So my sisters and I are brilliant. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you that before, but let me illustrate for you a little slice of our genius. Picture it, Christmas 2009: my sisters and I are assembled at my mom’s house, with our various boyfriends. We got rid of them by sending them off to see Avatar together, which meant that we had time together to bitch about them, but more importantly, it meant we wouldn’t have to see it ourselves. See? Genius!
And that is the story of how I got out of watching a super nerdy movie about blue people called Avatar. I guess it was a pretty big deal that year or something, but it’s amazing how much I didn’t care.
Anyway: cut to February 2019. Whoa, we just fast-forwarded through a whole decade, during which the four sisters from above actually went on to marry all four of those dweeby boyfriends from above. One such couple has had two adorable sons and Sean and I are lucky enough to be joining them for a family holiday in Disney World. Disney World, y’all, where you can now explore the world of Pandora, which turns out to be the world in Avatar. You get to ride a banshee, whatever that means, and take a journey up the river Na’vi, if that means anything to you. There are floating islands and a really big tree and I have no idea what any of that means. Do I need to watch this damn movie in order to properly enjoy my vacation? I asked the Internet for their opinion, and Jeffy responded with a “Nah, you’re fine” which I immediately decided to follow because it’s what I wanted to hear. But then Chris, the little bitch, chimed in with a valid point: I’d also managed to avoid Burlesque for a long time, but succumbed in the name of vacation. Point Chris. So I folded.
And at first I’m like: wow this script is astonishingly heavy-handed. And then I was like: oh, of course it is, it’s plagiarized. THAT’s why Pandora is in Disney World. It’s a 100% direct rip-off of Disney’s Pocahontas, which I’ve also recently reviewed in the name of this vacation. Sam Worthington’s John Sully is John Smith. Same initials even. He’s part of the white people invasion party. They’re going to plunder the land looking for resources, natives be damned. Sound familiar? And then Sam Worthington/John Smith actually gets to know the natives, who are very wise despite having more primitive weapons. He falls in love with the Chief’s daughter, Pocahontas/Zoe Saldana and basically joins the natives, fighting against his own side. There’s even an ancestor tree and an egomaniac in charge. James Cameron admits that he got the idea for this film while watching Pocahontas but I think what he means is, this movie IS Pocahontas, only with tails.
Did I like this movie? No I did not. But am I psyched to ride a banshee? Well, psyched might be overselling it a bit. But I’ve got a FastPass, and if you’re reading this, I might be doing exactly that right now. Maybe check out Twitter and see.