avatar world with Neytiri and becomes one of them. They do a transformation so where he doesn’t have to be connected to a machine. His soul leaves his body for good and enters the body of the avatar. In the movie Avatar of the things that stood out to me was greed. People don’t really realize in the movie that greed plays a big role throughout the whole movie and it is one of the many different things that we as people ignore. Were more focused on just watching the movie. A scenario that shows greed in real life is when Americans first came to this country and ran the Indians off their land to gain control and make it their land. The Americans and Indians went through a series of wars. Eventually the Indians were ran off towards the west and were continued to get ran off by the Americans as the Americans kept wanting more land. The Indians had nowhere to go and eventually lost everything. The Americans promised them that they would give them some land and some freedom, but they never got any of that. A scene that shows greed in particular is when the general and owner of the greedy corporation ask Sully, who is the main character, to go into the heart of the village and win the natives trust. The general asks Sully to go to the heart of the village where the sacred tree of souls is located. The sacred tree of souls is the most important thing that the natives own. It is their pride and belief. Sully cannot reject that because he is in the military and it is an order. One quote that James Cameron stated about Avatar was that,” This movie reflects that we are living through war, there are boots on the ground, troops who I personally believe were sent there under false pretenses, so I hope this will be part of opening our eyes”. Another thing that makes it tough for Sully is he is unable to walk so he sees this as an opportunity to show and prove that he can be useful to the military even though he can’t walk. But, in the avatar world of Pandora sully is able to walk, run, and do anything that a normal human can. So sully does not really have a choice. The general doesn’t care about the tree or the people of Pandora, he cares more for what is under the tree and that is the rich mineral unobatium. That mineral is only found on the planet of Pandora. It is a mineral that could provide lots of energy to run their technology. This just goes to show that Americans are willing to do anything to get what they want. They don’t care that it is someone’s home. That shows greed. They use war tactics to get what they want just like military’s do in the real life. There is a scene in particular that shows the destruction and heartless actions of the military in the movie Avatar. When the space ship is goes into the heart of the village of the natives and is chopping down trees and there are natives everywhere. They show no remorse or any feelings towards the natives and land. They are focused on one goal and that is getting the rich mineral that is under the tree of souls. They are destroying the land that the natives have taken care of for so long. It is their place where no one will ever bother them; at least they thought that no one would. Those ties into when I was talking about the Indians getting run off and getting their land destroyed. They never thought that anyone one ever come into their land. Never would have thought that an outsider would come and take over.
Another point of greed that James Cameron shows in the movie Avatar is the control of environment. In the movie scientists are trying to interact with the native people and take over and be like them. That is entering an unknown territory and taking over. They are not trying to do anything harmful to them. The military and the owner are the ones who sponsor the scientists to do their experiment. The scientists were not intending to do anything harmful, just science, but the military had other plans and the scientists were not aware at the beginning. They told the military that if they went in with guns and military action that it would disrupt the Pandora environment and cause the natives to take action. But, of course like any other military, when they have a goal they will do anything to gain it. The way that shows American culture is that Americans will do anything to gain land. Americans are all about malls, corporate inventions, stores, expanding their environment. They will cut down environments to put different companies and take over a colony. It’s all about Americans wanting to expand and expand their society. James Cameron created the world of Pandora to show what a world is like before the creation of shopping centers and buildings. It shows what our world used to be and what it has evolved to. It shows the technological advancement in the American world. I think that James Cameron wants us to realize that eventually we will start taking over our state parks, deserts, and any environmental place. The world is going to be full of stores, malls, houses, buildings and cities. We are not going to have anywhere to get away to.
So in conclusion James Cameron wants us to realize the big picture, and that is that greed leads to causing people to do harmful things to gain what they want. They will have no remorse towards any human being or colony. Avatar is a great movie that shows what greed does to someone. Personally I never would have seen the picture at first, but after doing my research and seeing more deep into it I realize that greed is the cause to a lot of problems. Especially in our world. I recommend this to anyone that thinks our world is full of corrupt military’s.

Works Cited
"Themes in Avatar." Wikipedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, n.d. Web. 21 Feb. 2013. <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Themes_in_Avatar>.

Cited: "Themes in Avatar." Wikipedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, n.d. Web. 21 Feb. 2013. &lt;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Themes_in_Avatar&gt;.