Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is a gorgeous but empty call to environmental action
When I’m finally allowed to climb the ikran rookery to bond with a mount of my own, it’s easy to see the big-picture appeal of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. Those first moments of flight, with my gangly Na’vi character silhouetted against an impossibly vast sky, are exhilarating. Flying remains one of the greatest expressions of human fantasy, possibly even more poignant for a young Na’vi who was essentially raised as a human, away from their birthright of ikran-enabled flight. My character whoops with delight as Pandora unfurls like a glittering diorama; my ikran and I soar through clusters of floating islands and ancient trees without a thought or care in the world. When I return to the ground after this whirlwind of serotonin — arguably the highlight of the early game — I recognize the exact flavor of escapism that has settled on my tongue as the taste of impending indigestion.
Frontiers of Pandora is probably going to be a great life sim for the small but earnest community of Na’vi fans out there, especially those with PCs who will surely be responsible for some of the unholiest Na’vi mods that James Cameron will (hopefully) never see. It’s a natural extension of Cameron’s enormously profitable movies — big, showy, purposefully unsubtle entertainment for the widest possible audience. This isn’t necessarily a criticism, but a reflection of Cameron’s intent with the original Avatar film and subsequent franchise — a universally conscientious science-fiction story that aligned with his own interests in environmental activism, albeit the sort of activism one does when one doesn’t have to worry about one’s material day-to-day existence. Following this blockbuster heritage, Frontiers of Pandora (so far) checks a lot of
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