After so many recommendations to see this movie, I decided to spend a warm and sunny winter afternoon inside a theater with my wife. We saw Avatar in 3D, complete with nerd glasses. I think my wife looked better in them than I.

Avatar is a wonderfully imaginative tale that made me wonder if the blue humanoids on the screen are real, or created in a computer lab. Add the three-dimensional effect and the blur becomes even more distinct. The topography of the world of Pandora, complete with floating mountains and luminescent creatures piqued my senses and drew emotions out of me that I hadn’t felt in a very long time. The Featurette gives a sensational glimpse of this fantastic world (link to featurette at bottom of this blog post):

Courtesy 20th Century FOX

The repeated references to the connection of living beings to their home world gave me hope that those in the theater would be immersed in natural spirit and somehow be brought to a new sense of awareness through multimedia osmosis. At times I allowed my senses to connect to the world of Pandora, as I have many times connected with the energy of our wonderful creation, Mother Earth, and her creator. It’s a lovely feeling when I can draw on the cycle of life between predator and prey, birth and death, all the while enjoying the fullness of life. If I could have my wish, I would like to see a version of this movie that only focused on the connection-building scenes that help one appreciate her/his animal body and to relink thought to remember that our bodily vessels are made up of earthbound substances. It seems like in this age we are bombarded with images that seem to separate us from the natural world. In this train of thought lives the irresponsible consumerism that destroys our world at such a rapid pace. It is an important message for us to give reverence to our habitat. Though we may be able to create a new and wonderful world free of mosquitos on the big screen, creating one in real life is simply not possible.

The continuation of the movie brought scenes that were unfortunately cluttered with an all-too-predictable plot, which is repeated in so many mainstream Hollywood movies. That is, the 3D experience stopped at the visual element of the film. Instead of choosing a complex theme of blurring the line between what is good and bad, the people involved in making the movie decided to focus on a story between nature vs. the corporate world and its evil military muscle. It is again the linear thought of the creators of this film that forget that they benefit from the military might that they portray as evil. They enjoy the freedom of speech because they live under the umbrella of the most powerful nation and its military. They also enjoy the unlimited profits from capitalism that they represent in the film as the evil mining company who brings precious ore from the land of Pandora back home to its needy consumer base. I ask the producers to glance into a mirror and see that they are a part of what they depict as bad and wrong. They need to take some of the responsibility as well and stop depicting the military leaders as the happy arms of Satan. In contrast, a movie called Princess Mononoke put a human and caring face to the mining effort that was also destroying nature in its quest to expand. Perhaps the producer thought the mainstream American audience is too simple-minded to grasp a more involved plot?

Princess Mononoke by Hayao Miyazaki

For me, the most atrocious offense were the parents who brought small children to watch this film. How do we enlighten parents who decide to take kids to this show? As I was constantly negotiating with my emotions to keep everything in check under such powerful scenes and sounds, I could only wonder how still-developing minds of young children were being assaulted by trying to do the same, only to end up failing and crying. Certainly the corporate structure that the producers were attacking with the plot of this film are essentially guilty of the same gluttonous greed by not penalizing theaters for allowing children under 13 to view this movie. (The movie is rated PG-13, which I agree with).

Despite the overkill of missiles, battles and destruction, Avatar 3D brought awareness to the masses to realize that destroying the habitat, either alien or domestic, is a really bad thing. I only hope that the younger generation that is getting a full dose of this message from so many sources aren’t overly desensitized to forget that they should actually do something about it.

-Keitan

(Link to featurette: http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/fox/avatar/hd/)