AVATAR, ILLUSION AND REALITY

Avatar is a 2009 film, from James Cameron, which featured Sam Worthington, Zoë Saldaña, Michelle Rodriguez, Sigourney Weaver, and Stephen Lang.

The film, which was produced by Lightstorm Entertainment and distributed by 20th Century Fox, tells us a story that takes place in the year 2154 and depicts a conflict in Pandora, one of the moons of Polyphemus, one of the three fictional gas planets that orbit the system Alpha Centauri.

In Pandora, human colonizers and Na'vi, native humanoid, go to war over the planet's resources and the continued existence of the native species.

The film's title refers to the hybrid Na'vi-human bodies, created by a group of scientists through genetic engineering, to interact with the natives of Pandora.

It also means an alternative body, or alternative personality or persona, today it is quite common in social networks to have a homonymous program that allows the caricatural representation of the user.

In the context of the film, it turns out to be a pun, because when we are driven by the reality of Jake Sully, we realize the avatar was the essence of the former paraplegic marine, and that the past and lived reality outside the Na' vi world, are the real fantasy.

They become throughout the film, only a shell to which he returns, without any meaning for the new mission he embraces, that of defending the world that welcomes him in Pandora.

The film has a strong ecological message and seeks to demonstrate the total uselessness of war as well as its obsolete value system, but it clearly states that the essence of each one takes place in the social world and not in the natural tendency towards paralysis or the inconsequential destruction of nature and the support of life, fully demonstrates that competition and greed lead to loss of humanity.

The film also advocates the acceptance of difference, whether of race, creed, or gender and seeks to demonstrate a path for humanity, renouncing power and domination due to sharing and above all the gift of the essence that is the connection with the all so well demonstrated at the resurrection ceremony.

The religious dimension is also decisive, because it appears here associated with the sense of spirituality separating it from its commercial and institutional side, once again the film is innovative in describing the Na' vi society as a society of balance between the feminine and the masculine, where the two unite to govern, the connection between animal life and intelligent life is also determined in the rites of passage where the natives learn to conduct their flying mounts.

The passage of Jake Sully is the transformation of a man who was a soldier who served the greed of men in a private army whose sole purpose was to explore and destroy the planet Pandora by a metal called "impossible to obtain" and which becomes a servant of nature, protector of the ancestral connection of quartz trees, which appeals to the ancestral legend of the first and oldest trees of Gaia.

Pandora is inhabited by a species of humanoids called Na'vi. Measuring almost 3 meters in height, with a tail, bones naturally reinforced with carbon fiber and bioluminescent skin, the Na' vi live in harmony with nature and are considered primitive by humans. They worship the goddess of life, called Eywa.

Humans are not able to breathe in Pandora's atmosphere, which is rich in carbon dioxide, methane, and ammonia. Besides, they do not have a peaceful coexistence with the Na'vi because they do not understand their culture of venerating and deeply feeling nature.

The human researchers coordinated by Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) created the Avatar Program, genetically modified human - Na' vi hybrids. A human who shares genetic material with an Avatar is mentally connected and can connect via neural connections that allow control of the Avatar's body. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is a former paraplegic marine who goes to Pandora wanting money for an operation that would cure him of paralysis.

Jake's twin brother Thomas was a scientist on the Avatar program and upon dying, Jake is called to take his place on the program for his genetic similarity that would allow compatibility with his brother's Avatar. Dr. Augustine is not happy with the replacement, as Jake's brother was a scientist with years of training to participate in the program.

Jake, for his part, has never used an Avatar and does not know the Na'vi culture. The research team lets him participate in the program, taking him more as a security guard than as a scientist.

When Jake is escorting Grace and biologist Norm Spellman (Joel David Moore) in the form of an Avatar, he is attacked by a local creature and is lost to the rest of the group. In the jungle, he is saved by a female Na' vi, Neytiri (Zoë Saldaña). Neytiri initially wants to leave Jake, but after he is covered with seeds from the Tree of Life, he decides to take him to the Home Tree, where his clan, the Omaticaya, lives.

When Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) hears about Jake's close connection to the Na'vi, which Neytiri is being taught about Pandora, promises him functional legs in exchange for convincing the Omaticaya to leave the Home Tree, which is over a huge reserve of Unobtainium.

In three months, Jake ends up getting involved with the Na'vis and falls in love with the planet Pandora, their culture and their way of life and starts to prefer the Na'vi way of life, joins the Omaticaya and starts a relationship with Neytiri, Jake gives up on his mission and starts to consider himself part of the Na'vis and Planet Pandora.

His change of loyalty is demonstrated when Jake attacks GDR machines that came to destroy the Home Tree. Upon seeing the event, Quaritch disconnects Jake from his avatar and discovers a video diary in which Jake says that the Na'vi will never leave the region.

This causes Quaritch to order the destruction of the Tree, and Grace disagrees, saying it would affect Pandora's bio-botanical neural network. Parker Selfridge gives Grace and Jake an hour to convince the Na'vi to leave the area.

However, when revealing the mission, the Omaticaya consider Jake and Grace traitors and imprison them. Quaritch attacks the Home Tree, killing many Omaticaya, including Eytucan (Wes Studi), clan chief, and father of Neytiri. Jake and Grace are disconnected from the Avatars and imprisoned along with Norm.

Pilot Trudy Chacon (Michelle Rodriguez), disgusted with recent actions, frees them. On the run, Grace is shot by Quaritch. With Grace dying from her injuries, Jake decides to ask the Omaticaya for help.

After taming Toruk, a beast that only five Na' vi managed to mount, Jake flies to the Tree of Souls, where the Omaticaya took refuge and asks for their help to save Grace. There is an attempt to transfer Grace's soul to her avatar, but the scientist's injuries are too serious, and she dies.

Jake and Tsu'Tey (Laz Alonso), the new leader Omaticaya, use the Toruk to fly to the different Na' vi clans and convince them to join in their fight. Afterward, Jake prays to Eywa, asking for his help as Quaritch's troops plan to destroy the Tree of Souls.

In the battle that follows, many Na' vi die, including Tsu'Tey and Trudy, and defeat seems close, suddenly as a miracle, Eywa, the goddess of the Na'vis decides to intervene in the battle by causing Pandora's fauna to attack and take away the advantage of the GDR.

Jake destroys a bomber, and Quaritch retaliates by attacking the building containing the avatars' control shell with Jake's body. Jake is exposed to the atmosphere and almost dies, but is saved by Neytiri after it kills Quaritch.

Selfridge and the military are expelled from Pandora, but the Na'vi let the scientists stay. The Omaticaya take possession of the human fortress and make it their new home.

Jake becomes the leader of the Omaticaya, and his soul is permanently transferred to his avatar through the Tree of Souls.

Here ends the film that was intended to be the first in a series of films, but given the clear allusion to the oil and weapons lobby that dominates our planet and due to its ecological and political message, the film was practically obliterated.

After more than ten years and plagued by the plague of COVID 19, which forces us to a natural social distance, it is worth reflecting on all the messages of the film and the extent to which we are captive of greedy elites who prefer to destroy human life on this planet.

The film evokes the acceptance of our spiritual and physical nature, the connection between the parts and the whole, the universal dimension of this unity called life which is composed by the binomial Gaia and God, Yin and Yang, Female and Male, which exists at the same time, and that it is all of us, the evident universe unity, that greed insists on separating.