2.Main Content
AVATAR
James Cameron's ground-breaking Avatar
Tue, 9 Mar 2010
It may not have quite hit the BAFTA/Oscar jackpot, but it’s no understatement to say that audiences are responding to James Cameron’s Avatar - but are they entranced by the storytelling or simply wowed by the high-tech spectacle? Trevor Johnston, our man in the 3-D glasses, reveals how the script blends quest narrative, dramatic choices, love story and not a little topicality in a killer combination which has hit home at the global box-office.
Those who like to analyse the screenplays of commercially successful films in terms of an underlying myth structure will no doubt find much food for thought in James Cameron’s Avatar. In simplified terms, this approach is based on the notion that folk tales and legends from throughout human history have thrown up stories in which a lone hero embarks on a journey towards proving their destiny in a decisive final battle, so it therefore follows that films which trace the same quest storyline are replicating patterns already proven to tickle our collective tummy, so to speak. Since many of the box-office blockbusters of the past few decades are indeed shaped in this very same mould, it’s understandable that such thinking should hold much interest for would-be screenwriters trying to figure out just what works with audiences. To add to the evidence, now comes the billion-dollar bonanza that is Avatar, delivering another story – much like, for instance, the original Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings – which starts with an unlikely hero chosen for a mission, and ends with victory in a titanic conflict which brings the salvation of an entire way of life.
Luke, Frodo and…Jake
So to add to the roll call including Luke Skywalker and Frodo Baggins, meet Jake Sully, an ex-US Marine now confined to a wheelchair, and as such certainly not your average man of action. The biotech innovations of the future however, offer Sam Worthington’s Jake a new lease of life by linking him up to a lab-created avatar on the planetoid Pandora. This embeds him in the consciousness of a nine-feet tall hunk of blue-skinned athleticism, enabling him to leap and fly with grace and vigour as he tackles an undercover assignment among the indigenous Na’vi people. Jake’s orders are to learn their ways so he can help a powerful Earth-based private security company relocate them and thus access the valuable mineral deposits lurking beneath their current home. As missions go this is, at first glance, rather less noble than Luke learning to harness The Force against the all-powerful Imperial forces, or Frodo getting his hands on the Ring before the armies of darkness have it in their grasp. The key point in Cameron’s original screenplay for Avatar is, of course, Jake’s eventual realisation that it takes an open heart and an ability to see through his enemy’s eyes in order to perceive a deeper truth. It’s then that he rejects the rapacious, self-serving ways of his mercenary employers and throws his lot in with the environmentally-attuned community-driven Na’vi, saving them from destruction at the hands of the tooled-up earthlings and finally being reborn as one of them. Thus he achieves an enlightenment as a Na’vi warrior which would have been beyond his scope as a mere human soldier of fortune.
In classic Luke and Frodo mode then, Jake’s path is not only a test of physical courage but also a moral odyssey. On the one hand, thanks to his avatar, he wins the confidence of the Na’vi and meets the challenges of combat, yet in so doing he also moves beyond the individualistic motivation of restoring his limbs (a carrot dangled by his ruthless commander, Colonel Quaritch) to embrace a cause larger than himself, namely the ecological and spiritual values espoused by the Na’vi. Like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, for instance, the fantasy settings also highlight the mythic through-line of the hero being set various tests – here Jake has to survive the danger-filled jungle of Pandora by night, ride the Na’vi steeds, fly their so-called Banshees, pass their vision-quest trial, and finally master the huge airborne Leonopteryx as proof of his leadership credentials. All of this provides a helpful succession of action set-pieces, but it also builds towards and makes credible Jake’s participation in the final conflict against his former masters, while allowing him to bond with the Na’vi’s value system, and, crucially, providing a context for the love story between himself and the fair Na’vi maiden Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) – which adds emotional ballast to the whole tale.
So, by giving Jake a cause, a people, and a woman to fight for, this particular mythic trajectory offers the motivation to power the viewer’s interest through a 162-minute feature, in the process supplying a structural template which outlines the sequence of events, 
Pandora - Avatar's new worldas well as providing a generic imprint readily recognisable by and marketable to a wide audience.
The whole apparatus of the mythic quest obviously offers the writer tools in shaping this particular kind of story (see Christopher Vogler’s ‘The Writer’s Journey’ for thought-provoking further explication), but while the likes of Vogler’s twelve-step outline may provide story guidance and helpful contextualisation, there’s obviously more to be said here – after all, ticking off sundry points on the mythic curve does not necessarily a compelling movie make. Is the mythic underlay then really what audiences find most engrossing about Avatar?
Decisions, decisions!
Actually, you could argue instead that it’s the conundrum of the dramatic choices facing protagonist Jake Sully which really draws us into Cameron’s story world. When we can’t work out how the hero’s going to get out of a scrape, that’s the intrigue which keeps us hooked, after all. In this instance, Jake is left weighing up the following:
do the mercenary Quaritch’s bidding, deliver the intel which will help the mining company destroy the Na’vis’ home, and be rewarded with expensive medical treatment to restore his paralysed legs
or help the Na’vi defeat his own side, find harmony with an ecological and spiritual cause larger than himself, and possibly lose his life in the process
Crucially, there are pros and cons on each side. Getting his legs fixed comes at the price of moral corruption, but fighting the good fight is in the context (a vulnerable individual communing with his avatar from inside a pod) pretty much a suicide mission. Evidently then, whatever he decides he must be prepared to square up to potentially grave consequences. At the outset, getting his mobility back again is his priority, since he wants to return to being the man he was before he was wounded. As is always the case in the most involving stories however, what he wants doesn’t quite correspond with what he needs – and what he needs is a cause he can believe in, after years of unquestioning service in the Marine Corps has left him a lonely wounded, embittered vet.
The opportunity to replace his late twin brother in the avatar programme is the incident which thus sets his physical and moral journey in motion, a journey which ends in his realisation of a deeper truth which will make him a fulfilled person. In essence then, the root of the story is in the tension between what he wants and what he needs since the subsequent action challenges and moral dilemmas Jake faces all stem from this fundamental dramatic conception of the protagonist.
Enriching and intensifying the dilemma
It’s one thing laying out a dilemma for a protagonist, the challenge then is to plot the leading character’s subsequent course. Throughout the script, Cameron uses the supporting characters to suggest patterns of behaviour for his leading man – ace pilot Trudy (Michelle Rodriguez) turning against her own commanders, for instance, or the failed transmigration of souls involving the stricken Dr Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) foreshadowing Jake’s final transformation. Grace’s position as the objective scientist who can observe but not alter the lives of the Na’vi (because ultimately the security company are her paymasters) stands as a contributing factor to Jake’s decision to go over to the other side. Her evident compassion for the Na’vi is in marked contrast to Quaritch’s steely ruthlessness, and is key to changing Jake’s initially neutral attitude, yet ultimately his escalating emotional entanglement with the tribespeople – and indeed his romantic involvement with Neytiri – will not allow him to adopt her semi-detached stance. When you’re creating what’s effectively an entire world the audience has never seen before, representing these various ways of thinking and behaving help the audience find their way into the drama, and also mark out a context for the protagonist’s decisions – either by planting a seed for his future choices or showing him the path he doesn’t want to follow.
Jeopardy, of course, is a useful tool in upping the stakes, since the fact that our hero could be a goner at any minute intensifies our rooting interest in his plight. What’s especially effective in the basic scenario here is that it allows for jeopardy on two fronts. In himself, Jake is an easy target, whether in his wheelchair or in his pod, should his superiors simply decide to eliminate him, while linking up to the avatar in itself takes a heavy physical toll which could be too much for him. In avatar form moreover, he faces a dangerously steep learning curve in adopting the Na’vi ways, whether it’s facing the animal perils of the jungle, the terrifying possibility of falling to one’s doom from a flying banshee (or some even bigger airborne beastie), or the nightmare prospect of squaring up with a bow and arrow to the heavily-armoured human invaders. With all these story elements at his disposal, Cameron always has some new danger to cut to as he marks the various steps in the hero’s journey – not least the threat that Quaritch can pull the plug on the avatar programme and thus forcibly break Jakes ties with the blue people forever. It’s jeopardy upon jeopardy.
True LiesNeedless to say, a touch of romance doesn’t do any harm either, and Cameron definitely has a track record when it comes to fusing a love story with other genres. In Titanic the DiCaprio/Winslet duo brought an individual dimension to the disaster-movie loss of life, while Aliens took the brave step of making Sigourney Weaver’s parental love a key element in a sci-fi adventure. The rekindling of the Schwarzenegger/Jamie Lee Curtis marriage in the context of an espionage adventure in True Lies was rather less successful, but one could see what he was attempting. On this occasion, the romance between Jake’s avatar and the Amazonian Neytiri, is certainly a case of opposites attracting, and though it’s not exactly unpredictable, there’s a bit of narrative multi-tasking going on with it. The feats of bravery which Jake performs to win her affections have the effect of allowing him to understand and value the world of the Na’vi, while her sense that his open heartedness and bravery make him a suitable partner even though he’s a mere ‘dreamwalker’ signals Jake’s special chosen-by-destiny characteristic which befits the hero in this type of mythic journey. This flags up expectations of further derring-do – and with it a curiosity to see whether Jake can actually live up to the billing.
Actually, more is more
Another effective by-product of the love story is not only that it increases the stakes, but it also loads up problems for later in the story. Since the romance has already kicked in, Quaritch’s decision to terminate the avatar programme is a heavy blow to Jake – the battle-scarred Colonel’s decision to shift into direct action motivated, with savage irony, by Jake’s earlier assessment that the Na’vi don’t want to leave their home. It’s not really all over though, since this apparent defeat is followed by one final opportunity for negotiation, landing avatar-Jake back in front of the Na’vi, where he has to confess the full details of his undercover assignment to a shocked Neytiri and company. Double savage irony – his earlier betrayal mean that his words of warning carry no weight, thus putting Neytiri and her people in even graver danger as the mercenary gunships approach. So, when the humans rain fire down on the Na’vi, and Jake witnesses the horror, his turning-point decision to throw his lot in with the Na’vi leaves him back to the drawing board in terms of winning their confidence and providing leadership in their hour of need. Jake’s dilemma over which path to follow is just the beginning, for an epic tale by its very nature needs a whole array of action beats and plot points to sustain its scope. What’s impressive here is that Cameron always has another crisis in reserve, right through to the expansive climactic battle where the combined Na’vi tribes and Pandora’s forces of nature win the day, the archetypal mano-a-mano biff-off between Quaritch and avatar-Jake, and the very last-minute cliff-hanger whether the stricken Jake has enough strength left to make it alive through the soul transfer which Grace failed to survive. There’s a lesson here for anyone considering writing action-adventure fare – the heart-in-mouth moments are what the audience pay their money to enjoy, so you have to keep them coming. The movie has to keep delivering.
An extra dimension
Still, there have been movies before with whizz-bang action and multiple thrills and spills, but they haven’t made the billions that Avatar has. The 3-D technology, of course, adds to the immersive-ness of the viewing experience, but the success is evidently more to do with the way in which such a broad span of people across the world engage with the story. Given the distinctly mixed critical reception the film has received, it’s presumably not the subtleties of characterisation which are drawing them in, for although the dilemmas and the plotting are dynamic and highly functional, there’s not a lot of depth or individual texture to Jake, Neytiri or Quaritch – the characters exist to transmit the story, rather than the other way round. No, it’s surely more about the way in which the conflicts outlined in the story are something that people can connect with even though it’s nominally happening on a distant fictional planet.
Hayao Miyazaki's Princess MononokeIn part, it may be about the way in which superhero movies present a fantasy context offering an imagined escape from all the frustration and repression we face in our everyday lives. So, when Jake hooks up to the avatar (and we slip on our 3-D specs) the sudden sense of high-flying liberty is very intoxicating – cf the consistent visual motif in the films of Japanese animation maestro Hayao Miyazaki to which one suspects Cameron has been playing close attention. It’s not just the flying which percolates into the audience’s psyche though, but also maybe the way in which the film delineates the terror of globalisation, the sense that our lives are shaped and formed and constricted by political and economic forces which we are powerless to resist, forces which ignore the ecological and spiritual questions at the heart of our continuing existence. The battle lines, between the death-dealing Yankee capitalists and dark-skinned natives for whom the spiritual and ecological realms are one and the same, may not be particularly nuanced, but they’re suggestive enough for a host of different constituencies to derive their own meaning from them – whether it’s the Palestinian protestors who donned blue Na’vi garb to express their defiance of the Israeli army, or the Chinese authorities who banned the film because it seemed to hint too sensitively at their own record on disruptive land clearances in the name of progress.
What ever one’s critical judgment of the film, it does offer cheering evidence that popular cinema need not always be about mere consumption, but that the potency of story and the alchemical reaction it can spur in the imagination transcends the notion of mere product and becomes another moment in humanity’s ongoing journey of self-definition. Who would have thought that a Hollywood studio would stump up the guts of $300,000,000 for a film which posits the justness of open rebellion against America’s military-industrial complex, and suggest that the key challenge facing the US today is its inability to perceive the world from ideological, ecological and religious perspectives other than its own. The final image of Jake’s rebirth as a Na’vi brave cements all these ideas, but it also brings to fruition Cameron’s dramatic premise – that the ultimate truth is revealed when, with an open heart, one sees life anew through the eyes of one’s enemy, as if for the first time.
Avatar's Na’vi people
Hints and Tips
• Quest narratives often employ a lot of similar generic elements which can be helpful if you’re contemplating writing this sort of fantasy adventure, suggesting both familiar plot motifs and a readymade linear narrative. Ticking a few of the mythic boxes doesn’t in itself mean you’ll have a compelling story, but it may offer guidance in terms of context and audience expectations.
• Things really get interesting when the protagonist is faced with difficult choices each representing particular moral worldviews. Look at matching an attractive option with dangerous or negative consequences, playing this against a more difficult choice which comes with more positive consequences, so the audience is drawn in to thinking it through with the story’s central character.
• The perceptions and behaviour of the secondary characters in a story can be an essential tool in helping the protagonist find their path, by reinforcing the benefits of a prospective choice or showing the potential pitfalls of a particular decision. The thoughts and actions of the same supporting cast can also be crucial in helping the audience interpret the whys and wherefores of the world in which the story unfolds, especially if the writer is creating a fantasy milieu.
• Action adventure stories often demand full-on moral conflict, but in order to give that conflict an appropriate sense of scale the action beats must deliver time after time. What thrills an audience most is the hero battling with some new crisis they didn’t quite see coming.
• A well-crafted genre story can be efficient in terms of generating a visceral viewer response, but in order to touch the audience more deeply, look for the ideas which can make your story relevant to their emotional lives and everyday fears and aspirations.
©Trevor Johnston/The Script Factory 2010
If you'd like to discuss this review with Trevor Johnston you can email him at info@scriptfactory.co.uk - and to read other reviews by Trevor click here.