The Politics of "Avatar"
It's playing to sold-out audiences from Beijing to Madrid. Opening night ticket sales for Avatar set a new record in China. It's likely to be the top-grossing movie of all time, surpassing James Cameron's previous blockbuster, "Titanic," which earned $1.842 billion.
"Avatar" has its own language, deity and a growing cult following that mirrors its box office success.
It's also been widely critiqued and analyzed by pundits as well as presidents, viewing the movie through their particular political lenses.
The Vatican takes offense at a fantasy civilization in which a species, the Na'vi, lives with deep connection to their natural surroundings. For example, the "tail" of a Na'vi connects with plants and animals, such as flying dinosaur-like creatures, creating a neural bond, similar to connecting a computer to a network.
"Pandora is the planet that cleverly winks at all those pseudo-doctrines that turn ecology into the religion of the millennium," Vatican Radio said. "Nature is no longer a creation to defend, but a divinity to worship."
The Vatican seems to equate the fantasy aliens of "Avatar" with "heathens" — dismissing them as irreligious, uncivilized or unenlightened. Other religions, cults and political movements through the ages, which plug into the same mythologies, archetypes and fears as "Avatar" (and underlie sacred texts), have started from equally strange beginnings.
"Avatar is a thinly disguised, heavy-handed and simplistic sci-fi fantasy/allegory critical of America from our founding straight through to the Iraq War," wrote John Nolte, editor-in-chief of Big Hollywood.
"It looks like a big-budget animated film with a garish color palette right off a hippie's tie dye shirt," Nolte added.
Evo Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, praised "Avatar" as a "profound show of resistance to capitalism and the struggle for the defense of nature."
New York Times columnist David Brooks called "Avatar" a "racial fantasy" that "rests on the stereotype that white people are rationalist and technocratic while colonial victims are spiritual and athletic."
"It rests on the assumption that nonwhites need the White Messiah to lead their crusades. It rests on the assumption that illiteracy is the path to grace," he wrote. "It also creates a sort of two-edged cultural imperialism. Natives can either have their history shaped by cruel imperialists or benevolent ones, but either way, they are going to be supporting actors in our journey to self-admiration."
President Obama saw "Avatar" with his family on Jan. 2. He hasn't commented so far on the film, but he might argue with Brooks' notion that nonwhites and natives living close to nature and unschooled in credit default swaps need a "White Messiah" to lead a crusade as aliens from the another world try to drive them out of their ancestral homes.
But it's just a movie after all, a hallucinatory 3D adventure in which a David beats a Goliath -- the Na'vi natives defeat the evil RDA Corporation. We've seen this picture before — RDA will be back… in the megahit's sequel.
Daniel Farber is editor-in-chief of CBSNews.com.