'Avatar' Wins Globe; Some Critics Scoff

Get ready for the "Avatar" backlash.

The film won a Golden Globe for best movie of 2009, which officially makes it open season for attack, along with the fact that it has earned over a billion dollars since its release. Critics are sharpening their knives.

Ironically, one of the first to come forward was the Vatican, which declared it emotionally unengaging and an attempt to replace God with nature, according to a New York Times story, which goes on to say: "The A.P. Vatican Radio said the movie 'cleverly winks at all those pseudo-doctrines that turn ecology into the religion of the millennium,' adding: 'Nature is no longer a creation to defend, but a divinity to worship.' "

Also, Times columnist David Brooks had a field day bashing the movie as a standard example of the "White Messiah" fable in which a man from somewhere else comes and saves the natives in a Godlike manner. He cited "A Man Called Horse," "At Play in the Fields of the Lords," "Dances with Wolves," and "The Last Samurai" as other examples. The kiddie version is "Pocahontas," he writes.

Another Times writer quotes his daughter's name for the film as "The Blue Kitty Movie."

There's no arguing that "Avatar" is a visually arresting film, and it does bring you into a fantasy world. As long as viewers don't confuse fantasy with reality, I don't see the harm. In fact, I think its plot far surpassed James Cameron's other mega hit, "Titanic," which I think the Vatican could have objected to on moral grounds.

As long as the viewer doesn't sink into the fantasy world and ignore the real one as people in Haiti and other parts of the world suffer for lack of attention, then no harm done by the blue kitties.