My wife and I watched Avatar in 3D last weekend.  It was an amazing experience.  I had never seen 3D work quite like that before.  At first it gave me a head ache but about 45 minutes into the movie my headache disappeared and I was able to fully enjoy the movie.  However, a bigger nuisance than the headache was the strong thread of  pantheism that was woven throughout the movie.  As a friend said later, James Cameron has stolen the script for Pocahontas and warped it into space.

I found a very good review on Avatar by ROSS DOUTHAT who delves into this much better than I do.  Its definitely worth the read.

Here is an excerpt:

It’s fitting that James Cameron’s “Avatar” arrived in theaters at Christmastime. Like the holiday season itself, the science fiction epic is a crass embodiment of capitalistic excess wrapped around a deeply felt religious message. It’s at once the blockbuster to end all blockbusters, and the Gospel According to James.But not the Christian Gospel. Instead, “Avatar” is Cameron’s long apologia for pantheism — a faith that equates God with Nature, and calls humanity into religious communion with the natural world.

In Cameron’s sci-fi universe, this communion is embodied by the blue-skinned, enviably slender Na’Vi, an alien race whose idyllic existence on the planet Pandora is threatened by rapacious human invaders. The Na’Vi are saved by the movie’s hero, a turncoat Marine, but they’re also saved by their faith in Eywa, the “All Mother,” described variously as a network of energy and the sum total of every living thing.

If this narrative arc sounds familiar, that’s because pantheism has been Hollywood’s religion of choice for a generation now

To keep reading click on the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/opinion/21douthat1.html?_r=3&ref=opinion