Avatar — The Metacontextual Edition

Rudyard Kipling would be proud

Note: This is a thing I wrote in January of 2010, just after the first Avatar movie came out. Originally I posted it on my personal web site, which was a blog site back when people had individual web sites with blogs. Content on individual websites is kind of a thing of the past now, so I’m moving stuff over here to Medium, which is where the action is.

Pretty much by coincidence, more Avatar movies are coming out around now too, so maybe this will be of interest. Though, it’s weird to read this now and see how even in ten years, references to things like DVDs and Skype can seem so dated. Also, a “green zone” was a thing when the US was occupying Iraq. Or Afghanistan. Whatever. For you kids out there, it means an enforced military safe zone. It was a term we threw around to sound like we understood the latest geopolitical situation.

The formatting on Medium is a little limited, but hopefully this still works. It’s supposed to be laid out kind of like a movie script. The little pictures are of the characters, just above the lines they speak.

Anyway, hope you enjoy it.

THE MOVIE OPENS WITH A MONTAGE SHOWING THE MAIN CHARACTER, AN EX-MARINE “JUGHEAD,” BEING RELEASED FROM A V.A. HOSPITAL, HIS FLIGHT IN SUSPENDED ANIMATION TO THE…